This week has been, well, tiring. I haven’t been staying up any later than usual and I’ve been getting up at the same time. Whatever’s going on, I’ve been having a heck of a time getting up in the morning and have been feeling pretty groggy for the first hour or so.
This groggy feeling has prompted me to look up some information on napping. I came across an interesting article from The Boston Globe on “the perfect siesta.”
Most mammals sleep for short periods throughout the day. We have consolidated sleep into one long period, but the biological vestige remains. Our bodies are programmed for two periods of intense sleepiness: in the early morning, from about 2 to 4 a.m., and in the afternoon between 1 and 3 p.m.
The article goes on to discuss what times are best for you to nap based on your sleep schedule and how to nap correctly. Overall, it’s pretty good information for the busy college student. I’ll definitely try to fit a short afternoon siesta into my Mudd schedule.
I was watching the news yesterday when I became aware of this marvelous piece of British satire on Barrack Obama from The Times of London. You must read it! Trust me, it’s well worth it! If you have any background on biblical text, then you will get the most out of this article (if you can call it that - more of an epic narrative).
Here’s an excerpt:
And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.
With less than two days until I take off for Shasta, tonight is going to be busy with gathering items and packing them away properly in my backpacking pack.
Yesterday I was able to run to the store to grab odds and ends that I needed to replenish my camping supplies. I made an online checklist with the free Basecamp service. It’s been very helpful being able to quickly drag items to different lists, add new items, and of course mark them off as I pack them away.
After my initial gathering of supplies, I’m afraid I may be trying to bring down too many things. I’m definitely going to finish packing everything away tomorrow and go for a short hike with the pack on.
Since I’m going to be spending a lot of time with my pack on my back, it’s really important that I balance it correctly. My short dry-run tomorrow will help me calibrate this balance and help me determine if I need to remove any weight from the pack.
That’s it for tonight. I’ll make one more post tomorrow before I leave, but after that the blog will be barron from updates until I return on July 20. I’ll probably be pretty tired, but I’ll try to get some pictures from the trip up on the website as soon as possible. If everything works out as planned, I may even post a condensed journal of the daily adventures. Yeah, we’ll see.
Kevin is a student at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA. He loves the outdoors and enjoys backpacking, camping, hiking, biking, kayaking, and just about everything. When he's not in the great outdoors, he spends his free time working on web development projects and tinkering with computers.
Kevin is currently serving as the Web Coordinator for the Western Region, Order of the Arrow, BSA.
