3 posts tagged “sleep”
Photos here.
Even if you do it every year, a person can forget how hard and traumatic moving is. Things still aren't settled, but progress has been made.
What I can't tell is, are we getting any sleep? It should have been Heavy Metal Monday last night at the Central, and this morning I couldn't remember hearing any music at all. Am I living in a hazy fugue state now, brought on by music every night and green flashing lights in the alley at 4 am every morning and not being able to keep the cats off the bed?
It's possible.
White noise.
I'm in this long-term hotel suite while working at this jobsite, and it's not great, but it's also not bad. (Mr. Jaq is stuck in a Days Inn with no connectivity 'til tomorrow; it's bad.) This trip, I am at the end of the building where I haven't stayed, the end by the flagpole. The first night, all night, there was this erratic sound; a bong...dong...pong......begong noise.
bong...dong...pong......begong....bong...dong...pong...begong..bong...dong...pong......begong......bong...dong...pong
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
My usual hotel-sleeping trick - turning the fan to On instead of Auto on the HVAC - didn't work due to some goddam energy-saving sensor that shut the thing off after 15 mintues of running. Putting the radio in between stations has never worked for me - there's some semblance of speech pattern or music that leaks through. I have ear plugs, and have resorted to them occasionally, but it is hell to sleep with your aural orifices getting all sweaty and weird from having foam stuffed in there.
I didn't catch on until morning that it was the wind, smacking the flag rope (which looks like a noose, of all things) against the hollow metal pole.
After work on Tuesday, I trotted off to Target (which has everything! seriously!) and bought a "preset tuning clock radio with MP3 line-in and nature sounds", which certainly sounded qualified to address my particular problem. It has "ocean surf", "brook", "birds", and "wind chime". The birds though are seriously scary - like a huge flock of ravens is circling your bed, ready to peck out your eyes. The brook is the noisiest stretch of water I've ever heard: frogs, ducks, some little kid throwing in rocks and branches. Not my idea of babbling. I've settled for falling asleep to the ocean which has an unfortunate cluster of seagulls fighting over something dead every few minutes tossed in for versimilitude. I'm waking to the wind chimes. They are not what I was expecting, light tinkling sounds on a neighbor's back porch. Rather, imagine your Harley loving neighbor has hung 6 foot long sections of tail pipe from a chain, with an empty gallon of Jim Beam in the center as the striker. bong...dong...pong......begong....bong...dong...pong......
It's a lot like that.
That's all I'm working right now - unfortunately, it's the night half of the day, from 6 pm until 6 am. It's kicking my butt, let me tell you. The hotel is also having technical difficulties with its hot water at my end of the building, which for some reason is making the night shift even worse. Yesterday, I got 5 hours of sleep before the maintenance people banged on my door. I couldn't get back to sleep after that, and I decided to do my laundry this morning so I am forcing myself to stay up for another hour. Then into the shower and into bed.
Possibly the worst aspect of this is it ends on Sunday morning, 2 hours before I need to go to the airport to catch my flight home. And I may not be back down here after that. So 6 days of nights and how long do you bet it takes me to get my sleep/wake stuff back to normal?
