Minor things that please you

[kphoger]

When I had a job that involved writing outdoors in zero-degree weather, pen choice became a bigger deal than it is for most people.

Rite in the Rain pens and paper are a godsend for those jobs.

Good old cheap-o Bic Cristal pens outperformed any other than I tried on those cold mornings, and I've stuck with them ever since.

I noticed this when I was at Staples the other day, but why is every single one of Bic's products just a word misspelled?

They're French.

Interestingly, their razor blades are made in Greece.

[Molandfreak]

When I had a job that involved writing outdoors in zero-degree weather, pen choice became a bigger deal than it is for most people.

Rite in the Rain pens and paper are a godsend for those jobs.

Good old cheap-o Bic Cristal pens outperformed any other than I tried on those cold mornings, and I've stuck with them ever since.

But can it write in the rain? 

[GaryV]

When I had a job that involved writing outdoors in zero-degree weather, pen choice became a bigger deal than it is for most people.

Rite in the Rain pens and paper are a godsend for those jobs.

No, but it can perform an exorcism.

Good old cheap-o Bic Cristal pens outperformed any other than I tried on those cold mornings, and I've stuck with them ever since.

But can it write in the rain? 

No, but it can perform an exorcism.

[kphoger]

But can it write in the rain?

That didn't matter to me.  I was writing on paper.  Doing so out in the rain would have been a bad idea to begin with.  Much better to notate the tickets in the back of the truck or under an overhang or whatever.

When I had a job that involved writing outdoors in zero-degree weather, pen choice became a bigger deal than it is for most people.

Rite in the Rain pens and paper are a godsend for those jobs.

No, but it can use the Preview button to make sure its post is formatted correctly.

No, but it can perform an exorcism.

Good old cheap-o Bic Cristal pens outperformed any other than I tried on those cold mornings, and I've stuck with them ever since.

But can it write in the rain? 

[GaryV]

use the Preview button

OK, I fixed it. 

[kphoger]

I woke up early this morning, looked at the clock, and it said 5:3-something.
My alarm is set for 6:01, so I thought to myself, Ugh, I've only got 20 or 30 minutes left of sleep.
I went back to sleep and woke up about a half-hour later, and the clock said 4:0-something.
I had apparently mistaken the 3 for a 5 the first time.
Yay, I've got nearly two hours of sleep left!

[JayhawkCO]

I woke up early this morning, looked at the clock, and it said 5:3-something.
My alarm is set for 6:01, so I thought to myself, Ugh, I've only got 20 or 30 minutes left of sleep.
I went back to sleep and woke up about a half-hour later, and the clock said 4:0-something.
I had apparently mistaken the 3 for a 5 the first time.
Yay, I've got nearly two hours of sleep left!

That might be for the other thread for me. If I wake up after 4:00 or so, I'm generally stuck being up for the morning. The second a mildly complex thought enters my brain, I'm awake.

[kphoger]

If I wake up after 4:00 or so, I'm generally stuck being up for the morning. The second a mildly complex thought enters my brain, I'm awake.

I'm that way too, but usually only if it's after 5:00 that I wake up.  It's actually pretty common for me to wake up around 5:15, then toss and turn for 45½ minutes, then go back to sleep for 30 seconds, and then get startled awake by my alarm clock.  But, before 5:00, I'm usually OK to get back to sleep.

[Scott5114]

I woke up early this morning, looked at the clock, and it said 5:3-something.
My alarm is set for 6:01, so I thought to myself, Ugh, I've only got 20 or 30 minutes left of sleep.
I went back to sleep and woke up about a half-hour later, and the clock said 4:0-something.
I had apparently mistaken the 3 for a 5 the first time.
Yay, I've got nearly two hours of sleep left!

That might be for the other thread for me. If I wake up after 4:00 or so, I'm generally stuck being up for the morning. The second a mildly complex thought enters my brain, I'm awake.

What sucks is when you wake up because you have to go to the bathroom, and you're desperately trying to keep your brain shut down while you take care of that so you can go back to sleep for an hour or two. All while the Responsible You Have Things To Do Voice in your brain is like "Maybe I should just stay up."

[1995hoo]

When I'm at home, I can pretty much always fall back asleep. This morning I woke up, saw it was ten minutes before the alarm was due to go off, mentally said "oh, good," and rolled over and went back to sleep.

When I travel, though, I often wake up half an hour before the alarm and then I can't get back to sleep. Especially if I have to hit the head. I suspect that's because I have to turn on the light to find things in a hotel bathroom and the light wakes me up, whereas at home I intuitively know where things are.

[vdeane]

When I travel, though, I often wake up half an hour before the alarm and then I can't get back to sleep. Especially if I have to hit the head. I suspect that's because I have to turn on the light to find things in a hotel bathroom and the light wakes me up, whereas at home I intuitively know where things are.

I've actually found that I have a very hard time sleeping when I travel in general.  It takes forever to fall asleep and then I often find myself waking up multiple times during the night.  It's probably one reason why travel exhausts me.

[1995hoo]

When I travel, though, I often wake up half an hour before the alarm and then I can't get back to sleep. Especially if I have to hit the head. I suspect that's because I have to turn on the light to find things in a hotel bathroom and the light wakes me up, whereas at home I intuitively know where things are.

I've actually found that I have a very hard time sleeping when I travel in general.  It takes forever to fall asleep and then I often find myself waking up multiple times during the night.  It's probably one reason why travel exhausts me.

I generally don't sleep as well and I'm sure the main reason is the different pillows. I use a fairly firm pillow at home and the extremely soft ones most hotels have aren't supportive enough. I wind up waking up multiple times and flipping them during the night. (But I almost always fall asleep very easily in the first instance.)

[kphoger]

All while the Responsible You Have Things To Do Voice in your brain is like "Maybe I should just stay up."

For me, it's not even necessarily the Responsible Things voice.  It's just like my brain decides it's now time to start thinking about anything and everything for the day.  And there's no shutting it off.

I've actually found that I have a very hard time sleeping when I travel in general.  It takes forever to fall asleep and then I often find myself waking up multiple times during the night.  It's probably one reason why travel exhausts me.

I get terrible sleep leading up to travel.  If it's a big trip—say, a mission trip or a family road trip—then I might get as little as five hours of sleep a night for weeks or even a couple of months in a row leading up to it.  I'll wake up at like 3:30 with my mind stuck on travel stuff—every single night, even though I've already got every detail planned out.

Then, either the night before the trip (when it's too late to do anything about anything) or the first night of travel itself (when all planning is completely in the past), I start sleeping normally again.

[vdeane]

I get terrible sleep leading up to travel.  If it's a big trip—say, a mission trip or a family road trip—then I might get as little as five hours of sleep a night for weeks or even a couple of months in a row leading up to it.  I'll wake up at like 3:30 with my mind stuck on travel stuff—every single night, even though I've already got every detail planned out.

Then, either the night before the trip (when it's too late to do anything about anything) or the first night of travel itself (when all planning is completely in the past), I start sleeping normally again.

Interesting... for me it's the night or two before when I start to get anxious over whether everything will go as I hope, whether my apartment will be OK while I'm gone, etc.

If I were having trouble sleeping that long before a trip, I'd probably get no sleep at all given how often I'm heading out for either family trips or roadgeeking activities!

[1995hoo]

For me it's funny to read those last two comments. I'm a very sound sleeper, and I fall asleep very easily, except when I can't turn my mind off for some reason. Usually that means something heavy is weighing on my mind—for example, back in June 2019 when my father was dying, or this week last May when we had to put our cat down.

I would think, like vdeane notes, that I might sleep poorly prior to travel, at least if we are flying somewhere, because my wife has a history of getting argumentative at the TSA checkpoints and it makes me very nervous that she'll cause trouble. That's the thing that usually worries me the most. But for whatever reason, it doesn't cause me to lose sleep. I guess I figure if she antagonizes them and loses her Precheck access, I'll still have mine. But right now we have an upcoming trip in a few weeks and we are going to board our (new) cat at a local "cat hotel" (the neighbors who fed her and scooped her box when we would travel have moved away, and in any event we think being home alone for ten days wouldn't work for her). So I find myself wondering whether I'll sleep poorly wondering how that will go.

.... whether my apartment will be OK while I'm gone, etc. ....

We have various automated lights that I have to set, and I also turn off certain things. I've taken to setting reminders on my phone for the day before, or morning of, travel (which one depends on departure time) and then setting corresponding reminders when we get home. The automated lights are, I suppose, conceptually similar to light timers except they're somewhat more sophisticated in that you can use the app to customize the schedule for different days of the week. For example, having the bedroom lights come on later in the morning on weekends because I sleep later. Setting reminders for those sorts of things makes it a lot easier to keep track of it all.

[kphoger]

my wife has a history of getting argumentative at the TSA checkpoints and it makes me very nervous that she'll cause trouble. That's the thing that usually worries me the most. But for whatever reason, it doesn't cause me to lose sleep. I guess I figure if she antagonizes them and loses her Precheck access, I'll still have mine.

My mind only races at night about things I have some semblance of control over.

What sucks is when you wake up because you have to go to the bathroom, and you're desperately trying to keep your brain shut down while you take care of that so you can go back to sleep for an hour or two.

Last night, I woke up a half-hour before my alarm would go off, and I was successfully able to go back to sleep right away.  Then, fifteen or twenty minutes later, my wife got up to go pee, and I woke up from her getting out of bed.  D'oh!

[Max Rockatansky]

I usually have sleeping issues if I'm angry about something.  Most of the time when I am angry about something it is work related.

[JayhawkCO]

I have zero problem falling asleep. From the time my head hits the pillow, I'm asleep within 5 minutes probably 95% of the time. My insomnia is normally just random wake ups and inability to fall asleep again. It tends to go in waves.

[vdeane]

except when I can't turn my mind off for some reason.

That's me most every night.  It's hard to fall asleep, even when tired.  And the night before a trip just makes that worse.

[Max Rockatansky]

My wife is the one who gets antsy before trips.  I'm used to waking up at varying hours through the week for work.  Getting up early to hit the road never has really been an issue for me. 

[JayhawkCO]

Even for my first ever big international solo trip, a 1.5 month backpacking trip to Southeast Asia back in 2010, my first flight left Kansas City at 6:00 AM, and I remember going to bed at 9:00 PM and falling asleep pretty easily. And this was during my era where me being up until 1:00 AM was pretty regular. We'll see how I sleep here in a couple weeks for my Central Asian adventure. My first flight isn't until 10:00 AM, so I can basically keep my normal sleep schedule.

[formulanone]

I used to get super-excited before a trip to the point where I's stay up late...that's waned significantly. Although, when we first starting taking our kids on trips, it's mostly because we had too massive a checklist and they weren't really old enough to pack anything, so staying up late was just part of the stress.

They're much better about it now: My son will leave absolutely no electronics behind but pack two outfits and a jacket; my daughter insists on fifty types of snacks so everyone's happy, a complete meal itinerary, and two weeks of clothes for six days.

[kphoger]

My son will leave absolutely no electronics behind but pack two outfits and a jacket; my daughter insists on fifty types of snacks so everyone's happy, a complete meal itinerary, and two weeks of clothes for six days.

Our kids go to church camp every year these days.  A few of the high schoolers are at that age where their parents let them pack their own bags, but then they'll end up at camp with an entire bag full of snacks and zero socks.  And I'm not exaggerating.

[formulanone]

My son will leave absolutely no electronics behind but pack two outfits and a jacket; my daughter insists on fifty types of snacks so everyone's happy, a complete meal itinerary, and two weeks of clothes for six days.

Our kids go to church camp every year these days.  A few of the high schoolers are at that age where their parents let them pack their own bags, but then they'll end up at camp with an entire bag full of snacks and zero socks.  And I'm not exaggerating.

We always remind them of "n+1" for all articles of clothing, where n=days of the trip. If we stay with family we can at least count on a washing machine evening.

I can believe it, I've packed at least 700 suitcases and forgotten additional socks or undergarments at least 4-5 times. I guess at camp, it's tougher to just make an emergency run to the store.

[place-saint-henri]

Driving around Batavia and Irondequout in my Chevette or riding the NYscape navigator