Lack of Sleep, Part 2: Me as a guinea pig

Note that this actually took place 3 monthd ago I've just been very lax in my blogging.

In Part 1 of this post I 'splained how my lack of sleep has been turning me into a zombie.  I then, at my doc's suggestion, went to a sleep doctor.  Very interesting ...

I went to their website (http://sleepdoc.com/) and promptly filled in their on-line form.  That took a good half-hour or so.  Questions ranging from name and address and insurance info to normal bedtimes and medications and family medical history.  Two days later I got a call saying "Let's schedule an overnight stay."

Lack of Sleep, Part 1: Me as a zombie

So I've been a bit negligent in my blogliness lately.  Had good roll for a year or more, but then ... things got in the way.  I choose to not elaborate ...

I will begin again, however, by discussing sleep.

Sleep.

Yes, sleep.

Over the last couple of years my sleep somewhat suddenly began to evade me.  I don't know why.  I rounded up all of the 'usual suspects': caffeine, work stress, home/family stress. eating habits, drinking habits, daily schedules, anything and everything that my wife and I could think of.  Nothing struck home.

Why Is It That No Matter Where You Live The People In Your Neighborhood Are The Stupidest People On The Planet?

Case 1:
It has been snowing off and on for several days now.  Kind of a nuisance, as we seldom know the night before if the kids will be in school, if we'll have to go to work the next morning, if we should really make that emergency run before the snow starts to the supermarket to buy bread and milk and toilet paper and other so-called 'essentials'.  But we live on a cul-de-sac, which I guess is some ancient French name for a road that does not "go through" anywhere and, conversely, ends in a circle.  Got it?  One way in, and one way out.  And the road is not very wide, I'd say maybe about 3 car widths.  So inevitably some of my my genius neighbors park their cars on the street and leave them there before the snow storm.  And when the snow begins, and continues and continues and continues, and the snowplows come to our neighborhood to clear our road, well, they can't do such a great job.  They must slalom around the cars that the idiots decided to leave on the road.  I cannot wait, and I will truly rejoice, when a plow takes out one of these cars, and I will take a day off of work to go to court to defend the plow driver by saying that, yes indeed, the cars should not have been parked on the relatively narrow street before a snowstorm and that they should have instead been parked in the idiot's driveway (yes, we all have driveways capable of holding up to 6 cars ... yes, 6 cars).

Whoever invented button-fly jeans should be shot!

Um ... not sure what else to say, since the title sort of covers it.

Last Summer I ordered a pair of these from Amazon.com.  I unfortunately can't blame Amazon since I neglected to bother with their fine print, and I had just plain forgotten that 501s have a button-fly.  So I got them, wore them, and immediately regretted buying them.  But didn't feel like returning them.  I do think they show off my butt real good though.

Problem is ... normally taking a pee, as a guy, is simple.  Walk up, unzip, do my business, and rezip.  However having a button-fly brings that effort to an entirely new level.  No longer can I simply just unzip when I wear these things.  I have to wrangle and wriggle around so they I can unbutton 5---yes 5--- buttons on my crotch.  And if I really have to pee, well, it's just that much worse.  Then, and only then, will my god-foresaken pants allow me to relieve myself.  And then afterward I have to reverse that, buttoning all 5 back up.

Oh what a pain it can be to be a guy!

Is Christmas green?

It sure as hell is red and green, but it sure as hell isn't green.  But let me begin with an "I don't do Xmas" disclaimer.  But oughtn't that be obvious? (and is that the correct usage of the word oughtn't?) (and isn't oughtn't a wordicle?)  Yeah, we're Jewish and we don't even do that.  So we sure as hell don't do Xmas.  And this time of year (say ... mid-October through the New Year) is irritating as hell, because everyone continuously tries to cram the red and green crap down my throat, over and over again, 24 hours a day, in pretty much the same way that we just cannot escape the ridiculous political garbage come every election season (on TV, on the radio, on sight-nauseating billboards along every road ... vote for this person ... no, vote for that person ...).  But anyway ...

So for whatever reason this morning, as I was sitting down doing my daily "business", the thought of whether or not Xmas is green popped into my head.  And I immediately said to myself, "No."

Why?  Isn't it immediately apparent?  Think of what people do during the holiday season every year:

Finally someone else gets it ...

Well, almost.  Let me explain:

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal a guy named Matt Ridley wrote an article titled "Who to Blame for Natural Disasters".  Ultimately he basically says that if prosperity, the big key word in his article, were to spread throughout the entire world, as it has not yet done, most people who currently die from natural disasters would instead end up alive.  Says he:

In short, prosperity buys survival. (The shocking thing about Hurricane Katrina was not that it killed so many people but that it did so in such a prosperous country.) ...

... Suppose world per-capita income were to octuple in the next 90 years, as it did, roughly, in the last 90. So long as countries like Haiti get their share of this prosperity, we can expect most of the world to become as nearly disaster-proof as the rich West is today: through building standards, warning systems, health and emergency services, and technology.

This, he says, is borne out by the actual statistics of wealth and technology over the last almost-century.  But this is not what I am interested in ... that in which I am interested??  Whatever ...

I am interested much more in his opening paragraph:

Disney vs. Holiday Inn

A few weeks ago we went to Disney World.  It wasn't our first time.  And our room (suite) was huge, as it always is, this time with 2 bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms.

A couple of weeks ago we went to Hersheypark.  Fun time.  As Hersheypark is a couple-hour drive from home, we decided to spend the night at a local hotel.  I booked us a nice room at a local Holiday Inn.  They gave us a non-smoking room with a king bed.  We had brought the kid's sleeping bags so they would sleep on the floor.

I got the key from the front desk and we all grabbed our luggage and went to the room.  I opened the door and we walked in.  Li'l D, my son of 6 years, walked in, took a quick look around, and said

"One room?"

I chuckled, realizing that my kids need to get out more ...

Disney World vs. Hersheypark

Living on the east coast, we have access to both the largest of the Disney properties, a place known as Disney World, and Hersheypark.  For those not in the know, Hersheypark is a relatively huge amusement park located in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that is owned by the Hershey company, the one that makes all of the chocolate.  We went to Hersheypark a couple of weekends ago for the day.  Unfortunately for us, it was a bit more anticlimactic than it might otherwise have been, as we had just a week before spent the week at Disney World.  Bottom line is that it just don't get better than Disney World.  Everything from the customer experience to the atmosphere to the ambiance (note to self: look up that word ...) to the customer service (remember my recent post).

My daughter's second theme song

The other day Li'l A, 4 years old, was playing around in our family room when my wife and I suddenly heard

Mamma Mia
Here I go again ...

I asked "Where did you hear that song?"  Li'l A responded "My friend at school!" (she has a lot of friends at school).  I ran out of the room and came back a minute later.  My wife, smirking, said "You have that song on CD, don't you?"  "Of course I do" said I.  It is the last song on CD #3 of my ABBA's Greatest Hits collection, purchased somewhere in downtown London in the very early 1990s.  And, yes, I admit that.

I put the CD in the player in our kitchen and told Li'l A to stop and listen.  When the chorus came around, she had a huge smile on her face. And we've been singing that song ever since.

Another plus: I have a second theme song for my daughter.  Here is my blog for the first.

For those who are pop culture-inept, here's the video:

Disney comes through again!

We are Disney freaks.  We'd had a few very successful and enjoyable trips to Disney World, both with and without kids.  We had bought some Disney stock (DIS).  I had bought some Marvel Entertainment (MVL) stock a long time ago and last year Disney decided to buy the whole company, giving me a nice ten-fold increase on my original investment.  We now own a bigger buttload (relative term ...) of Disney stock.  We have some friends who are even more avid Disney freaks than we are, and at their urging/hounding/incessant suggestions, we joined the Disney Vacation Club, just like them.  It ain't cheap, but we get top notch somewhat pre-paid vacations in incredible lodgings and second-to-none customer service for the next 50 years.

We just went to WDW last week for our second annual family trip.  We stayed at Kidani Village at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge.  Our two bedroom suite had three full bathrooms.  When we opened the curtains and went out on our deck we saw (mostly) a very nice replica of African wilderness.  Between our room view and those of the surrounding hallways and such, we saw zebras, giraffes, wildebeest, warthogs, okapi (looks like a Dr. Seuss rendition of a combination of a donkey, horse and zebra), nyala (look sort of like striped deer), storks, cranes, vultures, and numerous other birds.  It was wonderful.