Newness

I just started a new photographic web log (shortened to photoblog, and then further shortened to the inevitable and stupid "plog".)

Here it is. Bookmark it - visit it - love it.

It's going to be a photo, and maybe a small caption or musing of some kind. I'll try to post every day.
Oh, and it's on wordpress instead of blogger, just to be silly.

*GASP!*

So here is the story of my sleep apnea.

I did my sleep study, the guy who monitored me said I'd need a CPAP for sure.
I went to a respiratory equipment provider and got my CPAP, and they said I had a really severe case of sleep apnea. one of them said it was the worst case she'd ever seen. I'm thinking - oh great, I'm gonna be famous for how little I breathe...
I take the thing home - it looks like a "scentstories", by the way - and the first night, I sleep like a baby. Scratch that. I have babies, I know how they sleep - for 3 hours and they wake up crying. I slept great. Probably the best sleep I've ever had. Although I apparently kept yanking the headgear off because I remember waking up 4 or 5 times to put it back on. The experience of wearing this thing is a bit odd. You know those air hoses at the gas station? Imagine if those had a soft rubber tip, and you stuck it in your nose, and were expected to sleep. You get used to it, though.
So, there is this thing called the apnea/hypopnea index. It's how many times per hour you have an apnea or hypopnea event. An apnea is when you stop breathing altogether for at least 10 seconds, and hypopnea is when your airway is partially obstructed, causing your airflow to drop by at least half. At 5 you are considered to have sleep apnea. at 15 most insurance covers getting a CPAP. at 50 it's considered severe. I scored 129. in 3 hours of sleep, I had over 400 hypopnea events, and I forget how many apnea events. I was neurologically aroused by those events over 200 times in those 3 hours. Let me say that again:
I woke up over 200 times in 3 hours.
At one point my oxygen saturation dropped to 67%.
So the guy woke me up and strapped me into a CPAP, and I had like 14 hypopnea events in the next 3 hours, and my oxygen never got below 90%, and I woke up like 12 times, and 10 of those were in the first 20 minutes of sleep. Get this - My apnea/hypopnea index went down to 6. This means that even on a CPAP at apparently a really high pressure, I've still got minor sleep apnea.
A word on the air pressure: My machine goes from 12 to 20, as far as pressure. Apparently, the numbers mean how many centimeters of water that pressure will displace. Mine's set at 17. Well, now it's set at 12, and I have to take it in to get it set up a little at a time because starting that high would apparently suck for me.
So, every night for the foreseeable future I'm going to have to strap on this weird thing that looks like SCUBA gear, and sleep while it blows high-pressure air in my nose and down my throat. But it's worth it. Sleep is actually restful now. Think about this: I essentially got no rest at all when I slept. I was nearly always either gasping for air or not breathing at all. My oxygen levels were always low, my blood pressure was always elevated, I was at risk for stroke and all kinds of other nasty things. I could sleep for 16 hours and not feel at all rested. I woke up almost every day with a headache. I NEVER entered deep sleep. Now I sleep for 7 hours and feel refreshed and renewed. I no longer wake up and sit in a daze for 2 hours, feeling groggy and wishing I could have gotten more sleep. I actually could have died in my sleep!
I think it's worth it.

CFL SUCKS!

So I went and bought a 6-pack of "100 watt" CFL bulbs. They're actually 26 watts, which is why I got 'em. We're wanting to replace bulbs in some of the oft-used lamps in the house.
Guess what.
CFL SUCKS!
The base of the bulb is too big, and the bulb won't screw in to our torchierelamps. And I'm guessing they won't screw into most other lamps like that, either. So our options are thus:
We use incandescent bulbs, or we use a less bright cfl. Here's some other news about cfl bulbs:

They have all the negatives of fluorescent light, like the bad color rendition, flicker, warm-up time, poor response in cold weather, that sort of thing.
They don't fit in all kinds of fixtures. Not just the torchiere style - our ceiling fan in the living room doesn't have a globe because the CFL in it is too long.
They contain toxic levels of mercury. Yeah - they're also poisonous. You can't just throw them away when they burn out - they have to be disposed of in a facility designed to take care of things like that - and we don't have any of those facilities around here. And when they break, it's toxic cleanup time!
Speaking of burning out - they don't last nearly as long as they say. 3-5 years my ass. I've seen lifespans equating with incandescents, for the most part.

Just as an aside - we actually had to abandon this room for a while tonight - while I was working on this post - because I broke one of those little fuckers trying to put it in a lamp. Great.
CFL SUCKS!

The Sleeper Awakes. A Lot.

I had a sleep study last night. Basically, I went and slept in the hospital with a couple dozen wires glued to my head, and some guy watched me sleep. Halfway thru the night, he woke me up and strapped a CPAP mask to my face, so now I was expected to sleep with a couple dozen wires glued to my head and a tube blowing air into my nose. I slept like a baby. The tech who monitored me told me in the morning that I probably wake up 400-600 times a night. And here I thought I was hard to wake up. So I wound up having what is called a "split night" study, with a normal polysomnograph at the first half, and a CPAP Titration at the second half. I need a lot of pressure, apparently. I know I woke up at 5am and the mask was loose, and every time I breathed out it would fart in my eye - but when I tried to breathe thru my mouth it felt like I was choking. So a fun night. And now I'm gonna wind up wearing a big silly looking mask when I sleep.

There are things.

There are things people do in life that matter.
A man named Pablo is the reason why, when you say the word "Picasso", nobody goes "Which one?" He mattered. His name mattered. It had better. it was 2 miles long. Seriously.
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruiz Y Picasso.
Seriously.
That's a baby with indecisive parents.

There are things people do in life that don't matter.
Like this guy.

There are things people do in life that make total sense.
Martin Luther King Jr., for example. This is a man who knows what he's doing.

There are things people do in life which make no sense at all.
Like this.

What I'm trying to say is: I'm tired and can't come up with anything funny to post, so I cheated by linking to stuff.

Oh, and check out Mr. Picassohead.