Paul Lester Photo

My favorite place in the house is in the corner of a couch that sits near a window. I usually keep this window open to let in the sights, sounds, and smells from the outside. I find particular joy in listening to the various ‘voices’ being emitted from the trees. I can rarely see the creator of the sound, but it is enjoyable nonetheless. It’s such a peaceful place to sit and read and feel the caress of the breeze flow across my forearm and my right cheek.

The other day I sat watching a male cardinal hop around on the feeder looking for any uneaten sunflower seeds. Unfortunately, there were but a few left thanks to the squirrels who have figured a way around the squirrel baffle. It didn’t baffle them for long!

This cardinal, who is a regular visitor, hopped from side to side looking for a few seeds. Every time that I have heard a cardinal’s song, it is been the single ‘peep’, but on this day I was in for a surprise. Suddenly, he stopped, sang a tune that I was very familiar with, but had never associated with a cardinal. I was, to say the least, delighted. Within a minute or two, his mate showed up. She perched along the top bar of the feeder, looked down at him, and waited. Each time that he found a sunflower seed, he cracked it, took the kernel, flew up to the bar, placed it into her beak, then returned to the feeder. After about 4 or 5 times, she came down and perched on the edge so that he could walk over and feed her. Finally, when the seeds were exhausted, he flew down to the ground in search of more and continued his feeding ritual.

I considered running into my office, getting the 200-500mm, putting on the camera and the tripod, but then decided that it was as much fun, if not more, to just admire the handsome couple. They visit every day about dusk. They’re usually the first ones to the feeders and the last ones as well. It’s always a pleasure to see them.

Now, I just happened to have my camera available when I was in Myrtle Beach, SC and happened to see this red-winged blackbird perched on small branch singing away. He stayed there for all of about 15 seconds. As a matter of fact, this was my first and currently, only, red-winged blackbird picture. I took it with my 90mm macro. I had to crop it a bit to get this picture.

I think that I’ll pull the ‘big gun’ out and head to the garden and see if I can get some bird shots. It’s been a long time since I’ve used that lens.

Back in October of last year, my friends and I went on a trip to Asheville, NC to photograph the autumn leaves. As a possible money saving maneuver, Brett and I decided to share a room. Well, we didn’t make it one night. It wasn’t because we didn’t get along, because we do. It was because of my melodious snoring.

My wife had mentioned it before, but I usually just got up, went into the other room and continued my snore-fest. At the beginning of the year, I made an with a doctor to do a sleep study. Usually, I’m not sleepy during the day, but I do like to go to bed early. A couple of weeks ago, I had the sleep study, yesterday I got the results.

But, before those results … If you’ve never had a sleep study, it is not conducive to good sleeping. The room is nice. It was actually a hotel room with nice king size bed, television, drinks, and snacks. The major differences from sleeping in hotel were that:

1) There was a camera pointing at the bed.
2) There is an intercom on the opposite wall.
3) You have wires hooked up all over your body: Legs, chest, corners of eyes, scalp, and finger.
4) You have to sleep on your back all night.

Well, I don’t like to sleep on my back, so I wouldn’t say that it was exactly restful!
The results
While sleeping on my back I wake up an average of 40 times/hour because of full or partial sleep apnea, that is, I stop breathing because the base of my tongue relaxes and slides right into my throat! Nice! Also, as Brett can attest to, they noted that my snoring was “Extremely loud, rating an 8 on a scale of 1 – 10″. I’m not sure what the exact decibel level was, but the doctor said that it was certainly a bit higher than 70 db. Here’s a chart for comparison. She said that almost no one gets a 10 because the steps between 9 and 10 are pretty high, but that “I didn’t do bad!”.

The machine
So, I’ve been fitted for a CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) machine. My wife loves it! She said it makes a sound like it’s raining outside. She, of course, was hooked on it from day one. I, on the other hand, have been using it for 5 days and haven’t quite gotten used to it, but I’m getting there.
It’s kind of hard to get used to sleeping with a mask over your nose, straps around your head, and a six foot hose trailing of of your face! I need to get a picture!

According to their testing, I didn’t have any more apneas after they tried the machine. I was also able to move into deep sleep for a couple of hours. Before the use of the machine, I was only able to achieve REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. The doctor, who is a sleep specialist, says that they don’t even know if deep sleep is important because some people cannot get into that state but they think that it has to do with memory functions.

Lack of sleep causes death in rats
She also told of an experiment with rats where they kept rats awake, not allowing them to sleep at all, and all of the rats died within 1 week from sleep deprivation. I said that that was ‘torture’. She said, well, I don’t think so, it’s just that they were raised to be experimented with and how else are we going to find out? Dang! That’s cold!

I don’t know if it will make a big difference, but it has eliminated my snoring. In a couple of weeks, Richard and I will be headed to Utah. He has a machine too. We’re both taking them and we are staying in the same room. It’s a good thing that we have the machines or else we’d have to get separate rooms and we’d have some pretty sleepy neighbors!