The Obsessed Programmer

I remember waaaay back in middle school, Dad tried to convince me to write a research paper on sleep deprivation/apnea over the summer.  I think that was probably due to my habit of napping for several hours a day, every day.  In reality, it was just because napping was my #1 way to alleviate stress; I always felt better after a nap.  My parents got so worried about this habit that they had me go to the hospital for blood tests.  You should’ve seen me when they came at me with that big needle to draw blood–”I’m awake!  I’m feeling perky!  Nothing wrong here!”

Well, Dad, you should be proud of me.  I’ve gone way past writing an academic paper.  This last week, I’ve done some primary research into the issue.

I think the first night was last Wednesday.  Six of us went to hang out in the hot tub at Alex’s house (or “Alex the Girl”’s house, if you go by how she recommended I list her on my cell phone) around 11:00 PM on Wednesday.  Everything was going great until about 11:30, when Alex pulled the sliding glass door closed a little too hard, triggering the latching mechanism.

All six of us were locked out of her house, with every set of car keys inside, and every cell phone inside.  None of us had shoes or other clothing.

You should’ve seen us trying to break into her house.  We’d take turns jumping out of the hot tub, trying to push open a window or door, then give up after 2 minutes and jump back in the hot tub to warm back up.  Finally, around 1:30, a few people walked shivering down the road to the first house with lights still on.  They called a locksmith who drove from Salt Lake City (cost: $120) to break into the house for us.  Long story short, I finally crawled into bed at 2:57 AM.

Well, that wasn’t so bad.  There are worse fates than being stuck in a hot tub longer than expected with 4 girls.

On Friday, then, about 40 hours later (as I was still recovering from the last late night), I had the brilliant idea of having some people over to watch a movie at my place.  I managed to get 10 people crammed onto the soft seating in my living room to watch The Illusionist.  The movie ended at 12:45AM–not bad for a weekend, really.  But somehow I ended up chilling out in the living room talking with Sarah until something like 5:00 AM.

I’m a very time-conscious person, so when I say “something like 5:00 AM,” it’s because I’m not sure within 30 minutes’ precision when it was that we fell asleep on the couch.  I just remember waking up at 6:11 AM and dazedly wondering what the heck was going on (Who’s this girl on the couch?  Why am I still downstairs?).  Anyway, at that point it was obviously too late to do anything about it, so I just crawled off the couch onto the floor and fell asleep for another 2 hours.  I woke up with the sun shining in my eyes.  I woke up Sarah, sent her off to get ready for work, and got ready for my own (heavily-planned) day.

I went snowboarding around 10:00 for a few hours.  I knew I was doing the wrong sport when I had to take off my fleece (I didn’t wear a coat) at the top of the mountain because I was sweating.  So around 1:00 I went for a mountain bike ride along Lost Prospector.  And at 3:00 I drove to Provo to help Danny move some stuff around his house and eat dinner with him and Katie.

Needless to say, I relished the sleep I got between 12:00 AM and 6:00 AM on Sunday before the early-morning Priesthood session of Stake Conference.

I determined last night to make it all up by going to bed really early.  I turned off the lights at 8:00.  At 3:10 AM, I woke up and could not go back to sleep.  I went downstairs to get a drink of water and some yogurt, then came back upstairs and played StarCraft until 6:00, then slept until 7:45 and got up for work.

I feel… crooked.  I’m not exactly tired, but I’m not exactly alert, either.

I need a curfew

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 10:19 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.