Day 9.1

At the risk of this turning into an dream diary (though I maintain that the quality of the dreams is somehow relevant), I had a dream involving a frozen swimming pool and acrylic paint. There was apparently an auction being held in a toolshed in the wilderness, and the two most eye-catching items involved were large canvasses done in acrylic. (They also happened to be the work of a college friend of mine, who, as far as I know, does not paint in real life.) Now, this little whitewashed shed doubled as a locker room for people who used the swimming hole not far away. I'm not sure what happened, but at some point, there were Asian ladies in bright floral print swimsuits climbing up the shelves of the toolshed, and the paintings were thrown into the water, which then promptly froze over, to prevent us from retrieving them. And then it rained packing peanuts. Indoors.

I woke from this dream rather groggy, and understandably a tad disoriented. (Wait... where'd the styrofoam bits go?) I was at about 75% for ten minutes or so, but now am at 90-95%. It appears that it takes ten to fifteen minutes for me to "recover" from a nap (that is, to get myself up and running at my maximum capacity for that block). If I don't recover by the twenty minute mark, then I spend that block running half-empty, or worse.

We depart for ski trip tomorrow afternoon. Here's to hoping it doesn't destroy my schedule!

Day 9

Today, I zombified out during the dawn block, rather than the morning block. Hence the lack of post/test results; that's when I usually take the tests, if you hadn't noticed. Here they are, much delayed.

Short term memory test
Numbers: 12
Letters: 12.5
Words: 28

These things are quite time-consuming. Not whinging or anything, of course.

Day 8.1

I was an absolute zombie this morning. You may think you know what being zombified feels like after an all-nighter or two -- you have no idea. I've been there, and this was twice as bad. If the aftermath of two consecutive all-nighters is 10% functionality, I was at maybe 2%, where 0% would be brain-dead. It took an astonishing amount of willpower not to crawl into bed and hibernate. I probably spent three hours just staring at the wall before my 10:30 nap. I had my laptop open and everything -- I just could not focus on it for any length of time. I had actually meant to post the very strange dream I had, but again, just was not physically capable of typing it out. That post read, "I had the weirdest dream jus t now. It wassssn;r luciid pwewsonne i and folledo'nt finmmmmm" at which point I clearly gave up. I'm not sure what the second sentence is supposed to mean...

I can still remember parts of the dream, though not as clearly as at eight in the morning, if I was at all capable of remembering anything then. Interestingly, it wasn't a completely lucid dream, but one wherein I had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't real, but I was too caught up in the situation to really do anything about it. I was being chased through an abandoned warehouse, and some homeless guy pops out of a filing cabinet. He was terrifying; he had a massive, dirty grey beard, crooked teeth, and these absolutely feverish, murky yellow eyes in an otherwise expressionless face. I jumped out of a window.
Fortunately, it was snowing outside, and I landed in a snowdrift. It was getting dark out, and the only real light came from the orangy-yellow streetlamps. For some reason, I decide that instead of running away, it would be a better idea to try and hide in a pile of snow that was all of two feet tall. The people who were chasing me come into view; one of them is this pale, dark-haired lady in a black fur coat, carrying a walking-stick sort of like Lucius Malfoy's in the films. I seem to find that stick more frightening than the knives and pistols everyone else was carrying; she poked it into the snowdrift and I burst out of the other side, flat-out sprinting. She cries "After her!" and "Off with her head!" in a distinctly Queen of Hearts way.
I end up in the middle of a highway; I leap onto a passing taxi and somehow fall through its (open?) moonroof. All the cars start bottlenecking, and I know I'm being chased, so I yell, "Hurry up! Don't stop!" or something along those lines at the driver. He turns around -- and it's the homeless guy!
And that's all I remember. Wow, my subconscious is one messed up place.

Day 8

I'm finally starting to get tired at the right times -- a little before when I'm due for a nap -- which is a very good sign. That's me telling myself I should probably catch some shut-eye soon. Doesn't stop me from getting tired at the wrong times, but I expect (hope!) that will change as I adapt further.

Short term memory test
Numbers: 11.5
Letters: 12.33
Words: 30

Day 7.2

This nap was rather easy to wake up from; it feels like I've slept an hour, rather than only 20 minutes. And I had a dream! There were these mice (like the ones from Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH) living in a little underground town, and they ate cockroaches. They packaged live cockroaches in white cardboard tubes, and one would make a meal. I got to watch them being packaged in this lavender colored room; the machine looked like those baggage scans at the airport. At some point, the mice turned into people, except they looked like animated, cartoonish, mouse-sized people rather than real live people. One of them popped the lid to her tube of lunch, and the roach poked her in the eye! And then her friends lamented the fact that she could no longer go to the ball, since she needed eye surgery. Odd.

Speaking of lunch, it just occurred to me that I forgot to eat breakfast and lunch today. I think what happened was: I was thrown off by the extra sleep I got this morning, and forgot to eat breakfast. I then told myself that I would make up for it by eating lunch instead. Then lunchtime came and went, and I'd completely forgotten that I had vowed thusly, and assumed that I should skip lunch, as usual. Hmm... I'm not hungry, either. I'll remember to eat dinner though; I usually eat dinner.

Day 7.1

I definitely lost half an hour this morning. After my morning block nap, I did a bit of stretching and computering, and then settled down on the couch to do some reading. Next thing I know, I'm sort of curled up sideways against the armrest, I can't breathe, and it's 8:00 am. I gasp (surprise? lack of air?) and leap off the couch and finish my reading sitting on a table.

I don't even think I woke up particularly tired from that nap. I suspect it's the cold; my immune system's probably complaining and/or conspiring to throw me off this schedule. It's not my fault the bug's coming around before I've adjusted, sheesh. Although, in some weirdly ironic way, I likely only woke up after half an hour (as opposed to sleeping through classes) because of that cold wreaking havoc on my sinuses.

I wonder how far this will set me back?

Day 7

Feeling icky and a bit groggy after that last nap, but I'm not sure whether it's the sleep deprivation or the cold. I've moved past the sneezing phase into the itchy throat and sinus drainage problems phase. It's a major nuisance when napping; it takes longer to fall asleep, and I'm waking up to a very dry mouth. Running 75% full, or something thereabouts.

Short term memory tests
Numbers: 13
Letters: 12.75
Words: 25

I definitely had some trouble focusing during the words test, considering it's 90 seconds long (the others run multiple 10 second intervals). Sleep deprivation, anyone?

Day 6.3

Dashing this off quickly before I go to class:

That was the fastest I've ever fallen asleep. I literally pulled the blanket up to my chin, put a t-shirt over my face, and conked out. I was super tired going in, kind of average waking up (didn't want to), now running on 80-85%. The previous nap was similar, but less extreme. I think the sleep deprivation is starting to catch up with me. This is when the willpower needs to engage...

Day 6.2

Not about polyphasic sleep, per se, but... Wow, I had forgotten how wonderful it is to be outside early in the morning. I don't mean just awake, I mean out of doors. It's sunny today, blue skies, not-too-cold weather (that's somewhere between lukewarm and sockless-ankles-are-freezing), and campus is just beautiful before rush hour. Having lived in a big city all my life, I can certainly appreciate large swathes of green grass, fountains, and low buildings with wide-open skies in between.

It's not that I've never been outside early in the morning before; I was out the door at 7:00 am every morning in high school. It's not even that my cold seems to be going away (orange juice + green tea + cough drops). It's just that I've never really been this awake at eight in the morning, on the other side of the day. Usually, if I'm awake enough to appreciate the squirrels at this hour, it's because I haven't gone to bed yet. It's somehow different, having just woken up. I'm really getting to like this being-up-in-the-morning business, not just for the extra time in my day, but also for its own sake. I think I'll make this my running-errands-on-bike time, because a beautiful morning, however awe-inspiring, isn't quite enough to replace efficiency.

Day 6.1

I have discovered a remarkable, remarkably simple new concept -- the mini-snooze!

Now, the iPhone has its snooze function preset at nine minutes. Obviously, a nine-minute snooze would be devastating for an Uberman sleeper. But the effective time for these "20 minute" naps is actually somewhere between 18 and 23 minutes, depending on the person, the time of day, and a whole host of other factors -- so it's not completely inflexible, either. Enter the one-minute snooze.

Remember how I've set two alarms, spaced a minute apart, for each nap? Rather than waking up at the first one and turning both of them off as usual, this time, I switched each of them off as they sounded. I had another minute of horizontal time, during which I was awake (fiddling with a touch screen slider will do that) but not quite out of bed. The gradual wake-up (as gradual as a minute can get) is wonderful, the 100% full brand of wonderful; so much better than forcing myself upright as soon as the first alarm goes off, for fear of the comfy bed/couch/sleeping surface luring me back into the snares of sleep.

Oh, and I had a dream! Not only was it a dream, it was a semi-lucid dream! I've always wanted to have more lucid dreams. (I've only ever had a few.) I recall thinking, quite distinctly, I would be so amused by this, were I awake. I should try to remember it, so I can have a good laugh later! Unfortunately, I seem to be having some difficulty remembering what exactly it was that I found so funny in my dreamscape. There was a lot of dark green, and at least one other person, but that's as far as it goes. O, ye gods of irony, pick on someone your own size for once!

EDIT: Mini-snooze = wonderful; both feet falling asleep, not so wonderful. I managed to get off the couch (yes, half an hour later; the laptop is a foot away) and fall like a sack of potatoes onto the floor. Probably a better wake-up call than any number of alarms.