Well, I think I've finally got a polyphasic schedule that will work for my school schedule this semester. That is, one that will allow me to be alert during all waking times, and yet not require that I give up more than five hours to sleep each day. Basically, it's a pentaphasic schedule, with a three-hour core at night. In polyphasic parlance, "core" sleep is basically any sleep that lasts longer than a normal nap length (in my case, roughly 20 minutes), and cores generally come out to be some multiple of the normal 90-minute sleep cycle. At least, most people have a 90-minute sleep cycle. I am finding, however, that I do not, quite. I always thought that I did, but it turns out that at least some of that ninety minutes was spent in the getting to sleep stage because, now that I can drop off within the first three minutes, my three-hour core actually lasts somewhere between 2 1/4 and 2 1/2 hours. Weird eh?
I've also been doing a LOT of sleep shifting in order to fit in a social schedule during the past week and a half. Not so good. I even overslept one morning, and got to my Precalc class late. Turns out all I missed was a pre-test which had no bearing on my grade (whew!), but it freaked me out sufficiently that I've stopped sleeping in the van (which was my "bed" for all intents and purposes before I began polyphase, and thus has long-term sleeping associations for me), and I've started adding an extra alarm for the time right before school. So far I haven't needed it...hope I can keep it that way. Also, I don't go out on school nights, which will hopefully help.
In other news, Mom goes in for a surgery later this morning. It's elective, so it will hopefully be no big deal. But it means that I will be apartment- and cat-sitting for the next however long until she gets home from the hospital. Yay! A real kitchen for a week or so! Whom can I invite over and cook for.... :D
In other, other news...perhaps I can blame a certain ultra-embarassing occurence on my sleep deprivation...i.e. trying to wreck my friend Rob's car. :( Nah, I won't try that. He knows better (after all, he was there!). In fact, I was hyper-aware, because it was SOOO cool to be driving such a fun car. And the incident itself is irony of the highest order. It wouldn't dare happen when I'm careening around corners at 70mph. Oh no. It waits until I'm doing...2mph. In a freaking parking lot. I'm executing a U-turn, no big deal, right? And, I see this thing looming in the headlights that I would SWEAR is a Miami drain (side note here: apparently no one else in the world calls these Miami drains besides myself and my ex-father-in-law. So, for clarification, Miami drains are the shallow, v-shaped ditchlets that you often see running down either side of the road in this part of the country. They help with drainage. Where the Miami part came from, I don't know for sure, but, I would guess they're common in Miami? I never paid that much attention when I was down there. Neither do I know if they have a more commonly accepted name. But, if you know what I'm talking about, and you know the proper noun for them, please, by all means, comment away and let me know! Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post). So, yeah. I think I'm going to be driving over a little divot when...WHUMP! I run the car up on a nice, 6-inch-plus curb. Now, if this were my car...no big deal. I have 6 inches of clearance, easy. But NOOOOO! Rob's car is not just lower...it's LOWERED. With the uber-cool low-profile tires & wide-ass rims...big brakes...incredible-sounding exhaust system...short-throw shifter...ah, but I digress. Again. So embarassed I am literally feeling pain, I back down off the curb and pull over to a better-lit area so we can assess the damage...and hear a gut-wrenching dragging sound. He looks over his shoulder and announces that his entire bumper is laying in the road...AUGH! I get out and look at the bumper...intact! Then I run over to the item in question...turns out it's the splashguard/liner of the wheel well. Not good, but...not as bad as I had feared. We pore over the tire & rim with great attention to detail, and look around for any other broken bits, but there miraculously appear to be none. I guess there is SOMEthing to be said for low-speed impacts...So I deposit the curvy plastic in the trunk, and then discover, oh yes, the damage HAS indeed been done...he wants to drive. :( *snif* Much to his credit, however, he neither curses me nor takes a swing, so I don't think I've ruined the friendship. *crosses fingers*
Seriously...Rob...if you read this, thanks for being so cool about the whole thing. I'm not sure what I would've done in your shoes, but you probably did it better.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Back to school
Yup, in case you didn't know, I've managed to talk myself into going back to school. Not for any marketable skill this time, though, but rather for a course of study that will challenge me, and that I will hopefully enjoy: Physics/Philosophy. I love how they converge (albeit at the far end of the spectrum from where I'll be beginning my studies), and since they're both fascinating to me, I'm hoping I'll be able to stick with it this time. Not that psychology wasn't fascinating, but...
I find it kind of ironic that, were I to choose the "easy" way out (following my original psychology major), I could have my AA degree in less than one full-time semester. By switching horses yet again, I am committing myself to another couple of years of courses, because I have so much catch-up work to do in math. And math is about the only thing I have left to take. Well, math, and science courses which will undoubtedly be math-intensive. Welcome to the world of a professional student! I suppose that at least looks more respectable, though, to the outside world than my current job description of "bum." Hooray for being socially acceptable! NOT! Heh.
In other news...it's good to have Jeff back! Strange, after 7 weeks on my own, but nice. I've been slowly expanding my social circle, so that the next time he leaves town I'll not be stuck sitting on my hands quite so much, and one of the people I've met is a musician named Rob, who is based up in Brandon. If you enjoy folk/rock, you should probably check out some of the tunes on his myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/shoogerfree. It's not often that I stumble upon an artist without a record contract to whom I actually enjoy listening, but he's an exception...and a pretty decent human to boot, so I just had to give him a plug here :)
I've also been tinkering with my polyphasic schedule, trying to get myself stabilized so that when I go back to school I won't be risking falling asleep in class. It seems as though I'm going to need some sort of what polyphasers call "core" sleep in my schedule, as, if I try to go without it, my body manages to take it anyway. Usually in the early morning hours, either between my 2am & 6 am naps, or my 6am & 10am naps. Since I've a class scheduled at 7:40am, my goal over the next week is to ensure that I force this to fall between 2am & 6am, so that I'm fresh & ready to go for school. I was hoping to keep my core to 90minutes, but I'm not sure if that's possible. For example, my body took a nice 90min core at the 2am nap today, but then decided it needed another one a little before the 6am nap as well. It is truly amazing, when you are so sleep-needy that your body just takes over, and settles such things for you. At a certain point, there is simply NO fighting it. So I plan to do the next best thing, and plan for it. Perhaps tomorrow (tonight?) I'll ignore my 2am nap, and sleep from 3am to 6am for my core...see how that works out. Since that's the time of day that I have the fewest reasons to be awake (not to mention the hardest time staying awake), I'm hoping I can give that 3 hour period back to the sandman without feeling too gypped. If I can make that schedule work, I'll actually be shifting from hexaphasic to pentaphasic. Probably not a big deal for all the laypeople reading the blog, but most polyphasers consider this to be a pretty tough schedule to maintain. I figure, it's an extra hour to wait beyond my normal 2am time (which, I often have plenty going on at 2am, and usually have to stop whatever I'm doing to nap, so that might be nice) and only an extra half-hour on the other side (6am-10am, instead of roughly 6:30am to 10am with the old nap schedule) to stay awake through. My class schedule has one starting at 7:40, and the other at 11am, so I will be able to run home (very close by) and snag my 10am nappage in between. So long as I can avoid oversleeping, I'll have it made! The good news is that, from about 9am to 2am, I have no problem staying awake at all, and can function at near-peak levels the whole time now. This is a vast improvement over my performance on a monophasic schedule, when I would have a sluggish wake-up period, followed by a few peak hours in the morning, and most of the rest of my day varied between unmotivated and comatose, when I was keeping something close to those same 9am-2am hours. Whee! Ain't hacking your sleep patterns fun?
I find it kind of ironic that, were I to choose the "easy" way out (following my original psychology major), I could have my AA degree in less than one full-time semester. By switching horses yet again, I am committing myself to another couple of years of courses, because I have so much catch-up work to do in math. And math is about the only thing I have left to take. Well, math, and science courses which will undoubtedly be math-intensive. Welcome to the world of a professional student! I suppose that at least looks more respectable, though, to the outside world than my current job description of "bum." Hooray for being socially acceptable! NOT! Heh.
In other news...it's good to have Jeff back! Strange, after 7 weeks on my own, but nice. I've been slowly expanding my social circle, so that the next time he leaves town I'll not be stuck sitting on my hands quite so much, and one of the people I've met is a musician named Rob, who is based up in Brandon. If you enjoy folk/rock, you should probably check out some of the tunes on his myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/shoogerfree. It's not often that I stumble upon an artist without a record contract to whom I actually enjoy listening, but he's an exception...and a pretty decent human to boot, so I just had to give him a plug here :)
I've also been tinkering with my polyphasic schedule, trying to get myself stabilized so that when I go back to school I won't be risking falling asleep in class. It seems as though I'm going to need some sort of what polyphasers call "core" sleep in my schedule, as, if I try to go without it, my body manages to take it anyway. Usually in the early morning hours, either between my 2am & 6 am naps, or my 6am & 10am naps. Since I've a class scheduled at 7:40am, my goal over the next week is to ensure that I force this to fall between 2am & 6am, so that I'm fresh & ready to go for school. I was hoping to keep my core to 90minutes, but I'm not sure if that's possible. For example, my body took a nice 90min core at the 2am nap today, but then decided it needed another one a little before the 6am nap as well. It is truly amazing, when you are so sleep-needy that your body just takes over, and settles such things for you. At a certain point, there is simply NO fighting it. So I plan to do the next best thing, and plan for it. Perhaps tomorrow (tonight?) I'll ignore my 2am nap, and sleep from 3am to 6am for my core...see how that works out. Since that's the time of day that I have the fewest reasons to be awake (not to mention the hardest time staying awake), I'm hoping I can give that 3 hour period back to the sandman without feeling too gypped. If I can make that schedule work, I'll actually be shifting from hexaphasic to pentaphasic. Probably not a big deal for all the laypeople reading the blog, but most polyphasers consider this to be a pretty tough schedule to maintain. I figure, it's an extra hour to wait beyond my normal 2am time (which, I often have plenty going on at 2am, and usually have to stop whatever I'm doing to nap, so that might be nice) and only an extra half-hour on the other side (6am-10am, instead of roughly 6:30am to 10am with the old nap schedule) to stay awake through. My class schedule has one starting at 7:40, and the other at 11am, so I will be able to run home (very close by) and snag my 10am nappage in between. So long as I can avoid oversleeping, I'll have it made! The good news is that, from about 9am to 2am, I have no problem staying awake at all, and can function at near-peak levels the whole time now. This is a vast improvement over my performance on a monophasic schedule, when I would have a sluggish wake-up period, followed by a few peak hours in the morning, and most of the rest of my day varied between unmotivated and comatose, when I was keeping something close to those same 9am-2am hours. Whee! Ain't hacking your sleep patterns fun?
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