Follow the links below if you want to see the sources of my internet "research" that I conducted before attempting this experiment.

Wikipedia: Polyphasic Sleep
Uberman's Sleep Schedule || kuro5hin.org
Uberman's Sleep Schedule@Everything2.com
Polyphasic.blogspot.com
Arthur Dick's Diary

Background: I decided to transition at a very unique time in my life. I just took over control of the Perimeter Security Company, a 200+ soldier unit responsible for the physical security of a large military installation in the middle of a combat zone. I had implemented a lot of changes over a short period and felt it was necessary to supervise certain actions of my unit throughout the day and night while maintaining a regular meeting schedule during the day. Polyphasic sleep was one part of my solution.

For those of you who are looking strictly for numbers, I mapped out my sleep over the trial period to help illustrate the transition. Each box represents a half hour of sleep.

11 March 2005 1148z - Okay, Jane. I'm going to give it a shot. I finally had a chance to read through a whole bunch of polyphasic sleep articles and made a decision to start transitioning today. For the most part, I think it'll be an easy transition to make because 1) I'm used to being sleep-deprived already, b) the military environment helps me to maintain my discipline, and thirdly, because I am just that hard. For those who aren't familiar with polyphasic sleep or the Uberman sleep schedule, it's basically an attempt to increase your REM sleeping efficiency. The following is just what I've found through a half hour of internet research, so don't take the next paragraph as fact.

So your normal person is a monophasic sleeper, someone who gets all of their sleep at one time. I guess research into brain waves shows that there are five stages, with the last one, REM sleep, being associated with dreaming and other functions essential to survival. In a normal night's sleep, a person will go through these stages multiple times (4-5 per night), with each cycle lasting somewhere around an hour and a half. During each successive cycle, the percentage of REM sleep increases, with a nightly total ranging from 90-120 minutes.

Again, take your normal person. Without sleep, you will eventually die. And there are other things that come with accumulation of sleep debt and severe sleep deprivation. Like microsleep...that's something I've experienced all too often over the last few years, but didn't have a name for. That's basically a short second or two bout of narcolepsy. And there are myoclonic twitches, which occur frequently underneath my bottom eyelid when I am short on sleep. Anyway, I don't know about the other phases of sleep, but from my vast experience with REM (basically consisting of watching that one episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation when they go through that causality loop), REM is one of the most important. So when you are sleep deprived, your body will figure out a way to cheat and jump straight to REM sleep.

Enter polyphasic sleep. The basic concept is to reduce all of the other stages of sleep so that your body maximizes the REM sleep. Take the Uberman sleep schedule. That involves sleeping for 20 minutes every four hours. This is what I figure to be the ideal polyphasic sleep cycle, requiring two hours of sleep each day, with most of that two hours being REM. I think the key is getting your body trained to whatever off the wall sleep cycle you can come up with. Then, it'll know to kick into REM right away. I had a similar sleep cycle when I was going through JRTC in Fort Polk, except I averaged maybe two different thirty minute periods of sleep every day. I seemed to do alright with that, but I knew that I would have to catch up eventually.

Anyway, with four months left on this deployment, I figured it's worth a shot to maximize the amount of work I can do here in country. So I mentioned it to my CO who already had a basic understanding of the concept. He's pretty smart and reads a lot...so he seemed amazingly supportive and even asked me to copy a couple of articles on his flash drive for him to read later. Supposedly, there's anecdotal evidence that this technique was used by the likes of da Vinci, Edison, and Jefferson. I mean, if it works for them, right? So with that said, I am going ot kick off my experiment tonight. I think I will start off with a core sleeping period to get me started before giving up all of my sleep fully. I have to plan around guard mounts and meetings and the stock market open, so it won't be a perfect Uberman schedule; but I think it'll be close enough. Here's what it'll look like:

S1 = 0230-0300
S2 = 0800-0830
S3 = 1230-1300
S4 = 1630-1700
S5 = 2000-2300

Each of the first four periods should yield REM equivalent to 1.5 hours of normal sleep, so this schedule should give a REM equivalent to a nine hour night's rest at the cost of five. Eventually, each of the periods will be trimmed down to 20-25 minutes, with a total daily sleep of 100-125 minutes. That's the goal at least. That would be the equivalent of sleeping 7.5 hours while still having 22 waking hours in every day. It's worth a shot, right? For now, I need to get my hands on five alarm clocks because I am too lazy to keep changing them every day. I'll keep you posted.

11 March 2005 1725z - Since I'm going to have so many more waking hours...I think I'm call them w-hours, pronounced wowwers...I decided to look up some more things on sleep. There is surprisingly little information on the internet about polyphasic sleep, so I just started looking up a few things about napping instead. Ironically (in the Ben sense), it just happens that were are less than a month away from National Workplace Napping Day which I found out about at napping.com. NWND takes place on April 4th this year, the day after the start of daylight savings. It makes sense since everyone will be going to work with an hour less of sleep that day. Plus, there is also National Sleep Awareness Week, which occurs the week prior from 28MAR05-03APR05. Interesting stuff, huh?

I've got a couple of other links too, to include: Napping Enhances Worker Productivity, The Sleep Foundation, and SleepEducation.com.

Okay, fast forward a little bit. I just tried to go to sleep about an hour ago. No luck. I lay in bed for a whole twenty-five minutes and couldn't fall asleep. I think that's the first time I've been able to do that in a good three years...not fall asleep, that is. I think I was just too excited. I could feel my heart pounding the whole time. At best, I maybe hit stage 1 sleep for about ten minutes. But before I got too far, my alarm went off and it was time to get up already. I was okay with that, but I wonder how motivated I will be to get up after a day or two of this. Anyway, I came back to my office where I ripped through some packaging and synchronized my alarm clocks. (see below) I preset all of the alarms in the hopes that I would be able to stick to my schedule. I know things come up around here, but they won't miss me for a half hour here or there. I think it was more symbolic than anything else. I had to put little stickies on the top of the clocks to keep them straight though. I plan on keeping them here in the office and then bringing one to my bunk or just sleeping here in my seat whenever the time comes. As always, we'll see how it works. I'm sure I'll be updating a little more over the next few days.

11 March 2005 2345z - Okay, so I'm not sure whether to call yesterday day one or day zero. *flips coin* Day one it is...which makes today day two. I guess that decision-making process that they taught us in OCS does work after all.

Let's talk about last night...well, the last three hours of it at least. S5 went well. That's my three hours of core sleep at the end of each day. Eventually, I'm going to cut that down to a regular 20-minute nap, but I figure three hours is small enough of a time to help me to transition. Anyway, I left the office around 1950z last night and put my head down to the pillow just a minute before 2000z, my scheduled sleep time. I was probably out in about two minutes, plus or minus. I was already pretty tired by that time, and I felt like I was near useless typing up reports as it was starting to take longer and longer to complete each task. Like it took maybe an hour to finish my SITREP along with my BUB slides for today. I had some notes I typed up for the leader meeting as well as part of an AAR for the boss regarding the events of the last week. Those last few tasks weren't complete, though, as I just left the windows open on m desktop because I couldn't really concentrate on any one thing. I'm feeling a little more composed right now...composed enough to write this entry, but I am looking forward to my next little nap.

I woke up this morning at 2259z. I looked at my watch just one minute before my alarm clock went off. I guess it's a good thing that I woke up on my own. I imagine I went through two full sleep cycles during those three hours because I was feeling pretty good. I'm sure it would have been worse if I snoozed it and slept in an additional 20 or 30 minutes like I normally would at home. If nothing comes out of this experience, I'll at least pay more attention to these hour and a half chunks of sleep and calculate my morning wake-up based on them. There were people sleeping in the hooch, but I let my alarm clock go for a split second before turning it off. I needed to know how well the alarm worked. I did just buy five of them, already a decent investment sunk into this project. So I hit snooze right away and started dressing for guard mount. Halfway through that, my alarm went off again. A four-minute snooze...not bad. I think that'll help me to stay on my schedule...though I'm tempted to market a snoozeless alarm clock for those like me who need to get up out of bed on the first try. Anyway, with that said, I'm going to do as much as I can during my next three w-hours before my highly-anticipated S1. Good night.

12 March 2005 0919z - S2 went well, but I have had problems staying awake through just the last ten minutes here. I tried to wash my face with a baby wipe here at my desk and had a small bout of microsleep as I discovered that I'd dropped the baby wipe on my lap in the split second that I was asleep. In less than two hours, I have the big weekly synchronization meeting with BDOC. There should be a full-bird or two there, so I need to find some way of getting myself together. Even on normal Saturdays, it's hard enough to stay awake during those. So on a day like today, I need to take a few countermeasures. Looking around my desk, I'll start by filling my pockets with some Halls defense vitamin C drops.

The sleep itself went well. I don't know exactly when I fell asleep, but I woke up about 10 minutes into my half hour. Then I went back to sleep again and got up at the sound of the alarm. I'm feeling a little better now that I've started to type and get some thoughts on paper, but I was hurting just a few minutes ago. I'm not sure if it's the sleep inertia or if it was the fact that I just filled my belly up at the DFAC. Either way, I'm looking forward to my S3 which is scheduled just over three hours away.

12 March 2005 0311z - S1 this morning went much better than S4 last night. In this 30-minute block, I think I actually fell asleep. I had two quick dreams...not so much dreams so much as a cross between a hallucination and a vivid dream...very short. The first image was that of one of my fellow LTs walking around asking if I was asleep. I know it wasn't real because I could wake up and see my poncho liner draped over my head. But I was able to fall back into that mixed state of consciousness again. The second time, I had a somewhat more pleasing image of a girl that I used to know back when. I won't go into details on that one. Anyway, before I knew it, the alarm clock went off and I was back on the job. We'll see how the rest of the S's go today. I did a little more research on circadian rhythms, and I think that S4 is placed at a bad time, right at one of the peaks of consciousness if you convert from zulu to local time. Unfortunately, my sleep is going to be based around my meeting and guard mount schedule. Hopefully, my body will adjust, right?

12 March 2005 1507z - Okay, so I missed my S3 today. I think that'll be something I'll have to deal with on Saturdays just because of the meeting schedule. I've got my Synch meeting followed by the Battalion BUB, and there just isn't much room in between to pull a half hour nap...hmm...though I could just ride the shuttle bus on the way back and just sleep for two trips up and down Disney, the main street. A normal walk is right around a mile and that takes about fifteen minutes. So if I take the bus and just go to sleep while it circles, I should only need an extra fifteen. Make sense? Either way, I have a week to work out the details. For now, I'll just look ahead to my S4. That's just an hour and a half away. I think this'll be the hardest of my naps to adjust to just because of the circadian rhythm thing. From what I read, it your alertness tends to peak around 9:00, AM or PM. This is the one I had trouble falling asleep for yesterday, but I'm hoping it was mainly anxiety and not some deeper issue. As always, I will keep you posted.

So far, I've been actively trying to recruit people into doing this with me. There hasn't been much luck so far. Most people just look at my line of five alarm clocks and give me a look like I'm crazy. My commander is pretty supportive, though not willing to join me. My little sister has given me some positive encouragement though. Everyone else...eh, I'm not doing it to make anyone else happy. I'm just trying to get some more time to troop the lines and to get some down time of my own without having to sacrifice my work.

It's kinda funny. You know the feeling you get when you buy a lottery ticket? The odds of actually winning are horrible, but you still think about all of the ways you'll spend your money, you know? Well, I'm starting to feel the same way about this whole thing. I think to myself, "what am I going to do with all of this extra free time?" Back in college, I used to talk to Jeff about coming up with a sleeping pill. It didn't make you sleep, but it was like in the video games when you can just restore your health...except in this case, you would restore your sleep debt. That'd be really neat. Anyway, I'm just trying to think of ways I could spend my extra w-hours. I mean, seriously, if time is money, then this really is like winning the lottery. Maybe not the big jackpot, but it's close to winning one of those $5000 scratchers.

12 March 2005 1737z - S4 was a bust again today. It was better in that I was calm and relaxed tonight; but I just wasn't tired. I think I hit a near dream state at one point, but I don't feel like I was truly asleep at any one time. Oh well...it's less than three hours until my core sleep cycle, so I think I'll just go out for a drive and visit some guys in the towers. By the time I get back, it'll hopefully be S5 time. I should probably let up on the updating after today too. I don't know how interesting it is to read about this stuff. There just isn't that much to do sometimes with all of this extra time. I keep on checking RSS feeds to see if anyone else has updated their blogs and I wait for e-mail. Realizing that I go to sleep every 3-5 hours, I guess I shouldn't expect something new in my inbox every time I get up...but I do. So with that said, I'm off to make some use of my extra time. I'll write more after my S5.

12 March 2005 2357z - I got caught up with a lot of the tower visiting last night. I had planned on getting back by 2000z for my S5, but there were a couple of towers that had guys who just had a lot to get off their chest. I probably stayed over an hour each at towers eleven and one. Add a couple more towers and a 25 KPH speed limit and I didn't get back until after 2130z, which left me about 75 minutes until wake-up. Ideally, I would have had closer to 90 minutes, but I went with what I had. I'm hurting right now though. I can't wait until 0230z rolls around, though, and I get to go back to bed. I'd pay real money if I could have that now.

13 March 2005 0339z - So S1 didn't pan out this morning. Around 0130z, I was all ready for my nap. I was half passed out in my chair as I tried to finish up a task that my commander and I talked about the evening before. But then I took a break to use the latrine and ran into my commander there. He invited me to breakfast with him and I obliged. We talked about a lot of issues and then I went back to my desk to finish the task. It was good...the whole conversation helped to refresh me. Unfortunately, it came just maybe 20 minutes before my S1. So when I finally lay down to sleep, I couldn't do it. You would think that after going on an hour and a half of sleep, I'd be able to turn it on like a switch. But I couldn't. So I lay there in silence until the alarm went off. Then it was up and back to work. So that takes care of day two.

With today being Sunday, I'm pretty confident that I can hit most of my hard times for naps. Again, I just worry that I won't be able to fall asleep.

13 March 2005 1456z - I'm on such a high right now, it's not even funny. I just came back from dinner with three of the platoon leaders in my company and one of the staff captains. And we spent nearly an hour discussing issues from our ODP that occurred earlier this evening. It was great to hear all of that...just the fact that it generated so much discussion. I just hope that the excitement and emotion doesn't just fade with time. The ODP was the first I'd delivered. So you've got a few captains, one my current boss and one my former boss, our battalion XO, and a bunch of platoon leaders. I think it started off a little slow, but then I rolled into issues with training and what challenges we face when we get back to the states...and we've already run twenty minutes past our normal hour allotment, but they're still into it. No one's looking at their watches. They have genuine concerns and they really care. It's been so long since I've felt like a teacher, that part of it felt good. But even more, I felt like a commander. Over the course of the last two months, I've been given a lot of opportunities to grow that part of me, and although I've run into some stumbling blocks...I felt like I've made a lot of progress and there may just be some lasting effects of the work we're doing here. And I'm not talking about Afghanistan. I'm talking about our soldiers that we have here with us.

I mean, I go and talk to soldiers in the towers a lot now. And when I hear them talk about not staying in the guard when we go back home, I feel like we've failed them in some way. I mean, I know family has a big role in that. A lot of soldiers just don't want to sacrifice another year with their family...and I can understand that. But there are guys who have just given up on a lot of things...including themselves. I don't know. I don't want to sound negative here, so I'll just say that I think we have a lot that we can do in our last four months here. I just hope I can convince the guys to use these last few months to make things better instead of giving up and counting the days until we get home.

In other news, S2 went about as well as S1. Then S3 didn't happen because of the ODP. I'm still surprised about how alert I am considering I've really only had two hours of sleep in the last day and a half. I'm hoping I'll dip a little before S4 time though. We'll see.

13 March 2005 1830z - So I caught up on my sleep with my S4. I didn't think I was going to be able to fall asleep today, but I actually ended up oversleeping. I didn't do it by much, but I did oversleep. I think I ended up hitting the snooze a few times...enough to confuse myself. See, I was supposed to wake up at 1700z, but when I kept on waking up and seeing the clock, I thought that I was supposed to be waking up at 1800z. So I hit the snooze, not thinking. Some time around 1750z, it finally hit me. I thought to myself how I shouldn't have been hitting snooze because my clocks were set to go off right when I woke up. And then it hit me...1700z, not 1800z. So, strike one for me. I don't feel all too bad because I did miss my S3 today and my S5 last night was shortened. I think I'll adjust S5 to be an hour and a half for tonight and keep it that way until I am fully converted. So with that said, I have about three hours left until my last nap of the day. I signed out the gator keys from supply earlier today with the idea of visiting some more towers tonight. I should be pooped enough after that to pass out pretty quickly, I'm sure.

Reflecting on everything as day three is starting to come to a close, I find that this schedule has given me something to be excited about. I mean, I genuinely look forward to each of my naps every day and I constantly have that one thing to look forward to every 3-5 hours. The experience hasn't been without its low points though. This afternon, I didn't even realize it, but I guess I was kinda mush sitting at my desk around lunchtime. One of my E5s told me how he got a picture of me as I was just nodding off in my chair. Another one of the sergeants here was making fun of me, talking about how I'll probably go crazy within a few days. I don't know...I think in a few days, I'll be so used to it all, that I probably won't bring it up any more.

Anyway, thanks to mom and sister for their support through this. My commander has been pretty supportive of me too. And if anyone wants to throw in their two cents, I'm all ears. For now, I'll head back out and troop the line again tonight. Maybe there'll be more stuff in my inbox by the time I get back.

14 March 2005 0248z - Louie...you got some splaining to do. Yeah, S5 ended up getting cut down to a half hour tonight. I had to adjust it because I ended up taking close to four hours to round the towers and then I had to type up an operations order and an e-mail before I wrapped up. If I wasn't going to get a full 1.5 hours, then I'd rather have a half hour, you know? So I took my half hour and I sat down at my desk with about fifteen minutes before guard mount. Then I'm sitting there. Then I'm sitting there. And it's like lost time...I look at my watch and realize that it's now half an hour past guard mount. I'd just been sitting there in a state of half-consiousness and lost out. I was still groggy. It's the sleep inertia, I'm guessing. But I figured the best way around it was to just get a full cycle of sleep in. So I set my alarm clock for an hour and a half and passed out. I woke up two minutes before my alarm clock was going to go off, and it was amazing. It had felt like I'd just had a full night's sleep. I'm going to have to use these cycles sparingly in the future to catch up, but I know that I have that technique in my toolbox in case I ever just crash again. Tallying up my sleep for the last few days, I'm looking at 3.5 hours for day one, 3.75 for day two, and three hours for yesterday if you count that additional hour and a half I just pulled off.

Considering all of that, I think I'm functioning well. I just hope there aren't any long-term effects...hehe.

Anyway, with some of my extra time, I jumped on AIM and had a chance to chat with a few people. I got forwarded a link of one of our soldiers here who also kept a blog...and then I started to look for some more. I haven't found many, but I've inlcuded 3-116/OEF related links to the side for those interested. The one for Waheed is actually a blog maintained by one of the local national interpreters working with the Army here.

Other than that, it's rainy and ugly outside. Weather has been amazing around here though...forties in the morning and it's starting to hit the 80s during the day here. It's like night and day around here. Actually, to be technical, I guess it is night and day, not like night and day. Task for tomorrow: return to the gym.

14 March 2005 1025z - So another slip-up today. The timing has been off all morning because of that first hour and a half nap I took to catch up. So by 0700z, I was getting pretty tired and I went to lie down because it'd already been a good 5-6 hours since my last nap. Because it was off-schedule, I went and set the time on my old alarm clock so as not to throw off my five new alarm clocks. Then I put my head down only to wake up 2.5 hours later. So what was the screw up? I thought I set my alarm clock for 0730z, but after adjusting the time, I never actually turned the alarm on. I'm kicking myself and cursing in my head right now. I'm pretty upset that I made a mistake as stupid as that..plus I missed lunch. With that said, I think I'm going to skip my S3 today and stick with my S4 along with a shortened S5. Oh well...can't beat myself too much over this.

14 March 2005 1347z - Okay, so maybe today wasn't as productive as the last few. I needed a little break. I'd been running pretty hard with planning and meetings and getting people out of trouble and visiting towers. I know that doesn't sound like hard work...and it isn't hard work. It's just constant work and long hours, and that's just as tiring. Okay, I'll stop complaining.

I just had a quick link I wanted to add as I was wasting some time net-surfing today. Here is the coaching line-up for TJ this year. Note Coach Travis's biography. It talks about how he contributed to the development of such greats as All-State Wide Receivers Gordon Avery, Stu Greene and Brandon Buchanan; All-Region Wide Receiver Chino Rodriguez; and All-District Defensive Back Sonny Louie. Wait a second...wait a second. Who was that last guy? Hehe...it's nice to reminisce, but can you believe that was eight years ago? Pretty wild, huh? I'm getting old.

14 March 2005 1940z - I made my evening rounds early enough today that I can actually lie down for three hours before first formation in the morning. I was reading an abstract that Jeff e-mailed me today and it talked about a study that forced people to live off of sleep, whether monophasically, biphasically, or polyphasically. The monophasics were the worst off. But the more I think about biphasic or triphasic sleep, the more it appeals to me. When I have an hour and a half, it feels very refreshing, as if I had slept a whole night. I could probably live off of two or three of those a day. Of course, I'll still stick with my original plan as much as possible before I give up on the half-hour blocks. I mean, if I can get from a half hour what I can get from an hour and a half, why not, right? It makes me think about a line from a movie that I don't remember...you know, when they talk about 8 minute abs and then 7 minute abs and then 6 minute abs. I mean, if you can accomplish it in less time, why not? Speaking of abs...that reminds me that I have to go to the gym. Did I say that I was supposed to do that today or tomorrow? It's bad how all of the days just mix together now that there isn't a single period of sleep separating them.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. Don't forget to write me.

15 March 2005 0258z - So I think my body is sleep retarded. I think I've gone so long being sleep-deprived, that it just doesn't know how to adjust to this new sleep schedule. It might have to do with the three hours of sleep that I got last night though. I don't know. Maybe keeping that core sleep around has made it harder for the body to adjust. Anyway, lets recap what's gone on since the last nap. I did get the three hours of sleep that I planned and at the right time too. I think that's actually the first time since I started this thing. I woke up and took care of a few minor issues before heading out to the gym. I hadn't been there for a while and it showed. I stepped on the scale and it was tipping at 180. I don't feel like a fat-body, but that's pretty big considering I'd been sitting around 160 for the last two years. Anyway, feeling bad for skipping the gym this last week, I did 10K on the elliptical. I kept a good 6-minute mile pace the whole way and had my heart rate hovering around 180 for the last fifteen minutes of the run. It felt good. Then I went on to lift some weights for an hour before heading back to the office.

I noticed the ole bowl getting shaggy when I looked at myself in the mirror when I was shaving, so I decided that I would give myself a haircut this morning. It was a good morning to do it too...because I was actually feeling rather alert. That's probably one of the worst things that you could be doing when you fall asleep...giving yourself a haircut. Anyway, as I was wrapping up, one of my fellow LTs came in the door. He had just gotten off of leave and we caught up for the next half hour or so. It was nice to have someone to talk to in the morning. Usually, I'll wander in the guard shack just to find someone to keep me up for a little bit.

Anyway, that was pretty much the morning. It hit near 0230z, so I decided to head back to the hooch to see if I could squeeze out an S1. I wasn't feeling very sleepy though. But I tried anyway. I think I may have hit Phase 1 or 2, but not much past that. I was just trying to think of nothing as my mind was wandering and it eventually rolled into a dream. I tried to steer it towards a situation involving women, but to no avail. That's what makes me think that I was at least somewhat unconscious. Anyway, that was over by 0245z, and I didn't even bother trying to go back to sleep.

And now, I'm at a bit of a decision point. I think I'm going to try to stop sticking to these rigid sleep schedules because these naps just aren't going anywhere. I think I'm going to keep a window of about an hour or so for each napping period. And if I feel the least bit drowsy at any point, I'll put myself down. I need to get into the habit of sleeping and then cutting myself off, I think. Otherwise, my body will never figure out what I'm trying to do. It'll think I'm just doing what I always did. Like I said, I think I'm sleep retarded.

15 March 2005 1017z - Okay, I've got a quick meeting I need to leave for in about 20 minutes and I need to do a number two before I go, but I wanted to log this before I forgot. S2 went without a hitch today. I was feeling a little drowsy around 0730z, so I decided to start early. Good call on my part. On of my fellow LTs in the hooch next to mine was reading a book, and after I woke up, he mentioned to me how quickly I was able to fall asleep. It probably wasn't longer than two or three minutes. Then I woke up about ten minutes into it feeling pretty good. But I decided to put my head down for the full duration and ended up with a good half hour of sleep...just like it's supposed to be done. I woke up and ran into two other LTs on their way out to lunch and joined them for what became a pretty interesting meeting of the minds.

The two other LTs are Company XOs that I've worked with for a long time now; and being LTs, I think we all took comfort in being able to put all of our opinions and concerns and gripes out there on the table. It's never really appropriate to gripe down and it's never comfortable to gripe up either. Anyway, great conversation...probably lasted nearly two hours with a little bit of eating here and there. Whether or not anything good will come as a result of it, who knows. But it was nice. That's all I'm saying. Okay, off to meeting. I'll write more later. And no...believe it or not, not an ounce of caffeine consumed .

15 March 2005 1455z - S3 went about as well as I could have expected. Because of a meeting at 1300z, I pushed my nap about 15 minutes early. I was out in less than five because I woke up from a dream at about ten minutes. I actually woke up at the 10 minute mark and again at the 20 minute mark before falling asleep one more time just as the alarm clock went off. I wasn't completely refreshed, but it felt alright. I remember parts of one dream though...really strange. It was army-related. We had a platoon out on a patrol and we came to this bridge made of rock. Anyway, for some reason, some guys decided to go rappeling off of it. I guess that's understandable...but then they decide to set their ropes on fire. What the heck, right? And then they decide to lower this net filled with supplies. But it didn't make sense why they were lowering it down into a river. And then I look closer and there are soldiers caught inside the net. They're waving their arms, but not in desperation. They're just yelling and saying hi to me. I wave back just before they are cut loose and the net falls a good 30-40 meters down into the water. And then I woke up. Now, all of you psych people...figure this one out and tell me what it means, okay?

Oh, and I had to link to this one article that I read today in the news. Understanding that many of my readers are pretty conservative, I worried a little about expressing my views on this issue; but I'll be honest. This one issue is one of the biggest ones I can think of. The link is to an article about the California court decision finding the ban on gay marriages unconstitutional. Time after time, these judges are coming through on this very tough decision, and it gives me confidence in the system. I know a lot of people disagree, but I consider this a huge civil rights issue more than anything else. And I wasn't alive at the time, but I know thousands and thousands of minorities and interracial couples have already fought this battle in the past and it amazes me that we have to go through this again. For those of you who have time to read this, it's a summary of Loving v. Virginia, a case I've mentioned before regarding interracial marriage back in the 60s. Here's the summary paragraph for those of you with SASs.

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Okay, I hate when blogs get political, so I won't go much further. Thanks for your time.

15 March 2005 1731z - S4 went like clockwork, but I am feeling pretty tired right now...even more tired than before I took my nap. Again, it's the sleep inertia. I'm blinking like every two seconds and it's hard to concentrate on writing right now. I'll jump on AIM to see if anyone can keep me company for the next few hours until S5. Today was the first time I actually hit all of my sleep times...my way of making up for yesterday. The only thing I'm worried about right now is my three hour of core sleep interfering with my body adapting. Though as much as I'd like to get rid of it, that's the only way I've been able to treat my body to a solid sleep cycle...even if just for three hours. I'd cut it down to an hour and a half, but I don't see myself staying awake for more than three hours right now. Plus, I'm a little too tired to visit towers tonight. I think I'll take a day off from that to regain a little bit of sanity...not that talking to troops makes me insane in any way. I just need to take a little more of my extra wowwers and spend them on me. After all, that was one of the main purposes of shifting to this schedule. There were a lot of things I haven't been able to take care of. So far, the only thing I've really taken the time to do for myself since I've started this sleep experiment is update my weblog more.

What can I do more of though? I'm starting some reading tonight in the hopes that it'll lay some groundwork for making me drowsy...though right now, I don't think I need that much help. Besides that, I have some corresponding coursework to complete before attending my infantry officer advanced course at Benning in August. Oh, my commander said that I had to take leave today. So that means I'll probably have two weeks off some time around mid-late April time frame. Any thoughts on that? I'm thinking Germany, but home actually does seem pretty appealing right now. Maybe San Diego...I don't know if Arun is still out there. I don't know. I should be able to make this decision myself, but I'll go ahead and solicit input from you all. What do you think?

15 March 2005 2340z - Last night, I found myself nodding off while reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. It was a good book, but I just didn't have much juice left in me by the time 2000z rolled around. So I went down for a full three hours and I feel great right now. Adding up all of my naps from yesterday, though, it totals 4.75 hours for today and 5.5 hours the day before. That seems like too much to me. I'll stop talking about it and publish a new sleep schedule some time later today to cut it down further. If I can maintain three and a half hours/day, I think it'll be worth the sacrifice. Otherwise, I'll shift to a triphasic cycle with 3 x 1.5 hour blocks. I forget...have I said that before? I forget what things I've thought to myself and which I've already posted, and I'm too lazy to read through what I've written over the last few days right now. So, with that said, I'm off to the gym.

16 March 2005 1040z - So...a lot of talking going on today. Not gossippy stuff, but just good conversations. I sat down with one of our admin clerks and a fellow LT at breakfast this morning and just chatted for a bit. The LT asked me some questions about my sleep schedule because he was interested. He'd already been through ranger school, so he's experienced his share of sleep deprivation. Anyway, he just had a lot of things he wanted to accomplish and didn't have as much time to do those...so when he found out I was doing this, I think he saw an opportunity. It may take a little while longer to convince him, but that'd be neat to have an ally in this battle against sleep. Well, maybe not that far...but it'd be nice to have someone else to talk to at night.

Oh well...I had a conversation with my commander about an hour or so ago. It was in reference to an article he forwarded me. His wife had forwarded it to him. Anyway, it was an article written after studying a bunch of high-paid hotshot consultants and it was an analysis of their behavior...very interesting stuff. They talked about how smart people are bad at learning, mainly because they rarely made mistakes. And so when they did make mistakes, they were often to repeat them because of a deficiency they had with self-analysis. When things went wrong, they were quick to bring up external factors and rarely looked inward to figure out what they could have done to make things better. That was good stuff. I saw a little bit of me in that...you know, the part about always being right. *cough* Yeah, I guess I don't take criticism well, but I think I've grown a lot in just these last two months. I've gotten better at delegating and sharing the workload, and I think a lot of that comes from trusting a lot of my subordinate leaders...not that I didn't trust my squad leaders in the past. It's just that it's such a large organization now, I can't follow up after every little thing. So even if I don't want to, I have to. With a platoon, especially my old one, I probably jumped down into a lot of stuff i maybe didn't have to. But with a small organization, you can do stuff like that.

Like I said, good stuff. And for those of you still keeping track of sleep, S1 and S2 went exactly as scheduled.

16 March 2005 1542z - Like clockwork. It's so nice to be able to fall asleep when you need to. I was sitting at my desk feeling drowsy after running a couple of errands up and down the flight line, so I decided to start my S3 about 15 minutes early. I was out in about a minute and up in half an hour. Then I hung out a little bit and had dinner with the commander and a couple of my fellow LTs. It's kinda nice actually socializing more these days. I think I've been very lonely these last two months since I got up here. That's probably one of the reasons why I knocked down one of my walls. Oh, did I mention that? Hehe...I kept on getting lonely, so I'd go outside my door and walk right in the other side to hang out with the First Sergeant or the RTO or whoever. Well, about two weeks ago, I decided it was too much work to walk around. So we knocked down part of the wall between us and installed a door. I'll take a picture of it one of these days. We made the door out of a broken bunk, so it gives it a kind of cage feel. It's quite beautiful, actually. The next project is knocking down my other wall to open up a doorway into the guard shack. For that project, we're going to make the door out of a bookshelf...you know, that high speed, secret squirrel kinda door. I'm pretty excited about it. And even better, in Afghanistan, you don't have to worry about building permits.

Anyway, I've got about an hour before S4 time, so I'm going to start reading now. Hopefully, that'll make me a little sleepy and help me out. But if not, oh well. The eBook is How to Accomplish More in Less Time. The commander gave this to me a few nights ago after a talk we had and he had a bunch of other books he threw on my thumb drive too. Looking forward to it.

16 March 2005 1707z - Okay, so I'm so wired now, it's not even funny. I just woke up from a 15-minute S4 and decided that I wouldn't go back for another 15. That's usually what makes me drowsy I think. I mean, I woke up on my own, so I must be rested, right? Okay, before I forget, let me tell you about my dream. It was so strange and intense that I have to get as much of it here on paper (electrons) before I forget. Number 1, I somehow ended up going home on leave. And I had a few extra hours to spend, so I ended up going to this bowling alley for some reason...just to waste some time. And I'm looking for something. I don't remember what it is now, but it seemed pretty important. I get stuck on one side of the bowling alley...nowhere else to go, and there's a divider between myself and the lanes. So I walk outside and circle around. but when I go on the other side, I can't find the lanes either. Instead, I reach this pit where a bunch of guys are playing ping-pong in an area sunken into the ground a good 5-6 feet. There's a big-screen behind them too. I forget what it's playing. Then I walk on...I see a group of people...asian-looking. One of them is kinda tall, with a distinct haircut. I realize that it's my cousin Matt and my Aunt May and Uncle Alex and my cousin Dorothy. I speed up my walk and sneak up on them. My aunt almost has a heart-attack. She didn't understand why I would be home, so when she saw me, she thought that I was my ghost.

Fast forward to my hotel room. I'm going to bed for the night and I wake up to go to the balcony. I turn around, and there's Staff Sergeant King standing behind me. He asks me for my AKO (e-mail) password. I'm about to give it to him, but then I get suspicious. Why does he want my password? He must be trying to kill me! And once I realize that, he closes in and tries to push me off the balcony. At this point, I realize that it must be a dream. This is too crazy to be real. So I yell at myself, "wake up! wake up!" It takes a second for it to kick in, but I'm finally awake.

I'm back in my hotel room. I must be on leave. Wait a second...what am I doing alone in my hotel room. If I'm on leave, I should be out looking for women. So I get up and start going outside. At that point, I wake up for real, and I check the clock. It has only been 15 minutes since I put my head down. Amazing.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that out before I forgot it. It felt really good. The best part was waking up completely refreshed...and it only took 15 minutes. But who knows...maybe I'm still sleeping right now and this is part of my dream.

17 March 2005 0140z - And I was doing so well too. I cut my S5 down to an hour and a half, and I am feeling incredibly drowsy right now. It's been like that for the last two hours, in fact. It wouldn't surprise me if I've fallen asleep while sitting here for the last hour. Part of me thinks it's just the sleep inertia of such a large block. Maybe I should cut the S5 down to a half hour as well. I mean, I know that's what I need to do, but I don't have enough confidence built up yet. *sigh* oh well. One more day down. Maybe I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

On a side note, time is starting to go by sooooo slowly. I mean, there are four months left in this deployment. And every time I wake up, there are four months left. I wake up five times a day, so in that sense, every day is like a week and every week a month. In my own way, I've stretched the last four months of this deployment into another year. Oh well. If I weren't having such a good time, I'd go back to my old schedule. But now, I don't feel so guilty taking time for myself, especially the late night hours. Anyway, I would have written more, but I got on AIM and chatted away with a bunch of people, including some old friends from college/grade school, and a few students as well. Good stuff. Anyway, I'm going to wrap up and head in for my S1 in a few. After that, it's off to work again.

17 March 2005 1155z - So if there is one thing that hasn't been in short supply over the course of the last week while I've been doing this experiment, it'd be strange and disturbing dreams. Now, when I say disturbing, I don't mean the kind that would require me to be admitted to some sort of mental institution. I just mean that it makes you take a step back, scratch your head, and say hmmm... So I already told you about one of them. But during my S2 today, delayed because of a visit to the JOC and the BDOC, I woke up after only sleeping for maybe 6-7 minutes. I'd already finished up my first dream...pretty amazing, huh? But here's the image that stuck with me. For some reason...I don't know how we ended up getting dirty, but my sisters and a couple of male friends and I ended up in a bathtub together. It was completely innocent; just five people taking a bath. But it was strange in that I remember the bathtub being a regular-sized bathtub, and it just seems strange that we would all fit looking back on it. Plus, you know, we were all naked and whatnot. My mother was involved too, and my father came in with a towel on near the end of the dream. My big brother had a role as well, but I don't remember what it was. Anyway, what's interesting is that everything seemed perfectly normal in the dream, like it was something that we did all the time. Hmm...I think it may have had to do with swimming, but I can't be sure. What's funny is the whole naked thing really didn't bother me when I woke up. In fact, I was relieved that I hadn't broken my shower boycott more than anything else. How bad is that?

For those of you who are just jumping on ship here, today marks the 8-month mark. I try not to bring the topic up so much now that I am such a public figure; but it's been a little game I enjoy playing with myself. I just boycott random things. It usually has nothing to do with priciples or anything deep like that. I just like to challenge myself sometimes; and it's my way of being wild and crazy. So if you've wondered about that list of boycotts along the left-hand column, that's what it's all about. It's just stuff I've decided to give up at this point in life. I guess there are Christians who do something similar around this time of year as well...but for completely different reasons.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. BUB just wrapped up and we have a special ODP in about ten minutes...so that'll probably push back my S3 by a little bit. After that, I'll be heading out with a couple of the medics to bring some non-alcoholic beer to the guys up in the towers for St. Pattie's day.

17 March 2005 1915z - Okay, feeling a little tired right now. S3 just ended up bing a no-go today because of the BUB and the ODP and the other meetings. I had a good time at them, but I could've used the half hour of sleep. I ended up going around with our medic to half the towers tonight handing out near-beers. He was pretty awesome, getting all into the St. Patrick's day stuff. But he left to go back to work after that and I took a delayed S4 before getting up just a few minutes ago. I woke up one of my NCOs about three minutes ago and we'll go ahead and do the same on the dark side to hit the rest of the towers for tonight. And since I'm feeling pretty drowsy right now, I've got a feeling that I'm going to treat myself to a nice little nap after that. Because I skipped my S3 today, I'm going off an hour and a half for today so far. Yeah, I'll be happy to be back in bed. Let's just leave it at that.

18 March 2005 0105z - And five hours later, I'm back in the office. That back side took a lot longer than I thought it would, but that is not a bad thing by far. I kinda feel like I can relate to being a bartender now. I went with one of my NCOs to bring some near-beers out to our guys in the towers. And it was funny because once you got a couple of Beck'ses in them, they would open up. Yeah, okay, so the non-alcoholic beer probably didn't have anything to do with it. These guys just have a lot of built up frustration after months, and in some cases years, of trying to affect change and coming up empty. I listen to them and I think about the ones I used to remember being strong soldiers. I think to myself, "what happened to you?" What frustrates me is that a lot of these guys who have so much to give are ready to fold their cards and get out because they've had enough. I'd hate to think that it'd happen to me. I've been in almost seven years now, and much of it has been a learning experience. And while I'd like to think that I've made a difference in my time here, I see that there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

I know it sounds funny...maybe a little arrogant, but I've taken it as my personal mission to save the Virginia Army National Guard, starting first with this battalion. It's taken me about two months to feel my way around here, and I think I'm finally getting to the root of a lot of the issues. Anyway, with that said, I will work it more tomorrow. For now, I am going to bed because I already missed my S3 and S5 yesterday. And after a solid half hour of rest...maybe then, I can change the world.

18 March 2005 0720z - I overslept a little this morning...well, not really. I made a conscious decision to sleep more this morning. I woke up when my alarm went off at a half hour, but I was just so tired. I decided to set my alarm clock for another 30 minutes and put my head back down. After last night, I think I deserved it. Today is pretty light as far as meetings, so I should be able to get back on schedule again. For those following along at home, I went ahead and mapped out my hours of sleep for the last week and found some mistakes in my earlier calculations. But I've been on the schedule for seven days now, and I'm calculating just over 26 hours for the seven day period, yielding an average of about three hours and forty-five minutes for each day. Here is a graphical representation for those of you who are more visually oriented. Interpret it how you wish. Me, I just like looking at the pretty colors.

Other than that, I'm slowly chugging along today. I got to talk to some of my NCOs today just to get some more feedback on how we can train differently now and when we get back to the states. I also cleaned up around my office today. My desk was starting to get messy, almost resembling my classroom if you can believe that. Other than that, it looks to be a nice, slow day with ample opportunity to catch up on a lot of things. Tomorrow, we'll be back to the crazy meetings and a 10K run to start off the day...definitely looking to see how well I hold up with that. The only downer is that it has been pouring all day, which means the run route will probably be full of puddles come morning. Oh well. I guess it could be worse. I'll get a free t-shirt at least. That's what really matters.

18 March 2005 0930z - Okay, a couple more dreams during S2 today. I took it a little late because of lunch, but that wasn't a problem. I went down and I was out in a matter of minutes again. Like with the other days, my first dream was over in about ten minutes. I looked at the clock to see that there were 20 minutes left in my nap and turned right back over. But the dream itself. Today, Allison Bott was in it. I ended up running into her at the mall and she was really tall. I noticed that in the dream that she must've been nearly two feet taller than me. In real life, we're probably near the same height. But anyway, what was somewhat ironic was that she was acting almost like a stalker girlfriend-type in the dream. And there was talk about jumping into one of those ball bounce things...you know, like they have at Chuck E. Cheese's. Anyway, she was in the dream along with another girl I didn't recognize. They were both fighting over me for some reason. Yeah, I know...I realized that it was a dream pretty quickly.

Anyway, I've gotta stay awake for another three hours or so before I get to take another nap. Can't wait.

18 March 2005 1559z - I have way too much free time on my hands these days. I'm just not used to it. I mean, I can put in a 12-hour workday and still have 9-10 hours left over fill with various pursuits. You'll notice that I've been updating my page a lot more over the last week. I've gotten a lot more reading in too. I've also had more opportunity to jump online and AIM with friends, family, former students, etc. I must say I'm starting to get a little bored though. I mean, it's great to have all this time, but I don't think I'm using it as productively as I could. Tomorrow, I'm going to run the St. Pattie's day 10K, so that will take up an hour. Then I've got the BUB and the Synch meeting. That should take another two hours. The rest of this time though...I don't know. I guess there's a lot more work I could do. I have some correspondence work I need to complete. I have been procrastinating on that for a while now. I will start that next week though...I promise.

I don't know...I think I'll just read more. I went wandering on the net today and found a couple more weblogs. There was one that was written by a special forces guy here in Afghanistan. I was pleasantly surprised by his multi-thousand word entries. It made me feel good about what I was doing knowing that even special forces guys don't get out much in this theater. Good stuff though...I've really come to appreciate military weblogs, and I might start to branch out to reading others if I can't find anything else to do with my extra wowwers.

Anyway, for those of you still following along with sleep, my S3 went well today. I started it 15 minutes early so that I could wake up with about 10 minutes to spare for the leader meeting. And now I've got two more half-hour naps to go before morning and the 10K. I'll probably stop with the sleep updates in a few days. I think some of you are probably starting to get tired of me talking about it. I think I'll set aside a small section of the page for people interested in transitioning to a polyphasic sleep schedule. Maybe I'll work on that tonight. It's not like I have anything else to do, right?

19 March 2005 0015z - Yeah, so I'm a little upset right now. I can blame it on alarm clocks or any number of other reasons, but the fact is I ended up oversleeping. S4 was okay yesterday, but I found myself sitting at my desk and I don't think I really accomplished anything in about three hours. I just sat there in a bit of a daze. And then it was pretty much time for my S5 and I was thinking to myself, "what did I just do with the last two hours?" I don't know. Maybe it was good that I got a little bit extra sleep. In the end, it ended up being a three-hour block, bringing my tally for yesterday to 5.5 hours. I guess that's not too bad. It's not like I had anything planned for last night anyway. But hey...the 10K race starts in about 45 minutes, so I'm going to get ready.

19 March 2005 0345z - Okay, quick update before I head off to my S1. The 10K went great. My goal was to break 50 minutes and I finished 67th out of the field of 300+ with a time of 49:59.60. How's that for cutting it close? I was pretty proud of myself. Anyway, grabbed a quick breakfast and joined a polyphasic sleep online support group since then and now I am off to bed. I'm looking forward to today as I know it'll be a busy one. That usually helps make time pass faster.

19 March 2005 0650z - This morning was very productive as I hit the ground hard after my delayed S1. It's only been a few hours, but I finished a couple of SITREPs, issued an OpOrder, sent out a couple of e-mails, and made some phone coordinations already. I also prepped for all of my meetings this afternoon, so my S2-S3 window should be pretty open today. Maybe I'll take a trip around to the towers. I don't know. What I do know is that I need to let my legs rest for a little bit. My calves are killing me from the run this morning and it worries me a little with the whole polyphasic sleep cycle I've got going. I don't think it's all that conducive to muscle regeneration, which I hear is associated more with Phase 3 and 4 sleep. Oh well. You can't have everything, right? I'm sure my body will figure it out...it's pretty good at adapting to things.

Anyway, I took a few minutes to sort my sleep experiments in chronological order so that you don't have to read them in the memento-type sequence that is typical with weblogs. Enjoy.

19 March 2005 1355z - I guess all the meetings went well today. Well = short, with the bonus of no one yelling at me. I had a chance to take a quick S2 and then I rode around to half of the towers on the light side before heading over to BDOC for my first meeting. That was good. It'd been a long time since I visited the towers during the day. I'd been going during the night the last few times. Then I walked back to Camp Cherry-Beasley for the battalion BUB. The walk itself is almost exactly a mile, and my calves were screaming the whole time. I might have to get a little extra Stage three or four if I want them to recover any time soon. Otherwise, it may take a few days. Who knows. I need to read more books about sleep.

Other than that, I've got a lot of small tasks that I'll catch up on tonight. I feel like I've let a few small things slip here and there over the last few days. But after my S4 tonight, I'll sit down with my to-do list and take care of all of them. It's already too late for S3 today. Other than that, it's the weekend!!! ...which means absolutely nothing. I'll write more when I find something interesting to talk about.

19 March 2005 1515z - Okay, so here's the situation. It's time for my nap and I head over to my hooch to lie down. I try the combo on the master lock on the door, and it doesn't work. Uh oh...I must've messed up and miscounted revolutions or something. I try it again. Again, no luck. Third time the charm? Still, no luck. After about six attempts, I give up and head back to the office to go to sleep. It's a little harder there, but my chair is pretty comfortable; so I'm optimistic. A couple people walk in and out of the office. I say hi. They realize what I'm trying to do, so they try to keep it quiet. Next door, I can hear voices of people calling over the radio. That wall can be paper-thin sometimes.

But I'm determined to fall asleep. I set my alarm clock and drape my hat over my face, blocking out the glow of the fluorescent light overhead. I try to sleep. No luck. I try to sleep. No luck. SGT Simmons, one of my equipment NCOs ends up coming in. I didn't even notice the door open. He's got two dogs with him. One of them is in his pants. The other is under his blouse. It seems strange, but I don't say anything. Then he starts playing with the boy dog in his pants and the girl dog under his blouse. I'm a little curious, so I take a closer look. Before I know it, the boy dog and the girl dog are copulating. What?! Right in the middle of my office! I want to make them stop, but I am just amazed that they can conduct this while still under SGT Simmons's uniform, and I just stare in disbelief. I hope that they can keep my office clean.

I blink for a second and then SGT Simmons is gone. I pull the hat from over my eyes only to realize that I'd been dreaming for the last ten minutes. Don't ask...don't tell.

19 March 2005 2012z - So I got maybe an hour of work done and an hour of play after my S4.5 today before experiencing about an hour or so of that lost time again. I must have passed out or something because it went from Teenage Fanclub to midway through Third Eye Blind on my iTunes before I even noticed. What did I get accomplished? I filled out three consumption statements and enrolled in about 20 correspondence courses for my advanced course...two big things I've been trying to get off my back for a long time now. I did a quick update of the PSC operations over the last few weeks to fill the BC in as he comes off of leave, and I've probably got a half dozen other small tasks I'll take care of after my last nap of the day. They're not hard things, just tedious more than anything else. I'm also trying to decide on whether today is going to be a gym day or not...probably not.

19 March 2005 2346z - S5 started with me deciding to stay in the office. I sat myself down in one of those collapsing fabric camping chairs. I don't know what they're really called, but I think you all know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I sit down, set my alarm in the cup holder, and put my black fleece cap over my eyes. I was telling Ben how interesting it's been that my dreams seem to pick up right where I left off. So in my dream tonight, I had a bunch of sergeants in my office, sitting in a circle getting ready for guard mount. We discuss some issues, but I'm acting like a weirdo. I don't know why, but I insist on conducting the meeting with the fleece cap over my eyes. In my dream, though, I am actually able to see through the black fleece cap perfectly, so it doesn't bother me. Everyone else is just looking at me like I've been taking crazy pills or something. Anyway, not much else happens in the dream besides that. We finish the meeting and everyone leaves.

20 March 2005 0228z - I think the key to this sleep schedule is human interaction. Whether it is chatting with people back home or having someone in the office with me or driving around to the towers, any bit of human interaction will keep me up. If I just sit at my desk though, sometimes nothing will help. I've given my sleep schedule a little thought as well and I've decided I needed to regulate it more. I've decided to go to a full Battalion staff complement, S1-S6, placed evenly at four hour intervals throughout the day. I think that will help to train my body. Here's the new sleeping schedule:

S1: 0200-0230
S2: 0600-0630
S3: 1000-1030
S4: 1400-1430
S5: 1800-1830
S6: 2200-2230

Those times are all zulu, or GMT. For local time, you have to add 4.5 hours. I didn't think it was possible to work around all of my meetings and guard mounts, but I think this one'll do it. Anway, I'll try this one out for a little while and I'll hopefully have it down by the time National Workplace Napping Day comes around. I've always wanted to celebrate that one...you know, if always = for the last two weeks.

20 March 2005 1115z - So every American soldier in Afghanistan carries a weapon with him. That's just how things are. Whether it be a 9mm, a M16, M4, M249, or M240B machine gun, everyone has a weapon. So when you see people walking around without weapons, you think to yourself, "did that guy just forget his weapon somewhere?" Well, this morning, on my way to chow, I see two of our soldiers walking back without their weapons, and they have huge smiles on their faces. So I know either of two things happened. Either 1) these two soldiers have been diagnosed as crazy and their weapons were confiscated for their/our protection or b) they're going on leave. Yeah, it was b. You usually don't find these guys smiling like that unless they are heading away from this place.

Anyway, with it being Sunday, it was pretty easy to accomodate the new napping schedule. I took my S2 about an hour early and my S3 was right on time. I'm hoping that the extra half hour squeezed in there along with the regular intervals will help. Plus, there's the fact that I never have to be awake for longer than four hours at any one time. That part definitely has its benefits. But yeah, in my four-hour work blocks so far today, I've gotten a lot of little things taken care of. I've had a chance to review a lot of notes too and delegate a lot of small things to my staff to follow up on for me. That's the one thing I'm most proud of myself for. I'm so used to having to do everything myself and not letting go. Some of the things aren't getting done quite as quickly as I would like, but it's all part of training them too. I'm sure they'll get faster with time.

That's it for now though. Today's Sunday, so we have ODP in about 45 minutes here. I'm hoping the rain will let up enough so I don't get too wet on my way there.

20 March 2005 2338z - As always, the ODP went well tonight. It generated a lot of discussion, and everyone left the meeting with a purpose...we were going to make things better. Other than that, there's really NSTR today. Sleep is going well. I got five half-hour naps today and felt pretty good until that last block. At one point, though, it was pretty much useless for me to continue trying to stay awake and I decided that my interests were much better served by just going to sleep. I ended up taking an hour and a half block to help catch up a little. I felt a little bad about that, but I do feel a thousand times better. I may have to make a habit of doing that every few days to keep from turning into a zombie at night.

Other than that, I've decided to stay off of AIM until I got back into the swing of things. I found my conversations rather disjointed because of my lack of concentration during that night block. I may have to use that time more to visit towers and whatnot...something that gives me a little more energy. Anyway, I've got a little more work to do before daybreak, so I'm off.

21 March 2005 2355z - You know, sometimes it takes just as much discipline to go to sleep as it does not to. Yesterday, I have to admit that my mind needed a bit of a down day from what was going on. I mean, I still did my job, but my effort was probably less than spectacular. Instead, I spent most of my time working on learning CSS through online tutorials and whatnot. You like what I did to the page? I don't know. Right now, there aren't but a few cosmetic changes, but I'm hoping to learn more in the next few hours/days. That's kinda my pet project for right now...you know, my version of train sets or model whatevers to keep me sane. I think the sleep schedule works, but it accelerated my burnout over here, so I may rethink it. So for those following along at home, I didn't take any naps during the day yesterday and just took my sleep in one 4.5 hour chunk at the end of the day like a normal person. I feel pretty good right now considering.

My buddy, the BICC, came up from Ghazni the other day to go out on leave, and the first thing he said to me when he walked into my office were, "Sonny, you look like $#!+." He'd heard about my sleep schedule through the rumor mill and thought I was crazy. I don't know. I took out the mirror in my desk drawer just to confirm his observations. I did have some pretty huge bags under my eyes. I think they've always been there though. *smile* I don't know...yesterday, when I was sitting at my desk, learning, and doing the closest thing I've come to programming in maybe a decade, it really made me miss my high school days in FFX working with Dan and Ben on our thinkquest project. I wonder if that is still up online somewhere. Oh well.

Good times, though. Things are rolling along here, but it's been quiet and calm for a while as we've hit our stride. Part of me wants to just ride it out like most of our guys are content on doing, but part of me knows that we can still make things better here; so it's up to me to convince these guys to rock the boat a little. We'll see how it goes. Oh, and I know I'm a day late here, but happy birthday, Buddy. I won't say your name because everyone else will be jealous. You know you're special though...even though you never write me any more.

22 March 2005 1900z - Okay, after today, I am going back to my regular schedule...you know, if regular = sleep plan B. There were just a few things that I had to do for myself and I got kinda hung up on them. I mean, I couldn't go to sleep because I had to figure out some CSS stuff. CSS in this case does not refer to the Army's Combat Service Support. In this instance, it stands for Cascading Style Sheets, one of the web tools I'd long avoided over the past few years. Over the last 48 hours, though, I had a good time working through it and gave my site a small facelift while picking it up. One of the hardest parts was working around the IE/Firefox browsers and creating a different page for each. I'm learning slowly though. I guess I'll redesign the whole thing sometime, but I'll wait for things to settle down more over here. I really need to stop slacking and get back to work.

Speaking of slacking, I talked with one of my fellow LTs about leave today, and I started to get a little excited. He was talking France and Italy...and then I thought about it for a while. Hmm...a free trip on top of three weeks away from Afghanistan. Considering the fact that we only have 3+ months left, that doesn't sound too bad, does it? I don't know. I won't get my hopes up too high, but I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel here.

Anyway, I apologize for the lack of topics over the last few weeks. I think the only people who truly enjoy reading about my sleep cycles and other nerd adventures are probably my family. I'll do some exciting stuff tomorrow and maybe even take some pictures. Who knows. I'm feeling like a new me.

23 March 2005 1650z - So I haven't been updating as much recently. I think once a day is good enough. It's funny because it actually makes time seem to pass faster. Even while I've been doing the whole polyphasic sleep thing, I realized that sleep isn't really what's been separating the days for me. It doesn't last long enough and so has not really been my decompressing period. Doing this, writing in my journal, has been more of a relaxing thing for me. So when I was updating five times a day, I just went through that cycle of decompression and compression (for lack of a better word) over and over again, making my days just drag on. So after taking two days off from the polyphasic sleep cycle, I've decided to update less frequently...you know, just once a day. I think that is more than enough. It's not like all that much exciting stuff happens around here.

But today's been a good day. I finally got over all of my CSS hang-ups and got back to doing some real work. I think last night was the turning point. I was sitting in my office and the BICC comes in and sits down. He's waiting patiently to use my computer. I know it. I realize how spoiled I am to have the opportunity to go online whenever I want. He used to let me use his line all the time when I was down South, so it's understandable. It's just nice to be able to keep in touch with home. Anyway, he sits for a while and we chat, and then we swap places. He's at my computer, and I'm just sitting across the desk from him. It was nice to catch up. We talked about leave again. I'm getting more and more excited at the opportunity to visit Europe.

Soon enough, I start to get restless. So I look around and decide that it's time for a haircut. So we continue talking and he's looking up some Baltimore Harbor Properties online while I'm cutting my hair. I think I'm getting much better at it myself. It took me maybe five minutes and I don't think I missed any spots. I had him spot-check for me and it passed. So I put that up and we chatted some more before I went to bed. I slept for almost three hours last night and woke up pretty refreshed, just in time to make the early morning guard mount.

The rest of the day went just as well. I think the biggest different was the human interaction. I found myself in that same rut when I was teaching. There'd be periods when I would just hole myself up in my room and just concentrate on work. I got stuff done, but I don't think it was healthy for me. I had a conversation with the Commander during dinner tonight. He talked about reading people and then went on to say that he didn't think I liked talking to people. I mean, given that fact that I'm a teacher, you wouldn't think that'd be possible. But it's true. It's like that little riddle I used to tell about engineers. Do you know how you can tell that you're talking to an extroverted engineer? Well, he looks at your shoes during your whole conversation.

I don't know...over the years, I'd like to think that I've grown better at this skill of talking to people; but a lot of it has to do with confidence. I'm really good at talking to my class or to friends and family. But when I'm unfamiliar with people, I feel this sort of anxiety. It's hard to explain. Oh, and with girls...yeah, I'm horrible with that. But I'm working on it. I started bringing in my platoon leaders in to talk to me every few days just to sit down and talk through issues. That should help.

The Commander also brought up the whole conflict-avoidance too. I admit, I'm a lover, not a fighter. I mean, I can do the fighting if I have to. But if there's a way to resolve an issue without conflict, I usually choose that path. And I can usually find that, I think. But it takes a lot of effort...and sometimes, there are just people that won't respond to anything but force. So anyway, my homework assignment is to just flat out tell someone that he screwed up. Don't try to sugar-coat it or anything. Just say, "alright, you screwed up" and then work it out afterwards. I guess that's the military thing to do, so I'll give it a shot. And who knows, maybe it'll help me out with the ladies.

24 March 2005 2015z - I'm pretty excited because I just spent the last few hours working on a little CSS project that I'm hoping will help convert people over to FireFox. If you're using Internet Explorer or Netscape or some other browser, please take a look here. And heck, even if you already use FireFox, click on it anyway. I've been spending a lot of time over the last few days learning some CSS, and I felt kinda bad because that seemed pretty selfish. But I needed the "me" time and the challenge to help me keep my sanity. What was great, though, was that I thought of a way to use my newfound powers for good. If you take a look at that link, I'm going to use a similar image map to create a tour guide of our 10K threat ring. That's all of the area within 10 km of our base here that we patrol to make sure bad guys stay out. Anyway, what I plan on doing is linking the map to a huge series of photographs that we've taken in our time here. So you mouseover some part of the map and click and some picture will appear. Pretty neat, huh? Hopefully, it won't take more than a few hours to set up. I have some help too, though, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Anyway, I was sitting around the office yesterday and I started thinking to myself, "what smells so good?" And then I realized it was me. For some reason, I decided to put on some deodorant that morning and voila. Now, know what you're thinking. This whole showering deal and the deodorant...I must seem like some sort of socially challenged person. I assure you, though, that personal hygiene has definitely been one of my strengths whether here or back home. I just take a different approach these days.

Yesterday, I was heading out to eat dinner with my commander again and he had to stop to use the latrine before our meal. So I waited for him and then we walked over to the DFAC together. On my way there, I brought up this problem I'd been facing for a few months now...well, not so much of a problem as a social question. You see, they have these handwashing stations right at the entrance of the DFAC, and everyone is supposed to wash their hands. But often times, before people go to the DFAC, they go to the latrine...and they wash their hands there. So the walk from the latrine to the DFAC takes maybe a minute...tops. But now you have this choice. Do you wash your hands again just to satisfy "the man" or do you go straight in knowing full well that your hands are clean? It's a tough call. On one hand, you know your hands are clean. But on the other hand, no one else does. So do you just walk in knowing that someone may end up calling you out as a non-hand washer? And then do you explain to them that you just went to the bathroom and washed your hands there? I know, a tough choice indeed. I posed the question to my commander, since he was now in this predicament. He washed his hands again...which is the choice that I usually make. Sometimes, if no one is in the latrine when I go, I skip the handwashing knowing that I will have to wash them again in approximately one minute.

26 March 2005 0506z - So I overslept twice in a row. I don't know what that means, but it was a little upsetting. I even set two alarms. That kinda makes me wonder. The first time, I remember turning off the alarm and going back to sleep. That was my fault. The second time, I woke up after about an hour and a half of sleep. I must've woken up at some point to turn off both of my alarms, but I don't remember doing it. Oh well. I'm still averaging just under four hours of sleep each day for the last two weeks...so that's not too bad.

In other news, my First Sergeant returned from leave yesterday morning. That's a good thing. I actually feel myself more energized already - and I'm smiling more too. There are a few people around here that have that kind of effect on me. There's him, one of my platoon sergeants, and one of my other NCOs. There were a few guys in my old platoon too. It's hard to explain it, but there's just so much positive energy exuding from these people, that you can't help but be influenced by them. I'd like to believe that I affect others the same way, but who knows. You can only try, right? Anyway, because of all of that energy, I was able to accomplish quite a lot last night. I've started brainstorming a lot too...just random things. Some of it has to do with making things better here, some of it has to do with CSS, some with money, and some with teaching. I don't know why I bother bringing that up, but I just thought I'd throw that out. Don't be surprised if I start coming up with some off-the-wall ideas. I'm just playing around a lot these days...playing with ideas, that is. That's probably the best thing you can give a kid to play with, now that I think of it. I think I'll use that some time down the line. Can you tell I'm in a good mood? A little excited, a little random...

I think I'll stop before I embarrass myself though. Today is meeting day, so I need to wrap up all of my slides and reports early. The evening should be relatively relaxing heading into Sunday though.