Category Archives: Navel Gazing

700 Miles in Two Days Leads to Random Thoughts

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I drove back up to DC on Monday night for a meeting yesterday and then drove back last night.  That’s about 10 hours of driving that eventually led to a lot of random thoughts from my AD-dled mind.  Among them:

  • There’s a sign on I-95 south that says ‘Leaving Highway Safety Zone."  What the hell does that mean?  Am I entering a "Highway Death and Dismemberment Zone?"
  • High gas prices have led the highways to look to me like 1978 all over again.  That was the year my Mom bought the original Honda Civic (it replaced our decrepit Ford Pinto…you know the Ford that exploded when rear-ended as opposed to the Ford that rolled over) and I can remember driving to NC to visit my grandparents and feeling like we could drive under the 18-wheelers if we wanted to.  I also remember unintentional lane changes due to wind gusts which made the drive fairly entertaining.  Well on my drives this week I saw many cars that looked remarkably like the old Civics and made my little Saturn look like a limo by comparison.  I hope to god the drivers of those things hit nothing bigger than a squirrel because if they do they lose.
  • If I’m going to be doing these long drives more often (quite likely since air fares have about tripled in the last month or two) I might need a bigger car.  My Saturn gets great mileage but I can’t fully extend my legs and after an hour or two I feel like someone has poured cement into my leg joints.  I could live with it before, but my body has discovered it’s 40 and is screaming at every little disservice I present it.
  • Having an AD-dled mind sucks.  In the span of 10 miles something reminded me of someone I forgot to reimburse in college for tickets to a concert (Billy Joel I think) and I wondered if I could find her to get her the money. Then I wondered if I was the world’s greatest underachiever at the age of 40…I mean what have I done that anyone will remember even before I die, much less after?  Then I wondered why I was trying to hold in a fart even though no one could possibly smell it, except perhaps my lovely wife who can seriously smell them from miles away.  Seconds later I was wondering why skunks constantly run onto highways and get hit other than to give me cover to fart.  Then I thought about how I’ve been playing tennis for much of my life but I still suck at it and that got me thinking why I always think so negatively.  Am I a manic depressive?  Well, no I’m probably just hungry since I usually get down or pissed-off only when I’m hungry, or around brats, or both.  Wow, I’ve gone 10 miles…where the hell am I and I wonder if I should stop to get something to eat?
  • I’ve made this drive between DC and NC countless times over the last couple of years yet I’ve never passed, or been passed, by a hot woman driving in a convertible but I’ve seen hundreds of fat middle-aged men in convertibles.  That’s not fair, although I will say it’s fairly entertaining to see a guys comb-over flowing behind him at 70 mph.
  • XM Radio is a god-send.  I was able to listen to game 7 of the
    Stanley Cup finals on the trip north and game 6 of the NBA finals on
    the trip south.  And I didn’t have to suffer through the radio abyss
    that is I-85 between Petersburg, VA and Durham, NC.  And since I’m not
    enough of an audiophile to have a good MP3 collection that abyss is
    horrible without the satellite.
  • Hockey is hard to listen to when you don’t know much about it.  I
    was cheering for the Carolina Hurricanes but found I ended up
    inadvertently cheering for the Edmonton Oilers every once in a while
    when I misidentified a player/team relationship.  Still it was exciting.
  • The NBA sucks.  I know all the players, am a huge basketball fan,
    had a rooting interest in the game (Josh Howard of the Mavericks went
    to Wake Forest) and yet I yawned for much of the game.  I used to love
    the NBA playoffs, but for some reason these days I find it about as
    compelling to watch as a Spelling Bee.

Apparently I’m Healthy, but That Doesn’t Mean There’s Nothing Wrong With Me

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So I’m closing in on 40 and apparently that fact has caused me to jettison my normal attitude of indifference towards my health.  The result is that I’ve had my first physical in years and I’ve begun to listen to my wife about my supposed issues which led me to voluntarily participate in a sleep study on Monday night.  Here’s what I’ve learned, first from my physical:

  • God has blessed me with a good ticker.  My resting heart rate is 47 beats per minute.
  • Having a hairy chest is not conducive to the pain-free administration of an EKG. Taking those little bastard electrodes off does NOT tickle.
  • I’m a wuss.  When they went to draw blood and missed the first six times I almost passed out.  My doctor assured me that it had something to do with my miraculously low heart rate but I think he was just trying to soften the blow to my manhood.
  • The little rubber hammer thingy doesn’t have any effect when it is used to repeatedly strike me in the knee. Apparently my wife was correct in her assessment that I am insensitive.

This is what I learned from my sleep study:

  • It is quite difficult to sleep comfortably with electrodes stuck all over your face and scalp.
  • For some reason they also stick electrodes to your knees; I believe it is to make it difficult to pee in the morning, which it is.
  • It is considered normal to wake up 1-5 times per hour due to changes in breathing, but it is a mild case of sleep apnea to do so 6-15 times per hour and severe apnea to do so 16-30 times.
  • I wake up an average of six times per hour.  Funny enough I wake up once an hour if I’m sleeping on my side and 12 times per hour if I’m sleeping on my back.  I spend equal amounts of time on my back and on my side.
  • The prescription they have for me is to learn to sleep on my side at all times.  Their suggestion is for me to sew a pocket on the back of a t-shirt and insert a tennis ball so that I can’t lie on my back comfortably.  They figure it should only take 4-5 months for me to be properly trained.  This smells suspiciously like common sense to me, which of course makes me instantly suspicious.  Where’s my magic pill?
  • My heart rate when I’m sleeping is 45 beats per minute and my oxygen level stays above 90% which is apparently good.
  • I still snore loud as hell. They couldn’t prescribe anything to help my wife with that.
  • In the world of the sleep study folks I’m considered a moderate snorer; I feel for anyone who has to live with someone considered a truly loud snorer on their spectrum.

I wish I’d taken a camera with me to have my picture taken with all the stuff plastered on my head.  I looked like something out of a bad 70s sci-fi movie. 

The final analysis is that it looks like I’m healthy as a horse which is a good thing. Knock on wood.  Luckily no one has looked into my mental fitness…yet.

Change is Good?

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I caught up with one of my college roommates today.  Tony and I are both pretty bad about picking up a phone and calling so we can go long stretches without talking, but we always pick up right where we left off.  The big news is that he and his wife Amy are expecting their first child which begat his other big news which is they sold their townhouse and are moving into a big house.

Towards the end of our conversation he mentioned that he checks out my blog every once in a while and he can’t believe how conservative I’ve become.  I think he used the term "fascist bastard" in there somewhere (you have to understand that Tony is from Scotland and taught me everything I know about cussing, which is alot) and he also wondered aloud how disappointed my mother must be in me.

I’ll admit I was a pretty liberal punk in college, but once I got out in the real world and started paying attention to things outside of my own little corner of the universe I definitely lost some of my leftist viewpoints.  On the other hand I retain enough liberal ideas that I’d say I’m far from conservative.  Still it was interesting seeing a glimpse of myself from the perspective of someone who knew the then me and the now me.  Sometimes I miss the former but I’m thankful I made it to the latter since if my old self had held sway on my life path I’d probably be living semi-nude on a commune eating tofu and carrots. Yes, the whole world is better off not having to suffer through that.