Posts Tagged ‘sleep’

• This isn’t the Hilton

  Date: 2010.01.20 | Category: desert | Response: 2

  This place isn’t the Hilton, Sheraton, or Best Western. Think of it as a scattered Motel 6… that sublets your room to other people.

  I wish were sleeping in tents. Really, I wish we had tents instead of containerized housing units. First and foremost, I could have some privacy as its fairly easy to segment off a section of a room so that it is yours. This space belongs to you day or night. There is nobody else sleeping in there when you have your day off. You don’t feel bad when you need to go into your room and grab something. The guy that works nights (and who happens to be sleeping) is by far the lightest sleeper I have ever come across. I sleep through almost everything – people banging around in the room, lights getting turned on, controlled detonations by EOD, and fighter jets screaming down the runway.

  Sure, the heating/cooling system in a tent isn’t entirely optimal but the tent does have the opportunity to breath a little. The night sleeper likes to turn off the air during the day and get the room nice and cozy… and he likes to make it smell like warm human ass. That smell you notice from the unwashed masses at your local dollar store or Walmart – yep, that’s the smell I’m talking about.

  Oh well, at least they feed me well and the only thing I have to complain about it a slightly smelly light sleeper.

  I’m doing a slightly different job this time around and everything has been new for me – new is good – new is distracting. I’m working in the inspection section so if it comes in or goes out of the bomb dump I get my hands on it. We are the nexus of the bomb dump.

  The term bomb dump sounds terrible to people that directly dissect the words. Its not like a garbage dump where things are left randomly. We have a collection of warehouses, pads, revetments, and buildings where assets are stored in a neat and orderly fashion. We don’t have a death wish so we keep things clean and we make sure that not too much of explosive A gets next to explosive B. If explosive A should catch on fire we could have an extremely bad day.

  Unrelated note – ever Google your name? Found this old article from the base paper. A few spots down I found another link. I don’t live a particularly private life – not many people from my generation do either.

• No problems yet

  Date: 2009.12.07 | Category: I was too lazy to organize these | Response: 1

  Jessica’s Christmas present, a little Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Havoc, is sitting at my feet chewing on a dog bone. All of the dogs have been outside to go to the bathroom and the little one has been outside and gone twice (luckily I was watching her like a hawk and caught her before we had another accident). The morning meal went without incident when I learned that feeding the little one first was the easiest way to keep her out of my hair. The other dogs know that eating before they are released is a bad idea. They decided to sit and wait regardless of what was happening. The other two were shuffled off to the kennel with the little one in tow there simply to watch the proceedings. He was mostly there so I could keep an eye on her.

  I’ve got to keep the little guy quiet and busy until I leave. I know that if I put her in his kennel our morning of silence will be over. Did I mention that Jessica is still asleep? It also happens to be a Monday. Keeping her quiet lies within my best interests. Lets just hope that I can do it…. if I don’t my life expectancy will be drastically shortened.

• It’s a Rodeo – an AIR Rodeo

  Date: 2009.07.17 | Category: work | Response: 0

  I’ve got a few hours before I head back to work. Yes, its 130 on a Friday afternoon and I’m going to head back to work when everyone is headed home. For the next 7-14 days I am going to be running in my sleep – if I get a chance to catch some sleep.

  AMC is holding its bi-annual air rodeo and I’m a wrangler. I won’t be wrangling cows or giant mechanical beasts but I will be wrangling contestants, international contestants, luggage, generals, and anything else one might imagine. In the past week I’ve setup stages, assembled tents, delivered rental cars, decorated buildings, moved trash cans, chucked hay bales, and the list goes on. Its hard work but it is rewarding to do something completely different. The hours aren’t great but it will be over sooner…. or later.

• Stress, workouts, and the little things

  Date: 2009.06.04 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 0

  Switching to night shift is always difficult and the events of this week haven’t made it any easier. I’ve found that it takes a good 4-5 days for me to get my internal clock adjusted to working an off shift. I need copious amounts of caffeine to make this work because I can’t stay busy enough to keep myself awake. I’ve tried to keep myself busy but there have been times when I caught myself dozing while standing up. Summer has arrived in the state of Washington and in the land of no air conditioning our house tends to get a little toasty during the day even if all of the windows are open. If it’s dark I can usually sleep but when its warm like this I don’t sleep quite as well.

  Jessica has had a rough week. Jeff, her brother in-law, was in the hospital because of kidney stone and a brand new diagnosis of diabetes (boo!), her uncle passed away earlier this week, and she has been running on empty all week long. She has been stressed (obviously) and taking everything in like this simply wears a person down. Stress feeds stress and I haven’t been my normal self all week.

  My normal stress reliever is a trip to the gym. The heat and the lack of energy due to the time shift has prevented me from getting in a decent workout. I feel like a weakling right now. Its extremely difficult to time to calorie intake so that I have some energy come workout time. When I work on dayshift I normally workout 4-6 hours after my last meal and 1-2 hours after my last snack. When I am working nights I haven’t had anything to eat in at least 9 hours. I feel like I am trying to win a race with nothing in the gas tank. I have tried eating immediately after waking but I hardly have enough time to digest. My only options are to suck it up or wake up in the middle of the night (or day) and eating breakfast. Can you imagine waking up at 2AM to eat a meal? I can’t and I really enjoy my six hours of sleep a night.

  Little things at work have been driving me crazy. Communication from my shift to the other shifts is a one way street. I try to send out as much information as possible and in return I receive nothing. Dayshift may do something and have some solid reasoning behind it but without communication I feel that they have lost their damned minds. Ten to fifteen times I night I ask myself what the hell were they thinking. Oh well – I’ve vowed to get in a good workout tomorrow and the weekend is fast approaching. Hopefully I can ignore the little things and relax – this isn’t the end of the world and I need to stop acting like it is. I really want to be able to work myself to exhaustion but finding enough work to stay busy is a difficult task. I’m writing this post instead of doing something because I want to be able to stretch out my one hour of scheduled work for this evening. Motivation is difficult when you are working by yourself. When you have no communication with other people it’s hard to gauge how much work you need to finish to be a contributing member. I’d much rather work with someone I despise than work alone – at least I’d have some competition.

• Another month in the dark

  Date: 2009.05.30 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 1

  I was up until 6AM watching bad television and bits and pieces of movies. I tried to keep myself entertained throughout the night and I also tried to keep myself jacked up on caffeine so I could keep on keeping on. Why subject yourself to late night torture? I’m heading back to working graves for the next month so I’ve got to do some adjusting.

  I always hate the first few days trying to adjust to the right sleep schedule. Its hard enough trying to stay up all hours of the night when your options are limited. My diet gets whacked for a few days as I stay constantly hungry. I don’t sleep well and for the first time this year its warm outside so it doesn’t make for the best sleeping conditions. The upside is that it has stopped raining for the moment so at least I’m not by myself while the weather is gloomy (thus dampening my mood). It was my turn to do nights and luckily for us we’ve got an actual schedule so that I know that it will only be a month and that it will rotate around.

  My plan is to stay busy. I hope to leave dayshift with no work – no work whatsoever. I think I can do it. It’s the only way I’m going to stop myself from falling asleep at my desk.

• Can’t sleep, too much time and talent, and zombies

  Date: 2008.11.03 | Category: I was too lazy to organize these | Response: 1

  Par for the course during the first week of mid-shift is an inability to sleep throughout the “night.” I only got four hours of sleep and I’m wide awake now. There is no going back to sleep and I will be exhausted by the time I go to bed tomorrow. Luckily, day two always turns out better and I’m able to get a solid six hours of sleep.

  This guy (video below) has far too much time and talent on his hands. Bravo!

  Jessica and I had our party and we dressed as zombies for Halloween. The makeup took quite a while but I think the effect was pretty darn good. Yes – we like brains!
  

  
  
  

• Crashing

  Date: 2008.03.15 | Category: Life as we know it, desert | Response: 0

  I’ve been crashing the last few days for some unexplained reason. I’m not driving vehicles into solid objects but rather experiencing my body deplete its energy reserves. Last night, about an hour before chow I noticed that I was having an extremely hard time concentrating. Little bits of time were disappearing and I was wearing down quickly. I knew that I needed to eat soon but I don’t have the ability to speed up time.

  We got on the bus to the chow hall and I promptly passed out and woke when we reached the parking lot. I entered, ate my food in 5 minutes, and returned to the bus to sleep for the next 40 minutes. When we got back to work I attempted to check my email and I found that I was falling asleep between messages. I knew that we would be returning to work in 40 minutes and that we would take the bus so I went back outside and passed out.

  When we arrived I was a little groggy until we started working. At that point, my body found its energy and I was fine for the rest of the night. I fell asleep, at the normal time, with relative ease.

  I woke up two hours early today and I haven’t been able to get back to sleep. I decided to eat something – I am never awake for what the day walkers call “lunch”. I’m not sure how this is going to affect me later. Only time will tell.

  My only guess to the cause of the crashes is that is related to my diet. I am not eating enough whole grain foods (that break down slower and provide longer lasting energy) so I’m going to tweak things a bit. We’ll see how it goes.

• A little bit of that and this and that and a….

  Date: 2008.02.07 | Category: desert, rants | Response: 1

  Ok, so I still haven’t done what I set out to do on my day off but I’m getting closer to it with each passing week. I have extremely little free time on a daily basis as I have scheduled only enough time to plow through my routine. There is no extra time for anything else unless I want to cut into my sleep schedule. I do well on 6 hours of sleep but 7 is better. Unfortunately, I don’t move fast enough when I wake up and that extra hour is imperative. Jessica, on the other hand, wants 10 hours of sleep a night. I have no idea how she sleeps that much and still has enough time to do everything. Even when I am bored and have little to do sleep is always a last option for me – she is down for a nap at almost anytime of the day. Often she insists that I join her – Read the rest of this entry »

• Pointless ramble

  Date: 2008.01.29 | Category: desert | Response: 0

  I feel like writing something while knowing full well that I have little to share. I’ve mentioned almost everything of note in previous posts and there is very little that you don’t know about my experience while I am in Iraq. I still feel the need to post – but only time will tell what actually pops out of my head and ends up in this post.

  I only work twelve hour days, six days a week. The work schedule really doesn’t bother me because I came here to work and it gives me a great feeling of accomplishment when my job makes a difference. Unfortunately for our foes, the difference it makes renders their skin unable to hold their body together as god intended.

  When I’m not at work I have a few choices on how to spend my time. On work days I go through the same schedule: Wake, shave, gym, study, shower, eat, work, eat, work, eat, work, sleep. On my off days I have a few different choices because there are movies, games, video games, the gym, books, and volunteer work to keep me busy. The last two weeks I’ve done almost nothing productive save for reading a few hundred pages in a book. This week I think I’ll go to the (Iraq) Theater Hospital and do whatever they need me to do. Some people are thrown off my medical treatment – I’m not sure how I’m going to take it. I’ll probably only volunteer from six to midnight and then goof off the rest of the time but its better than doing nothing.

  I have a book on the way that should prepare me to take one of my two final classes for my associates degree. I’m in need of a humanities class so I’m going to study world religion and take a DANTES test. I passed my last CLEP test without studying my I’m not so sure I could pass this one without reading up on it. I found a book for $6 on Amazon so I think its a fairly decent proposal – spend a few sheckels on a book, study it, and take a test. It sure beats going to a class for a few months.

• Sleep

  Date: 2008.01.15 | Category: desert | Response: 1

  Sleep has been a mysterious vixen that I have been unable to catch. She has evaded me at every turn and has thwarted my every attempt to catch her. For the past few weeks I have been unable to sleep through the night.

  Two nights ago I finally caught that bitch and tied her ass up. She isn’t going anywhere for the time being and I’m happy as I can be. I’ve been able to sleep through the night (or mid-morning for those day shift people) for two days straight. I forgot how refreshing it is to have full nights of sleep with no interruption. Of course, this sleep does take a little work to catch. First, I am forced to dehydrate myself after 0500 in the morning. Failure to do so will cause me to wake up with a bladder that is screaming in pain. I don’t want to wake up, get dressed, and walk to the cadillac in the cold to go to the bathroom. I shouldn’t feel like an old incontinent man – I should have full control of my bladder at all times. Second, I’ve got to wear myself out at the gym and at work. Both of these are relatively easy to do because I’d rather be swamped and not notice my shift is complete than trying to waste 12 hours. The last thing that helps me sleep is entirely dependent on others. I have one roommate that comes in from work at 1200 (I sleep until ~1400). He normally drops his stuff on the floor with little regard for how much noise it makes. This causes me great frustration and anger when he does this. I want to kill him (not really) when he does this. Sleep is my friend and he is taking her away from me. I have an incredibly hard time falling back asleep once I have been woken.