I can honestly say that I have been able to achieve everything I ever truly wanted to. That’s not to say that I don’t have regrets or things that I wish I had done that I didn’t. But I know that the only reason that I didn’t is because I wasn’t ready to commit the necessary time, dedication, energy and get over my fears.I believe that there are two primary reasons that people don’t accomplish what they want to in life and often don’t even try: Fear and Laziness. That’s it in a nutshell.

Now, please don’t interpret this as the rantings of an arrogant, pompous ass. I am quite aware that I am not perfect. I am just realistic about life.

To give you a bit of background on my life, I came from a “broken home”. The term itself sounds like a ready made excuse for all the failings of my life. I grew up with my mother and sister in a less than perfect childhood. We never had enough money to pay all the bills. We moved often, I was never able to have enduring relationships and as a result, found myself by default, an outsider. Never quite fitting in, but always trying.

This had the beneficial side effect of making me very self reliant as I had no family to coddle me nor sources of easy money or help. I learned that if I wanted to get things and get places (literally and figuratively), I had to find a way to do it myself.

My First Real Job

Probably one of the best things that ever happened to me was deciding that I wanted to make money. When I was very young, I’d mow the neighbor’s lawns for some extra money. Later I worked handing out flyers and other “kid” jobs. When my family moved to the suburbs, I got a high school job at McDonald’s. This is the greatest experience I could have ever gotten and taught me an immense amount of life skills and experience.

Working there forced me to get comfortable dealing with people. This is a HUGE skill to have in life and NOT just for people working in retail or sales positions! I was not only forced for the first time in my life into the very awkward position of starting a job not knowing anything about anything, but I also had to work with a wide range of people with very different personalities and age groups. The cherry on top was having to deal with customers in a very demanding and face paced environment.

It’s funny. Most people go into a fast food joint and just see a “kid” behind the counter and assume that they aren’t that bright or that they don’t know much. I can tell you that many of these people are developing the skills to become the executives and entrepreneurs of the future that your kids will work for.

My family was living in the suburbs and we didn’t have a car. Now there were buses and taxis and you could ride a commuter train into the city to work, but suburban life is far easier with a car. My mother didn’t have the money or interest in having a car as she simply rode the train to work and took taxis and buses locally. The problem for me was that I was going to high school and working in a nearby town. My friend’s parents had cars and would drive us around, but I always hit that awkward moment when the topic would come up as to why my mother didn’t drive me home when it was late, etc…

I also didn’t have many of the things that the “other” kids had. I wasn’t necessarily desirous of these things because I was materialistic. I wanted these things more so that I didn’t have to live with those awkward moments when friends or their families would ask why I didn’t have them. One example was when my backpack would finally wear out and one of the straps broke off. I would keep using it until the other strap finally broke. Then, I would have to do some serious hunting and scrounging to find something to carry my  books in.

I decided a job was the greatest idea ever. Right off the bat, I was faced with a challenge. None of the local businesses hired kids under the age of 16 due to labor laws. I was 14. I really wanted to get a job. The idea that I could work all the hours available to me and make money drove me. So now I needed to find out how to get the job. I went into the store and asked how to get started getting a job there. I was handed an application. I took it home and filled it out, reading it top to bottom. The application said I would need to provide a working card from my school stating I was 16 and entitled to work.

Social Engineering

Social Engineering is the modern term used to describe techniques used to get people to agree with you and sometimes to get them to do things they either don’t want to or shouldn’t. You get them to like you or sympathize with your cause and they ultimately do you a favor or just “help you out”. Sometimes it’s inadvertent on their part. You just ask enough questions while being nice enough not to annoy them until you find out that there IS and exception to the rule or some other loophole they can use to your benefit. Often this works impeccably with customer service. If they say no, you just keep calling back and speaking with someone different until you find someone that says yes. This will almost always work with large companies. The key here is being extremely nice and extremely polite. Beg for help.

I went to school the next day and suffice it to say that with some social engineering (people hacking) I walked out with an official letter that stated I was legal. I headed back over to the store and became employed.

The key to life, I had discovered was not saying “That can’t be done!” but instead saying “HOW can that be done?”.

This lesson has proven amazingly simple yet immensely powerful in the rest of my life since then.

Getting Promoted

After working at McDonald’s for about a year and a half I decided that I wanted to be an assistant manager. By that time, I knew every function of the store and had memorized pretty much all of the operating procedures for all the equipment and jobs.

I became friendly with one of the assistant managers that was on his way up through the ranks and had a very good reputation in the company. I pretty much glued myself to his hip. He gave me an awesome piece of advice: “The best way to get promoted is to start doing the job that you want”. That made amazing sense to me. When a position for promotion opens and they are considering who would be the best person to be promoted, it’s natural that they would pick someone that is already doing the job well. I would stay and work off the clock when my shift ended and help him out in exchange for him teaching me what was involved with running the store. I ended up making the same arrangement with the other assistant managers. They welcomed the deal since they would get an extra set of hands to do their busy work and I would get experience and a good reputation among the managers. I probably worked just as many hours for free as I did on the clock. It worked. Within six months I was promoted to assistant manager.

The real kicker here is that while they thought I was eighteen years old (the minimum age to become an assistant manager) I was actually sixteen years old. That kills me now looking back. I was running a $2 Million dollar a year store on my own at sixteen years old (and doing a damn good job). I prided myself on doing things as close to perfect as possible.

Getting Hired

When you are trying to land that new job you need to see yourself from the interviewers point of view. If you were interview someone, what would you want? Someone friendly, outgoing, easy to get along with, professional, and looking sharp.

BE THAT PERSON!

Think about it, in most cases, the fact that the interviewer doesn’t know you can work to your advantage. This is a clean slate for you. Show them who you can be at your best and stick to it! Even if you had a less than stellar reputation at your last job, that doesn’t matter anymore. They only know what you show them!

Now make sure you cover the basics. Dress appropriately. Make sure your clothes and yourself are clean and look sharp. BE ON TIME! By all means, if you are running late, you may even consider making up an excuse about an emergency you have to tend to and reschedule for another day. If you don’t know these things already, I can’t help you. Basic courtesy and manners goes a long way. You will piss off the interviewer before they even know what you look like by being late.

That out of the way, just try to be yourself, but your absolute best. If you died and were at the gates trying to convince Heaven how good and dignified you are to get in, that’s exactly how you should be on a job interview. As long as the interviewer thinks you are in the ball park as far as skills go, you can sell yourself by having a great personality.

Lastly, don’t put outright lies on your resume. You will get caught and you will lose your chance. It’s ok to fudge some numbers or make things and little better than they were, but blatant lies will screw you, don’t do it.

It’s ok to not know the answer to something. One thing I’ve learned from being on both sides of the interview table is the best way to answer a question you don’t know is by saying “I don’t know, but I can find out!” No one expects you to be perfect, but you will get huge respect by not only admitting it, but following up with a can-do attitude that you are willing to learn.

Get The Girl (or Guy)

There was a girl that I was hugely attracted to in High School. She was a year older than I and in my opinion, perfect in every way. I would go out of my way to say hi to her and even had a bit of a friendship with her. She was exceedingly nice, very beautiful and a pleasure to be around. When I first met her, she had a boyfriend. I thought he was substantially below her standards, but of course, never had the nerve to say anything to that effect to her. I was content just spending what time I could with her chatting between classes or after school.

She eventually broke up with her boyfriend and there were at least a dozen times afterwards that I got within an inch of asking her out but chickened out. All of my insecurities would come raging into my head. “I don’t have a car, how would I take her out? I don’t look as good as that other guy that’s chasing her. She’s way out of my league. If she liked me, she’d show it more.” On and on this crap would beat through my head until I convinced myself I was crazy for even thinking of asking her out.

She eventually got a new boyfriend. Of course, I didn’t think he was good enough for her, but what right did I have to judge when I was too chicken to even approach her on the subject, right?

Fast forward a year or two. I was at a party with some mutual friends. She was there. We all got a bit drunk and started playing “Truth or Dare”. This went around the room a few times and the dares were getting quite risky. It came the girl’s turn and she asked me: Truth or Dare? I thought quickly… I blurted out “Truth!” before I noticed the knowing grin on her face.

She asked the mother of all questions: Who in the room have you wanted to ask out but never did? My God! I’m dying! I turned so red so fast, I was hoping I’d fall unconscious and wake in a hospital, thereby escaping the question.

Unfortunately, I retained my consciousness and just stared in horrified embarrassment. Several awkward moments passed until she finally said, “Well?”. Realizing there was no out, I looked at the floor and said, “You”. I wanted the carpet to come alive and swallow me whole.

She then proceeded to shock the ever loving hell out of me and teach me a life lesson I will never forget.

She said, “Why didn’t you ever ask me?”. I replied, “Would it have mattered? Would you have actually gone out with me?”. She simply replied “Yes”.

My head spun and I was in shock. That was NOT the answer I expected. I was blown away and now embarrassed for a totally different reason. Now I was the idiot that could have gotten the girl but didn’t because I didn’t have the balls to ask. AND it was now totally confirmed in front of a room full of witnesses. It felt wonderful and horrible all at the same time.

No, I didn’t get the girl after that either. She was dating someone else and so was I. But that is EXACTLY the point of this story! Don’t EVER let something  you truly want pass you by without at least trying! If you try you may fail, but you may also succeed – regardless of what you think may happen. If you never try, you will never succeed, I guaran-damn-tee you that!

I have many more experiences that I will share in future posts, but the moral I am trying to convey here is that anyone can do anything they want to if they get past the lazy excuses and the fear. I’d bet that as you are reading this, you can think of several things in your life that you’d like to do and that you knowyou can do, but aren’t. Reach deep down in your soul and ask yourself in the most honest of terms: Are you not pursuing your dreams because it would be too much work? How about because you’re afraid you might fail? Maybe because others might see you struggle and you’d be embarrassed?

If You Knew How Little Others Thought About What You Do, You’d Do More

Read the sentence above again and think about it. Think about people in your life. You’ve seen people around you try something and fail. Did you sit around for the rest of the day thinking how foolish they were? More likely you felt some compassion for them for a few minutes then wondered what you’d eat for lunch.

Even if it was someone you despised, you may have evilly enjoyed their failure for several minutes longer… THEN you wondered what was for lunch.

My point is simple. All the fears you have about what others may  think of you if you did the things you wanted to but stumbled are far overblown. People tend to be very self centered (you spend all day worrying about your issues, not other’s issues, don’t you??) and generally do not spend much time analyzing what YOU do.

The flip side of this equation is that the more you face your fears and TRY, the more you are likely to succeed! The confidence you gain from those successes will embolden you to try more and more things until you are practically unstoppable!

Think about those motivational types you see on the infomercials at 3am telling you how great they are and how they can help you get there. The only real success they have truly had was being able to get over their fears and laziness and DO things. They’ve done enough things and had enough successes (and failures too) that they are now confident to share their failings with you.

It’s easy to tell people how bad you were when you can end it with how great you ARE!

Do something every day that scares you. Before long you will find it is harder and harder to find things that do.

Please let me know if I have made you think… Leave a comment below!

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I’ve been eyeing the Breitling Super Avenger for about a year now and even tried it on once in the store. The problem is that I don’t have the balls to pay $4,000 for a watch on my own. I just had a lot of trouble justifying it to myself. Now that’s not to say that I’m cheap. I would have no problem at all spending that money on my wife and I actually have been known to buy her pretty expensive things.

That being said, I’m not sure where my interest in Breitling came from, but I definitely started noticing them more and more over the last several years. I considered Rolex, but that has the air of a stuffy old man’s watch (I’m sure I’ll get heat from the Rolex fans for that), I also looked at Omega, but it just didn’t catch my eye.

I was walking past a Tourneau store several months ago. My wife has been advocating me getting a nice watch for a long time, so she suggested we stop and look in the window. My eye was immediately drawn to the Breitling Super Avenger. I’m a very tall and large framed guy, so I have always been interested in larger watches. The problem is that large watches all seem to be either very cheap (and look it) or insanely expensive.

While we were ogling the Super Avenger, a salesman walked out and asked if we’d like to see it. My wife spoke for us and said sure. We went inside and the salesman pulled it out and let me try it on. He pretty much immediately started saying annoying things like “so are you ready to buy it?”. This type of cheap sales tactic pisses me off. I don’t get intimidated by sales people and am likely to walk away from a deal just because someone is less than respectful. In this case, I have a personal rule that I generally follow that says I will not make major purchases without having done a substantial amount of homework and knowing that I’m not about to make a bad deal. Beyond that, when I’m considering a very expensive item like a Breitling or Mercedes, I expect a higher quality sales person with tact and respect. If I want to buy a watch from “my cousin vinny” then I expect to pay a lot less than several grand.

Suffice it to say that I appreciated the opportunity to try on the Super Avenger and check it out up close, but by the time the salesman uttered his 4th or 5th lame high pressure sales pitch to me in the space of five minutes, I had already decided that I would not buy the watch from him. Idiots like that do not get commissions from my purchases.

My wife and I politely said we’d consider it and would return if we decided for it and left. We went home. I did some research on the internet and looked into pricing. I was very suprised to find that Breitling prohibits all sales of it’s watches online. There are NO authorized Breitling distributors that sell them online at all period!

The few stores that I found online that people on forums, etc. said were trustworthy, initially looked like they sold the watches substantially cheaper than the authorized resellers, but then I found that most stores will let you haggle down the price pretty significantly. The bottom line for “Gray Market” stores is that they only save you about $100 to $200 below what you can generally get the watch for at an authorized seller. Why is this a big deal? Because you void your Breitling warranty by purchasing it from anywhere other than an authorized reseller. Beyond that, if you ever decided to sell your watch later, most stores and private parties will want to see not only the watch, but your receipt and the box and everything else that came with the watch to prove that it is real. Apparently there are some very good fakes out there.

At the end of the day, I decided that when it was time to buy a ‘Ling (as the watch fanatics call them) that it would be from an authorized seller with some serious haggling.

Fast forward several months. I had thought of the Breitling from time to time, but as usual, my practical side won out and convinced me that a Breitling was an unneeded luxury that I could live without. I would occasionally be reminded of it and would look online to see if there were any sales or news on them and would start gaining interest in it again, but would once again ignite the fires of reason and force myself to close the web browser.

 My wife came to me one day and asked if I wanted to go to the mall with her and her sister. We went to the mall and I was questioning my judgement as we walked from boring clothing store to boring shoe store. Suddenly her sister says “Hey, let’s stop by the watch store. I want to check something.” I suddenly perked up thinking this would be a good chance to get to caress the Super Avenger again. Sure enough, we get to the watch store and I gravitate over to the Breitling counter. My wife is right next to me and she points to the Super Avenger and says “Ooooh, there it is. Why don’t you try it on again?”. My drool on the glass counter must have been a sign because a nice saleswoman came over and asked if I’d like to see anything in particular. My wife points and says “The big one!”. It came out and I tried it on. My wife asked if it felt nice and if I really liked it. I answered in the affirmative. She suddenly put on a serious poker face and says to the saleswoman “What can you do for me on the price?”. The conversation went as follows:

Saleswoman: “well, it’s $4,600″. 
Wife: “yeah, but I’m not paying that. So how much can you go down?”. 
Saleswoman: “If we get you the price you want, are you prepared to buy it right now?”
Wife: “Sure, if it’s a good price”
Salewoman: “What price are you looking for?”
Wife: “If you can give it to me for $3,500 I’ll buy it right now”
Me: Stunned disbelief
Saleswoman: “I will go ask my manager. Can you give me a credit card to show him as a sign of good faith?”
Wife: “Here you go”

The saleswoman walked away and my wife looks excitedly at me and says, “Are you sure you like it? If she comes back with that price or close to it we’ll take it. That’s a very good price.” I just asked her if she was sure about this and knew what she was doing. She said yes on both counts as long as that’s really the one I like. I again asked if she was sure as that’s a lot of money (especially in light of the fact that my wife is known for saying “it’s not necessary” to many of my frivolous desires). She looked at me the way a mother looks at a silly child and looked back towards the counter where the saleswoman was returning.

Saleswoman: Ok, I spoke to the manager. The best I can do if you buy it today is $3,640.
Wife: If I take it for that will you throw in the two year Tourneau bumper to bumper warranty?
Saleswoman: I can’t throw in anything else as we are limited by Breitling on how much we can discount and anything I throw in is considered part of the discount.
Wife: There has to be something else you can throw in. How about a watch winder?
Saleswoman: Same thing, I can’t give you anything else as part of this transaction.
Me: I don’t know. You won’t come down on the price and you won’t thrown anything else in…
Wife: I have a watch at home that needs a battery replaced and my sister needs to buy a new strap for a watch. What can you do?
Saleswoman: Come back in on a day I’m here and bring me the watch. I will have the battery changed for free and can give you a discount on the new strap, but you have to see me specifically.
Wife: We’ll take it.
Saleswoman: Do you want the extended warranty from Tourneau? It gives you two years bumper to bumper on the watch. If you drop it and break the face, we’ll repair it. You can bring it in to have it polished and remove scratches for you as often as you like. If anything gets broken or damaged externally we’ll fix it. The internals and movement are covered by the Breitling warranty.
Wife: Theres no way you can include that in the price?
Saleswoman: No, as I explained
Wife: We’ll take it, but I want the free battery replacement and the strap discount
Saleswoman: No problem, just come see me as we discussed

And that is pretty much it. We paid and got the watch. When they brought it out, I noticed the outside box was damaged, so I made her give me a new one. As I mentioned earlier, I discovered people that buy used Breitlings are very particular about having all of the packing and items that came with the watch. They will actually pay you less if you don’t have the box or receipt or if the box, etc. are damaged.

One humorous (to me) note: As my wife was signing the credit card receipt, the first salesman we had dealt with that had been rude and less than professional walked in the store. He immediately saw me strapping on the Breitling and looked from me to the saleswoman, then back to me. I smiled politely then looked away chuckling to myself. Vengeance is a dish best served cold.. Mwuahahaha!

I tried to stop in once since then to have the battery on my wife’s watch replaced, but the saleswoman was on vacation for the week. Since she was so specific about saying to come back and see her, I didn’t want to risk getting her in trouble by asking someone else to honor the free battery change.

 I will update this post if I have any troubles getting the watch battery replaced, but I don’t anticipate any problems.

The watch has been great. Beware that it is a VERY large watch and it’s heavy. I have gotten used to it from wearing it regularly, but if the bracelet is not sufficiently tight, it will try to roll over on your wrist. I have gotten a lot of compliments on the watch and pretty much everyone notices it as it is huge and shiny. If you are a smaller or average sized man, you should be aware that it will look massive on you.

Lastly, if you haven’t had an automatic watch before, be aware that you must wear it regularly as the movement of your had actually powers the watch. If you leave it still for more than about two days, the watch will stop and will have to be reset. Not a big deal, but worth knowing.

Technorati Tags: Breitling, Super Avenger

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She goes for an appointment at the ENT, where they find that some dissolved wax was stuck to her ear drum. They pulled out a mini shop vac and sucked off the offending matter and all is well. Then my wife asked a fateful (for me) question: “Can I still wear ear plugs?”. Which is answered with a question from the doc, “why do you wear ear plugs?”. The answer of course, is because I snore when I sleep. Not your normal honking through your nose snoring, but more like I take a breath then hold my breath then suddenly fire it out. The wife says it sounds like I stop breathing and make a ruccus starting up again. Well that’s all it took for the doc, “It sounds to me like your husband is the one that should be here, not you”.

I am then informed I have an appointment. So off I go to see the doc. She is a very nice lady who jams some tubes in my nose and ears. She asks me a bunch of questions like:

 - Do you wake up often at night?
 - Do you sometimes wake up gasping for air?
 - Do you feel tired even after a full nights sleep?
 - Do you sweat a lot while sleeping?
 - Do you feel that you can only breath through one side of your nose sometimes?
 - If I left you in this room with the lights turned down, would you fall asleep?

She asked some other questions, some I answered yes to, others no. She told me that after looking at my sinuses that I have some swelling on one side that I should use a nasal spray for, but more importantly that she is sending me to a sleep center to have an overnight sleep study done. Meh!

She tells me to expect a call from the sleep center in the next day or two and that they’ll set me up. She reassured me that they are very nice and are very good.

Now, I’m not completely clueless. I’ve suspected sleep apnea ever since my wife started complaining about the snoring and described the sounds of me choking and not breathing. I have NOT been snoring my entire life. It actually only started two or three years ago which also just happens to coincide with me not going to the gym anymore and putting on a good amount of weight. I am fairly convinced that if this does come back as sleep apnea, the simple answer is that I need to get my husky butt back into the gym and get into shape.

I’ve kind of already decided that if they want to give me drugs or anything else, I will probably refuse and just go on a serious diet and excercise routine first. I don’t want to treat the symptom, I want to treat the cause!

The next day I get a call from Joan at the sleep center. She tells me that she’ll be collecting all my info over the phone and then tells me in general what to expect. I decide I may as well get this over with so I schedule the appointment for two days later. Joan told me to be there by 8:30pm and that I’ll be woken up by about 6:00am the next morning (lovely… I am soooo NOT a morning person).

I spend the next day doing a bit of research on the web and find that a common (but disturbing) possibility of treatment for sleep apnea is a air mask that is placed over your nose when you sleep. It is supposed to have just enough air pressure pushing through your sinuses to keep your throat open while you sleep (as opposed to periodically closing which is what makes you stop breathing).

I also had a bit of a wakeup call while researching sleep apnea. It is very tough on your heart. It can strain your heart and cause all kinds of problems including high blood pressure. This was a bit shocking as my father died young (early fifties) of a heart attack. He also was a snorer. I wonder now if it was more than just the usual diet and excercise deficiencies that contributed to his death.

Fast forward to the day of the appointment. I wake up in the morning and despite them telling me to swear off caffeine for the day, I decide to have my morning cup at work anyway. I do drink plenty of water for the rest of the day and avoid soda so that I won’t have trouble sleeping. I dozed a bit on the way home riding public transit (boring book) and worried if that would mess anything up.

I got home, packed my bag (shorts and a t shirt to sleep in), kissed my wife goodnight and headed off to the center.

When I got there, I was greeted by Velda who brought me into the reception area. She handed me a stack of forms to fill out and took care of the formalities. She immediately brought me back to my room. I was worried at first as it just looked like a normal doctor’s exam room with the examination table. Now I’m over six feet tall and 300lbs. I could not imagine trying to stay on that tiny table and somehow get to sleep. Luckily, I soon discovered that they have a full sized bed that folds out of the wall. Similar to the ones you see in the old “I love Lucy” episodes that someone always gets folded up into the wall with.

Velda told me to fill out my forms then head into the bathroom to change into my sleeping clothes. She did warn me that it is a shared bathroom with the adjoining room and that I should lock both doors while I’m in there.

The forms were pretty straight forward but sometimes asked the kinds of questions that force you into one of their answers even if it’s not quite accurate. This bothers me because if the question said something like, “How likely are you to fall asleep watching TV?” The choices are “very likely, somewhat likely, never”. Well, taken in context with the other questions they ask you, it implies that they mean how likely are you to fall asleep when watching TV at all. But the choices they give you don’t let you explain “only at midnight after a long day and only like once a month”. I don’t want them using those answers as justification for a diagnosis that they need to cut my nose off or something… (Yes, I’m exaggerating).

So I get changed and call Velda back in the room. She comes in with her box of wires that look like colorful spaghetti. She has me sit in a chair with my back to her and explains all the wires as she’s hooking me up. She pulls out a can of some kind of paste and sticks the sensors all over my head, neck, forehead, chin, chest and legs. She tapes a pulse/ox sensor to my finger, then puts three straps around my chest, midsection and stomach. She takes the ends of all of these wires and plugs them into a relatively small box with a carrying strap on it that is then connected to some kind of jack on the bed. Just when I think she’s done, she pulls out a tube and sticks it up both nostrils… wait! we’re not done yet, she pulls out another tube and sticks that one in both nostrils… Oh joy!

Velda tells me that if I need to get up for the bathroom, etc. that I can hit an intercom button and call her and she’ll come and untether me from the bed.

She then pulls out the bed and tucks me in (which is odd to me). She hands me the tv remote and tells me they have cable tv (yay!) and that I can go to sleep whenever I want. She says that she will call me via the intercom from the control room to calibrate the sensors.

A few minutes later, she pops on and takes me through a series of calibration tests: “look up till I say… Look down… Grind your teeth… move your legs… She then wishes me a good night.

I watch a bit of TV and then decide to go to sleep. I quickly realize that it’s hot in the room and getting hotter. I hit the intercom and ask if they can lower the temperature for me. She says it’s controlled by the building and they can’t adjust it… Well hell, I wonder if being hot and sweaty will affect the results.

I get as comfortable as I can and fall asleep. It is far from ideal comfort with a nest of wires on me and tubes in my nose. I am sleeping lightly when my neighbor in the adjoining room decides to go to the bathroom and slams the door on the way out – BANG!

crap.

I roll over and try to fall asleep again (sweating and hot). I drift off for about an hour then wake up with another toilet visit from my neighbor – BANG!

crap

I fall asleep yet again and am woken up after a while when I realize that I need to pee this time. Veldo comes and disconnects me from the bed and puts the wiring box around my neck. I go to the bathroom and decide we need a little revenge… Yep, I’m evil and pointedly slam the door behind me and mumble “up yers!” as I make my way back to my bed.

I go back to sleep and after what seems like a painfully short amount of time Velda comes into the room and wakes me up saying, “ok, time to wake up. You’re all done.”. I feel miserable and am destroyed. Six am never felt so brutal.

Velda pulls all the sensors off of me, I head to the bathroom to brush my teeth and change. I suddenly look in the mirror and realize that Velda has left me covered with the paste from the sensors all over my face and in my hair! I do the best I can cleaning the goop off of me, change and get ready to leave. Velda tells me I need to fill out one more form asking questions about my sleep that night.

I do and leave. I climb into my car and am confused when I look at the clock in the car and it says 5:15am. What the hell? They kicked me out a full hour early. I am pissed. I’m driving home feeling like I’m half drunk and thinking that if I get into an accident I will sue them. Luckily I got home uneventfully and make coffee for the wife. I can’t go to bed as I have to go to the fertility doctor and then to work in a couple of hours.

I am now waiting for the results of the study to be sent to the ENT doctor that referred me. I’ll put a link to the update as soon as I get the news. In the mean time, here are some books on sleep apnea.

Technorati Tags: sleep apnea, sleep study

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