Long day. I was awakened last night at 23:00 by thunder, and I got up and watched it storm for a coupla hours; went back to bed and got up at 04:00.

The storms in Oklahoma and Wichita were terrible... fortunately, none of my relatives or Karen's were involved.

I spent several hours this morning updating the Keirsey Site... I'd gotten way behind on that, and I had about 40 journals to add to the list. Tedious work, especially when I get so far behind.

I had my appointment with the sleep dysfunction doctor at 13:00, and he had a survey that I had to fill out that I've been carrying around for a month or so... I thought that it would be pretty simple, but no, it wasn't. Took me a coupla hours to fill out. And as I was starting to fill out the insurance info, I discovered that my insurance cards were gone. I called Karen and yup... they were in her purse. Good excuse (not that I really need one...) to go eat lunch with her.

After lunch I went to see the doc. Spent about 30 minutes with the nurse and another with the doc. Really nice guy, has a sense of humor similar to mine. Sick, in other words...

Anyway, I learned a lot about sleep deprivation, and I definitely fit the pattern. One of the things that he told me was that it would be very unlikely that I would be able to quit smoking (yeah, like I didn't know already...) in my present state. He told me that people who work nights are commonly... no, almost always... sleep deprived. Smoking is a small pleasure that we can't deny ourselves... along with a lot of other things, like over-eating, sexual insatiability... we can't maintain the concentration for self-discipline. Makes sense to me.

However, after he cures me... the world will be my oyster. Hmmm, that's an odd expression.

So, I'll have the sleep study done on the 25th of May. Should be interesting, and I hope that it proves that I do have sleep apnea. Because that's curable, and I like that notion.

Sleep apnea occurs when the soft palette and the back of the throat close off the airway. So I'll be snoring along, and then I'll stop... and, with an effort that awakens me, start breathing again. I don't really come all of the way awake, just enough to keep me from getting any really deep sleep. The doc said that some people will awaken 200 times during the night. I feel like I probably fit in that category, but we'll know for sure after the study is done.

In the meantime... JD and Tyler finished the french drain yesterday before it started raining... and it rained a bunch. And the drain seemed to work.

Well, let me amend that... it does drain some water away from the house. However, the water is still getting in the basement, dammit. We've had plenty of rain last night and today, probably another 3+ inches or so.

JD and Tyler just got back from tornado-chasing, and they actually saw two north of here. No major damage, though, just baby ones, compared with the one in OK last night.

Which, incidentally, might have been bigger that the one that hit Topeka in 1966... We've had the record since then, but maybe not anymore.

After I got back from the doc appointment, I played around a little on the web then took a nap, for longer than I wanted to, but I still don't think that I'll have any trouble getting to sleep tonight. In fact, it's 21:00, I might start right now...