Absent Posting

You've probably been wondering why we haven't posted a weblog entry in awhile ... there are a couple of reasons for this:

1)Since I'm working full-time now (or at least, until the plant goes into scheduled shutdown two weeks from now), I haven't had as much free time to post. Usually, by the time I get home at 3:30, it's time to rest a little bit and decide what to do for dinner (and then make dinner, if dinner involves staying at home vs. eating out).
2)Since the weather's improved a little bit, Lauren and I have started walking regularly, so we're both putting in about 5-6 miles per day; Lauren gets her morning mileage from walking to campus and back, while I'm getting mine from work: I took a pedometer to work one day, and based off of that, Lauren estimates that I'm getting about 3 miles per day there. The other 2 to 3 miles we get from our evening walks to Hy-Vee for dinner or elsewhere in town (we've found that Baskin-Robbins, not to mention $3.22 gas prices, are good motivators for a 2-mile round-trip walk ;-).
3)By the time we're done with that, it's usually about 8:00-ish, or just enough time to wind down, check e-mails, and surf the web for a little bit (in my case, continuing my job search). Given that I have to get up at 5:45 to pick up a coworker and be at work by 7, and Lauren has to be up and around so she can walk to school to teach her 7:30 morning classes, it's usually lights out by 9:30ish for both of us.

Anyhoo, Lauren is done teaching for the week, which is good because she's developed a case of laryngitis. Hopefully, she'll recover by Monday for her classes. In the meantime, this gives her the opportunity to rest and continue exploring the world of "image macros" on the web: otherwise known as LOL cats, these are usually Internet memes involving Photoshopped (and funny) captions onto pictures of disgustingly cute cats:

Examples abound here at: http://www.icanhascheezburger.com

Speaking of recovering, I've belatedly discovered (with Woodgie's help), that I seem to have developed (or have developed over the last few years) a case of sleep apnea, which would account for a few things:

1)My near-legendary inability to get up in the mornings, especially in wintertime.
2)Why my snoring seems to have gone from very mild to very loud (annoying Woodgie to no end and, despite my use of Breathe Right strips, almost causing her to sleep on the couch).
3)Why I seemed to be unable to have or rarely remember dreams ... this is probably because I've been unable to hit REM sleep long enough to have them.

Because of this, Woodgie has been asking (no, too mild ... demanding is more like it) that I start sleeping on my side, which seems to alleviate the symptoms, but causes me some mild discomfort as I try to position pillows "just so". Also, during the first couple of nights of sleeping on my side, I had dreams (and remembered them) for 3 nights in a row ... something that I have never done before.

Anyhoo ... that's the week so far; if Woodgie is up to it by then, this weekend should see us road-tripping up to Bedford, IA for their annual Iris Days festival on Saturday.