I miss this show.
Block of Cheese Day
Reply
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Excuses Excuses
I know I’ve been slacking a bit lately when it comes to posting. I’m working on the draft for Zoe’s one-year newsletter, but it’s taking a bit longer than usual — which I noticed the other day when she turned 13 months old. It wasn’t my fault!
Once again, Annie and Zoe are sick, and once again I’m trying desperately not to catch it. I really can’t afford to miss any more time at work. Tonight I came home to help Annie put Zoe to bed, and while we were cleaning up the mess in Zoe’s room from where she peed in the bed (and on the crib bumper, and on the floor), one of the cats threw up in the basement. I would mention that we’re just lucky there wasn’t a poop catastrophe at the same time, but I’m afraid of jinxing myself.
Anyway, long story short, Zoe’s newsletter(s) are coming soon, and then I should be getting back to posting more frequently.
The Sleep Study Sucked
To make a long story short, they wired me up like you can see in the photo above. I had electrodes taped to my legs, shoulders and head, some wires wrapped around my chest, a laser taped to my finger to measure my blood oxygen level, and some tubes in my nostrils to measure my temperature and air flow. Set up like this, I got into bed where I discovered that due to the way I was wired into the bed, I couldn’t really move. I had to call the technician in to disconnect me so I could go to the bathroom before bed, and also to turn out my light.
My Sleep Study is Tonight
About a year back, my dentist told me that I probably have sleep apnea, and I should talk to my doctor about it. She said she could recognize some of the symptoms during my dental cleaning, like the fact that I breathe through my mouth at night. Long story short, I mentioned it to my doctor, and after some follow-up questions, she said I should go to a “sleep study” where doctors would observe the way I sleep at night and determine whether I have sleep apnea, and if so, how severe it is.
Sleep apnea is linked to all sorts of horrible stuff like heart disease and strokes. They used to think that weight gain and stress caused it, but now they think it’s the other way around – if you have sleep apnea, it causes high blood pressure and weight gain, and can even aggravate your allergies or cause restless legs syndrome.
The treatments range from very mild cases that don’t really need treatment to more severe cases requiring sleeping with a machine to help you breathe or even surgury. To be honest, these treatments sound horrible to me, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I have a mild case, if at all.
It’s not an unreasonable thing to hope for – about the only symptoms I have are that I snore and sometimes I stop breathing at night for a few seconds. The other symptoms, like being tired during the day, or high blood pressure, I don’t have. I’ve never felt like I sleep poorly at night – but I have always tossed and turned and made a lot of noise while sleeping.
Anyways, I’m pretty nervous about this whole thing. Annie’s meeting me after work to have dinner, and then I get dropped off at the Marriott for the study. That’s one nice thing – rather than a hospital room, they just have a hotel room set up with cameras and monitoring equipment. Then I’ll be hooked up to wires all night, and in the morning hopefully I’ll find something out.
Jumper: One Paragraph Review
Since Zoe was born, Annie and I don’t get out to see movies together as often as we’d like, so when we do manage to swing it, we feel the need to pick something that demands the big screen. Last time, we saw Cloverfield, which was an easy decision. This time, we decided that Jumper seemed like the one that most needed the big screen. The good news is that the effects are fantastic, and the fight scenes are a lot of fun. The bad news is that there is no plot to speak of. Anakin is the main character, who discovers that he has the ability to teleport, and immediately runs away from home to lead a glamorous but morally bankrupt life. He robs banks, eat lunch on top of the Sphinx, and picks up women in a bar in London. All of this ends when he is attacked by men with cattle prods in the Colosseum. Long story short, another teleporter reveals to him that there is an ancient war between “Jumpers” and “Paladins,” a religious group who are determined to exterminate all Jumpers. The Paladins are led by a distractingly white-haired Samuel Jackson, but while they are armed with all sorts of advanced technology, they don’t seem to have any training whatsoever, because Anakin and his buddy proceed to beat the snot out of them. By the end of the movie, nothing is resolved, but you don’t really care, because you’re not invested in any of the characters. Still, the special effects are pretty, and if your primary goal is to spend some time with your wife away from the baby, Jumper is not half-bad.