I've never been asked to leave a gym before.......

  I've never been asked to leave a gym before but after the events tonight I suspect that may change. Every word of this tale is true and will probably end up on YouTube one day. Hopefully not.
  Recently I have switched to doing a fair amount of opening shifts which require me to get up at 4 a.m. Considering I don't go to bed until 1 or 2 in the morning, it's made for some short nights which have had an interesting and unwanted side effect. Typically after my shift is over I swing by the gym for a quick 45 minute workout and then head to the sauna for another half hour before going home. And this is where the problem started. For whatever reason I fall asleep in the sauna right after working out. That would be bad enough but it isn't a deep sleep as much as it is sleep-sweating.
  Last week after a workout I drifted off and was awaken by my phone bouncing off my foot. The other men in the sauna were glancing at me the way people glance at a homeless sidewalk preacher. Part out of interest, part out of fear he might be crazy. I chalked it up to being over-tired until over the weekend I managed to slump forward and bang my head on the railing so violently it knocked my headphones off. The people in the sauna with me that day weren't even trying to hide their concern. And their concern had nothing to do with the growing knot on my head. When people get up and leave the sauna shortly after arriving and all at the same time you realize you're scaring them.
  Now that you have the background let me tell you about tonight's brush with narcolepsy. Once again, after opening and working a demanding physical shift I stopped at the gym on the way home. 45 minutes later I was perched on the bench of the sauna with a staunch determination not to fall asleep. It couldn't have been 10 minutes when my head started slumping forward and my mind started detaching from it's current reality. Fortunately a large man sat on the bench which caused me to not fall asleep. But it was only a temporary reprieve because my head dipped again and I was at work in the office on the computer when one of my servers told me I had a phone call. So I turned to my left and said in a loud voice, "Who is it". To say the stranger seated to my left in the sauna was surprised  would be a gross understatement. I'm just glad he didn't hit me. After I realized I yelled at a volume that was way above normal (headphones and loud music will raise your voice every time) it was time to apologize but I couldn't. He was out the door before I even opened my mouth to say I was sorry.
  Because the sauna was now empty again and I wasn't ready to leave, I switched songs and tried not to think about how freaked out that guy must have been. While I was mulling that over the familiar tilt of the head was occurring once again. The scene from earlier repeated itself as a man sat down heavily next to me, momentarily prolonging the inevitable involuntary nap. Apparently he hadn't run into the guy who was yelled at or he would have sat somewhere else. No matter because I wasn't going to fall asleep again except that I did. And oddly enough I didn't go very far into sleep because I started thinking about what had just happened. And then I was sitting with my wife Scarlett telling her about yelling at a random guy and she was laughing really hard. I love hearing her laugh so I had a big, goofy smile on my face when I turned to look at her. Except it wasn't her but the newest victim who sat next to me. When I noticed it wasn't my wife the smile changed instantly to a frown, no a scowl. A menacing, pissed off scowl. This poor chap couldn't have mover faster if he was on fire.
   Perhaps nobody bothered to tell the front desk at the health club that there is a complete whack job scaring people in the locker. Maybe they won't tell anybody else but that's not the way to bet it. I think the next time I hit the sauna there will be an armed guard inside. Or all the members will line up outside the plexi-glass windows to watch the show. Either way, my time may be over at the gym.

Till next........

Man Cave Musings: The struggle to keep up......

Man Cave Musings: The struggle to keep up......:   With all the new advances in technology the struggle to keep up can be somewhat exhausting. Between updating your status on Facebook, addi...

The struggle to keep up......

  With all the new advances in technology the struggle to keep up can be somewhat exhausting. Between updating your status on Facebook, adding photos on Instagram and doing whatever the hell it is you do on Snapchat the world of social media is a very busy place. But it's not social media that keeps me one step away from full blown sleep deprivation, it's the easy access of information always at my fingertips. When my brain says "squirrel" I can instantly look up the average weight, height and life expectancy of the American breed. Are they different in China? Not sure, better find that answer. This is not to say that I'm savvy with the internet. I once opened up a Google to search for Google. (True story). Nor am I innately in tune with the current pop culture. Last month I came home raving about this cool new song I heard at work. It was called "I can't drink you away". After some extensive research I found out it was only five years old. I say only because last year I stumbled on to this great new song call "Drops of Jupiter". That one was over a decade old. Yep, I'm hip.
  Given the fact that I've spent most of my life with what is clinically described as chronic insomnia the internet has made what was left of my sleep pattern look like a Gitmo detainee. I fall asleep to blaring rock music only to be jolted awake an hour later to the screeching sounds outside my window. I hate morning birds but that is a subject of a different rant. There have been many mornings where my wife comes down the stairs to find me banging away at the computer keys like one of those monkeys that you wind up and they bang to cymbals together. All this for the never ending quest for the most useless knowledge on the planet. I've amassed so much minutiae that I can literally bore myself during conversations. I find myself starting to explain something critical like the flattening of the yield curve or the ten year high in lumber commodities and I have to stop myself. Not even I give a shit about what I'm talking about, why would anyone else.
  But this constant journey to become Alex Trebek (who is from Canada, stop it, just stop it) can be fraught with peril. During one period I had terms in my search history which included, 'best terrorists' is uranium located near copper' 'shipping patterns from the Middle East to Lake Superior'. I'm pretty sure the surveillance drones fly by the house on a regular basis these days. My son Zachary learned the dangers when he was searching for background sound on one of his songs and he Googled bedroom sounds. That will help you grow up fast. My money says he heard noises I didn't cover in that birds and bees speech I mumbled my way through a few years ago.
  The gold medal winner for bad searches to try and fill in the gaps of knowledge still belongs to me. We were talking about card games we used to play and I mentioned I played a lot of cribbage as a kid. I was trying to explain the game to some novices who had never heard of it. I explained how you play on a board, with a deck of cards and so on. You moved up and down the board by moving your peg. I was trying to explain it further and couldn't remember the exact details. So I turned to my trusted midnight friend, Google. If I had thought about it for one minute longer I would have typed in 'Rules for Cribbage'. Sadly I did not. I typed in 'Pegging' which is how you keep score in cribbage. Urban Dictionary had an answer. I wish I hadn't clicked on it. For all of you who are now searching 'pegging' I sincerely apologize. An innocent mistake led to a loss of whatever crumb of innocence I had left. I think I'm going to go back to looking things up in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Do they still make those? Hang on, I'll check.

Till next.......