Hearty

And I just thought I was lazy! Turns out I'm a health-nut.

Study: Napping Might Help Heart

(02-12) 08:54 PST Chicago (AP) --

New research on napping provides the perfect excuse for office slackers, finding that a little midday snooze seems to reduce risks for fatal heart problems, especially among men.

Manic Sunday

Busy Busy Busy!

I barely had time between my noon nap and my 6PM nap to finish up the previous night's pizza and watch 20 more episodes of Dark Shadows. It's going to take me all week to recover from this.

Super, thanks for asking

Yesterday was Keith and Amy's annual Superbowl party. It was a hoot as always, and now traditions have formed such as the halftime chili dog feeding, the betting on the length of the national anthem (Billy Joel's voice is busted!), and running out to get a bottle of bourbon at the end of the game and doing shots with Keith, Sara, and Nicholas.

The problem with the Superbowl is that it ends so early on the West Coast, and then you're wasted at 7PM. I barely managed to stay awake until 9.

Fleeing into the avenues

Today I was feeling hungover and braindead for the fifth day in a row, despite not having had anything (much) to drink the past couple of days.

Then I thought about an issue I've been too lazy to follow up on for a couple of months: the carbon monoxide seeping into my apartment. A while back a plumber told me that the water heater located right about underneath my bed in the basement (that is covered only by wooden floor with giant spaces between the slats and a matted shag carpet over that) has had the ventilation pipe removed and thus is venting carbon monoxide into my apartment.

The plumber promised to follow up and I believe that he did. I mentioned it a while later to the gardener, who said he thought there might be a new water heater on order, as mine was too tall for the short-ceilinged basement and needed to be replaced by one that's legal. It was sure to come any day now.

It occurred to me today through my perhaps-not-hungover-afterall haze that I never heard them install one, which seems odd because I never leave the house. And it also occurred to me that as it has been especially cold and I've had the heat and furnace on and been staying inside with all the windows closed tightly for a while, that perhaps the carbon monoxide was building up.

So I decided to check in the basement. No new water heater. So then I went to the internet to see if beyond cloudiness and confusion there were any other symptoms I should look for. They are:

• 1. Headache (yes)
  
• 2. Dizziness (nope)
  
• 3. Irritability (no, and fuck you for asking)
  
• 4. Confusion/Memory loss (yes)
  
• 5. Disorientation (yes)
  
• 6. Nausea and vomiting (yes and no)
  
• 7. Abnormal reflexes (yes, but that could be caused by prescription drug abuse)
  
• 8. Difficulty in coordinating (color-coordinating? most definitely. but otherwise no.)
• 9. Difficulty in breathing (a little)
  
• 10. Chest Pain (a little)
  
• 11. Cerebral Edema (ce-wha-wha?)
  
• 12. Convulsions/Seizures (not)
  
• 13. Coma (yet)
  
• 14. Death (duh)
  

So I just had most of the signs of carbon monoxide poisoning, including three others from another list of warning signs.

I thought this would be a good time to take a walk in the fresh air. I opened all the windows and headed off to the avenues for a few hours. Now that I'm back and the windows are closed again I'm not sure if the symptoms are returning or if I'm just sleepy. Very, very, sleeeee

Sleep Numbers

I accidentally fell asleep at 9PM last night. I woke up at midnight to realize that I still had soup cooking on the stove, which I turned off. Then I went back to bed and woke up again at 3AM. It took me until about 6AM to fall back asleep after that, and I consider it a great accomplishment. To my surprise I skipped right over the next three hour waking period at 9 and managed to stay fully asleep until 10:45AM.

I am totally not lazy.

Let's talk about the weather

All this rain makes you want to just sleep in late and take naps every couple of hours. Oh right, that's what I've been doing all day.

Rainy Days

I'm very happy that it's supposed to rain for the next three days. I've been so busy lately that I haven't been doing anything but working. Then when I get a short break I tend to sleep for 10 hours a night plus take a healthy daily nap. All in all, I haven't been leaving the house much. But when it's raining outside, I have an excuse for my behavior.