Hometown: The Roch, MI (aka. The Crotch, aka. Crotchscratcher, aka. Crotchmolester, aka. Rochester)
Currently Living: Clawson, MI
Height: 5'8
Weight: Ha ha, yeah right
Favorite Color: Blue (preferably navy)
Profession: Researcher
Favorite Nickname: Trick, Sloan
Favorite Drinks:Vodka Tonic, Guinness, Diet Dr. Pepper, Dirty Martinis, red wine
Favorite TV Show: Friends, Sex & The City, Project Runway, The Amazing Race, Iron Chef America
Least Favorite TV Show: A Baby Story, I Love Lucy, Martha Stewart, Everybody Loves Raymond, every hour long drama
Favorite Books: The History of Love, Beloved, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Fight Club, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The of Being, SurUnbearable Lightness vivor, Empire Falls, The Corrections, The Bell Jar
Favorite Movies: Little Miss Sunshine, Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Wordplay, American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, Amelie, Breakfast Club, Singin In The Rain, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sleeping Beauty, Dancer in the Dark, Duets, The Virgin Suicides, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Austin Powers I, II & III, My Best Friends Wedding, Moulin Rouge, Tommy Boy, Billy Madison, The Shining, Gone With The Wind, Bridget Jones' Diary, Chicago, Love Actually
Guilty Pleasure Movies: Xanadu, Dirty Dancing, Overboard, Groundhog Day, Steel Magnolias, 10 Things I Hate About You, Bond movies, Footloose, Clue, Murder By Death, High Spirits, A Cinderella Story
What I Do Too Much: Check email, crossword puzzles, complain about my job to friends and family,
Obsessions: sushi, Indian food, ranch dressing, toenail polish, song lyrics, hands, awards shows, symmetry, avocados, maps, dreams, This American Life, the display in my car that tracks my MPG
Pet Peeves: loud eaters, slurping, gulping, arrogance, snoring, bad grammar, repetition, late mergers, ripping cardboard, the word "chunky", intolerance, couples in a restaurant sitting on the same side of a booth, pop-up ads, privacy manager, men that drive without shirts on, being foolish, unfairly jumping to conclusions, being made fun of, cat-calling, people who type too hard
Greatest Fear: crossing bridges
Relaxing Activites: late night drives to sing by myself, headstands, hot baths,
Wish I Was: Ansel Adams, Jenifer Aniston, in love, living alone
Prized Possessions: ring from my grandparents, flower pot of my Grandma's, electric blanket (temporarily broken), tongue scraper, my bed
Craziest Thing Ever Done: getting a tattoo, strip Jenga
Things I Eventually Want To Do: skydive, buy a guitar, learn how to play the aforementioned guitar, take flying lessons, travel to France, write a novel, learn how to play the harp, tap dancing lessons, run a marathon
Friday, October 11, 2002 I want a girl that gets up early. I want a girl that stays up late....So I did just get up not too long ago. I ended up fighting rush hour traffic this morning....to get home. Not to get to work. You know it's cool when your parents are already awake when you get home. But let me give you a little explanation here about my night. This might get a little scientifically-lengthy, so bear with me.
So last night was the first night of the new study that we're attempting to do. And I knew that it was going to be incredibly difficult to do and longer than the previous studies. Because the normal protocol involves having the subjects in bed sleeping, with a nasal mask on, so we can monitor their breathing (oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, pressure in the mask, flow rates etc). They're also attached to this machine called a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) where we can increase the pressure being delivered to the mask, therefore either opening or closing their airway more. So when you increase it to a certain level for a certain period of time and then reduce it to baseline, you can cause an apnea, where essentially the subject stops breathing for about 10 seconds (but up to like 30. People who actually have sleep apnea can stop breathing for over a minute). So, normally, what we're trying to do, is determine what the lowest pressure is that we can cause the apnea (their threshold).
So last night, we pretty much tripled the length of the study. Because first, we determined the subject's first threshold. The problem was that it took like 4 hours because she was very sensitive to positive pressure. Everytime we would increase the pressure, she would wake up. So after that we exposed the subject to periods of hypoxia, where we reduce the amount of oxygen that the subject is breathing to 8% (it's normally ~21%). So we have them on 8% for 3 minutes and then room air for 5 minutes and do this 10 times. Math time = 80 minutes. And then immediately after that, we repeat the first part of the study to see if the threshold has changed, but it needs to be done no more than 60 minutes after the last hypoxic interval. But another stipulation is that we can only determine the threshold in non-REM sleep. So what did the subject do for the last 40 minutes or so that we needed to be changing the pressure? Yup. Dreaming away. So, after our 6 1/2 hours of toiling, we couldn't get the final value that we needed, and pretty much wasted our whole friggin' night. Not to mention that we had a barrage of setup problems with the equipment either not being the correct valve or coming off when the subject would move. So I had to go in the damn room with a flashlight trying not to wake her up like 10 times.
So that likely didn't make any sense at all, but I figured I needed to vent/explain instead of just giving you the standard "I was up late". So although it was frustrating, I would have been totally fine if it would have been successful and we would have had good data which we were so close to having! We seriously couldn't have been any closer to having everything work out. And they need to have three people done with this experiment by November 1st. Considering that, at the very most, we'll have 2, that might be a problem. ***sigh*** Don'tcha just love research....
Ok, enough work babble. What are you up to this weekend? I feel like I'm having football withdrawl considering that Mich had an off week last week. So that's my agenda tomorrow. Tonight, I'm going to a Detroit Social Club Happy Hour. I've been to one before and they're a whole lot of fun. It's not all that different than going to the bar normally, but I guess I just had a blast last time I went. and then later I think I'm going to see this very good local singer, Jill Jack, play at another nearby bar. So it should be fun. I'm just the little social butterfly this weekend/week. Going to see Ryan Adams on Sunday and "I think" going to see David Sedaris speak on Monday at the Detroit Opera House. Lunch on Tuesday with a frined of mine. Going to see a scary movie at a mansion on Wednesday. Don't fret, I'll give you more updates as the days go by.
