Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I slept a whole lot yesterday, but I need more. Kayla seems to have more energy than I do. Maybe that's why I received a comment today saying that she looks ten years younger than I do.

For various reasons, I only got about four hours of sleep on Tuesday night, and I was sleepwalking through the Day Jobbe most of the day. Much catching up of sleep needed.

I don't understand why the DST time change disorients me much more than traveling (and crossing time zones) appears to do. For the past couple of days, I've been falling asleep in the late afternoon, sleeping for several hours, then being up for a few hours, then going back to bed. I think I'm getting the same total number of hours of sleep, just in two separate stretches.

Because of both me and the Astro being out of service for the past two weeks, we were behind on our grocery shopping. So this morning at 2 AM, we set out to Winco Foods in South Reno and did a pretty large grocery run. It took a while and cost a lot, but we have the larder refilled. The minivan ran without problems.

Lisa's sleep schedule is such that when got home, it was the end of her "day." I, however, had slept for about four hours overnight and drank a bunch of coffee to keep me awake for the drive to/from Reno, and consequently I could not go back to bed. I went and had breakfast at the Wigwam (arriving just as they opened), then later in the morning ran over to Walgreens for a few miscellaneous items that I've wanted to get for a while, and otherwise took it relatively easy. But there's a good chance that I'm going to fall into bed early this afternoon.

Because of all of the caffeine I drank yesterday to stay awake for the drive home, I was awake until after 1 AM. In retrospect, I might have been better off to have stopped and spent the night at one of the small motels in Grass Valley.

I figured that I'd sleep much of the day, but for some reason I woke up at 5:30, only an hour after my normal work day alarm time. Rather than go back to sleep, I got up, got dressed, and went to the Wigwam for breakfast. As their first dine-in customer of the morning, I had a quiet and uneventful breakfast, albeit that it's still hard to eat it all under the influence of the Ozempic.

Aside from that and going to get a few perishables later in the morning, I did not do a whole lot. I've been doing a little bit of planning for Westercon/BayCon and for Worldcon. I have even got some interesting ideas for both conventions, but I'm not going to write about them here just for now until some of them mature.

Friday must have been even more exhausting than I initially thought. Not only did I sleep very soundly and for a long longer than usual on Saturday night, but a bit after Noon today, I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me and I went back to bed and slept almost four hours.

Last night, I managed to break my CPAP mask, or rather, one of the two clips that attach to the mask on the headgear. Fortunately, I have several older masks that still work, more or less. As luck would have it, the place from which I buy more CPAP supplies announced a sale this morning, so I could buy a replacement set of headgear and also restock on other supplies. Annoyingly, my Healthcare Savings Account debit card, which works in most places and even worked when I was in the UK, is not accepted by CPAP.com. However, I was able to buy the supplies with one of my ordinary credit cards and reimburse myself from my HSA account, so it's mainly just an extra bit of annoyance, and I'll have new headgear in a few days. It was probably time to buy a new set even if the clip hadn't broken, as I've had this set for more than a year now.

Fortunately, the clip didn't break while I was traveling, as it would have been a little bit harder to get it replaced there, and I depend upon that CPAP to get sufficient sleep.

By my reckoning, this was the longest day of the Worldcon trip due to traveling from BST to PST.

( Heading Toward Home )

Before going to bed, I called Lisa (now nine hours ahead of me) and we briefly checked in on her and my travel for today. We still have some travel management for me to do for her, but fortunately it does not have to be done right away.

I got to bed about 22:30 PDT, some twenty five hours after I started this day. Sleep was not a problem.

I intended to write the first half of the road trip home from Utah today, but it's still too hot and I'm too tired, and my phone still hasn't finished uploading all of the video I shot today, so I'm going to go lie down under the output from the swamp cooler and hope to get some more sleep.

Lisa, who got a little bit more sleep than I did last night, decided to chase the Big Boy to what is likely to be its most obscure stop: Gerlach, Nevada. Those of you who go to Burning Man know where it is, but hardly anyone else does. They had a fifteen minute whistle stop there today, probably because it was the only convenient place to do so and to a required inspection between Winnemucca NV and Portola CA.

Yesterday morning, it was very quiet as I was working at my desk in the living room. From the kitchen I heard a faint rattling noise. From previous experience, I knew what that probably meant. Putting on my work gloves, I went to the kitchen and hefted the humane mouse trap, from which I could hear skittering sounds. As is my usual practice, I took the box out into the rail yard and opened it. No picture this time because the mouse immediately jumped out of the trap and headed for cover. I don't mind mice in general, but I don't want them in the house. Let them take their chances with the cats and hawks out there.

Meanwhile, I wasn't kidding when I said yesterday that I felt exhausted. Right after work I fell into bed and slept for almost six hours. I felt better after that, and got another four hours overnight.