First of all, welcome to any new readers who may have come in by way of the link at The American Spectator. I promise you that I don’t always blog about my physical health.

Sometimes, for variety, I blog about my emotional health.

“How did my sleep study go?” a breathless nation asks. Well, it was different from what I expected in terms of details, but pretty much exactly what I expected in the essentials.

The ambiance was less clinical than I had foreseen, and the bed in the room they gave me (furnished to look like a small motel room) was more comfortable than I expected.

That benefit is lost, though, when you’re trying to sleep with two straps fastened around your body and you have to lie on top of various tubes and wires. For a guy who can be kept awake at night by the sound of a fly walking on the ceiling, it wasn’t promising (by the way, they tell you that the gunk they use to stick the electrodes on in your hair shampoos right out. Consumer report: No. No, it doesn’t).

According to their records, I slept more than I thought I did, but their definition of sleep and mine aren’t entirely congruent. I did get into deep sleep (REM sleep) for a couple of periods. And I had some incidences of apnea (where your throat closes up and you stop breathing).

The thing is, I’m apparently on the low end of the apnea scale. This is a fact that speaks to the paranoid in me. They gave me a CPAP machine and sent me home with it, with the idea that I’d go back to see them in a month and we’d decide whether I’d stay with it or not. However, the doctor also told me it might take six weeks or longer to really see much benefit.

So I can’t help suspecting that my own doctor (who’s actually just a Physician’s Assistant) is getting a kickback from the clinic for sending anybody who remotely resembles a sleep apnea patient to them. And they, in turn, prescribe the machines to anybody who snorts a few times a night.

On the other hand, I do feel tired a lot, and I’d like to have more energy and a better attitude. They tell me this might help.

I have no idea what to do about it.

I went back in to work for the afternoon half-day. I had plenty on my desk, but I took time to give blood at the annual blood drive, because it’s not like they’ll be back next month.

You know that informational notice they make you read beforehand? The one that started out as one sheet, then became two, then three pages? It’s about eight pages now.

I worry that the blood bank people (who do a fine work) are getting safety measured out business.

Imagine giving blood ten years from now. It will probably involve reading 300 pages of closely spaced information and informed consent contracts. It will require taking a whole day off from work and submitting to a strip search, a CAT scan and a rectal examination. You’ll have to fill out a form detailing whom you’ve had sexual relations with, whom you’ve had lunch with, and whom you’ve stood next to in the Men’s Room, along with the social security numbers and sexual histories of all such persons.

And I can see the story on the TV news. “Blood stocks are down again, for the eightieth month in a row. Officials are at a loss to account for the drop in volunteer blood donors.”

And that will be before the HIV activists win the court case recognizing their constitutional right to donate infected blood without being discriminated against.

Tonight I shall not sleep in my own bed. I shall sleep in a bed in a sleep center, with electrodes stuck to my skull, to see if a CPAP machine will improve what is laughingly known as my quality of life.

Knowing me as well as you do by now, you understand that I’m worried about this. I have a hard time getting to sleep most nights in my own familiar bed, even if I’m tired. How I’ll sleep in a strange bed with an electronic snood hooked up to me I can’t quite comprehend.

I figure the technicians will wait in the next room behind a two-way mirror, cracking jokes about me in low voices, a green light from the control panel illuminating their pasty complexions (sleep technicians never see the light of day, after all). One of them—the muscular broad with the shaved head and the tattoos, will keep saying, “I hate this guy. Look at him. What a lump. What a loser.”

And the other one will say, “If he’d just fall asleep, we could catch that late movie on Lifetime.”

And the M.B. will say, “This one? He’s never gonna fall asleep. He’s gonna lie there all night, like the loser he is.”

And the other one will say, “Well, we could always use the Sleep Inducer.”

And the M.B. will say, “Sure. If any moron ever deserved the Sleep Inducer, it’s this creep.”

So she sneaks into the room very quietly, holding a great big mallet behind her back, and she smashes me over the head with it like Bugs Bunny in a cartoon.

And in the morning they’ll ask me how I slept, and I’ll say, “Great. I’m really surprised. But I’ve got this awful headache.”

And the doctor will nod and say, “That’s a common side effect.”

Tonight I shall not sleep in my own bed. I shall sleep in a bed in a sleep center, with electrodes stuck to my skull, to see if a CPAP machine will improve what is laughingly known as my quality of life.

Knowing me as well as you do by now, you understand that I’m worried about this. I have a hard time getting to sleep most nights in my own familiar bed, even if I’m tired. How I’ll sleep in a strange bed with an electronic snood hooked up to me I can’t quite comprehend.

I figure the technicians will wait in the next room behind a two-way mirror, cracking jokes about me in low voices, a green light from the control panel illuminating their pasty complexions (sleep technicians never see the light of day, after all). One of them—the muscular broad with the shaved head and the tattoos, will keep saying, “I hate this guy. Look at him. What a lump. What a loser.”

And the other one will say, “If he’d just fall asleep, we could catch that late movie on Lifetime.”

And the M.B. will say, “This one? He’s never gonna fall asleep. He’s gonna lie there all night, like the loser he is.”

And the other one will say, “Well, we could always use the Sleep Inducer.”

And the M.B. will say, “Sure. If any moron ever deserved the Sleep Inducer, it’s this creep.”

So she sneaks into the room very quietly, holding a great big mallet behind her back, and she smashes me over the head with it like Bugs Bunny in a cartoon.

And in the morning they’ll ask me how I slept, and I’ll say, “Great. I’m really surprised. But I’ve got this awful headache.”

And the doctor will nod and say, “That’s a common side effect.”

I have to pass these on this morning, in case you haven’t seen them already.

1. Prime Time America conducted an hour-long interview with Ayaan Hirshi Ali, author of Infidel, a memoir on her life in and out of Islam. Ayann is an intelligent woman telling a moving story about rejecting the principles of radical Islam.

2. I heard another interview last week, one with Mark Steyn, who has written America Alone on the threat of Islamic revolution and how liberals undermine their own freedom. I don’t like thinking about current events anymore. It makes me pray harder.

3. On the lighter side, two popular children’s books and movies are reviving the toy train market. Can you guess which books have done this?

I am the man. I’m half horse and half alligator. When I roar, mighty beasts flee.

After a white collar guy like me does a job of work like I did today (and last night), he’s entitled to beat his chest a bit, I think. Because that’s all the reward he’s likely to get.

Picking up last night’s enthralling narrative, not long after I posted yesterday evening I got a call from the school’s dean, saying they were canceling classes tomorrow (that is, today) due to the snow.

I went to bed earlier than usual, needing the rest pretty badly. I didn’t set my alarm clock.

I got up around 7:30, ate my breakfast, and went out to face the day and the evil thereof.

We’d had more snow overnight, and high winds as well, so there was a lot of drifting. I was tempted to think that all my work of the previous night had been wasted, but I think it would have been harder without it.

I had the idea that if I set up my rope-tourniquet differently, I could get a tighter hold and hold a seal on the snowblower tire.

I found that my rope wasn’t strong enough to do what I wanted it to do. It snapped.

So I reverted to Plan B, and took up the shovel again.

Briefly put, it took a long time. I rested frequently, and more often as time went on.

My neighbor’s wife came back from work around 10:00, because her office had closed too. She joined me when I was about half way down the driveway, and together we finished it up.

This is how it looks in my back yard today:

It’s snowed some more since, but I don’t think it’s going to interfere with me when I drive to Hutchinson for a Viking Age Society event tomorrow. It’ll be indoors, in a mall, but we’ll do live steel, so I’ll be able to try out my new shield(s):

I apologize for the egregious ugliness of the rawhide edging on the finished shield in the picture. It was the first time I’d worked with rawhide, and I went far astray.

I made a point of showing the back of one shield so you could see the handle. This handle construction is (I believe) my own invention, and I predict it will be a major success with live steel fighters, bringing me… nothing at all.

Archaeology tells us that Viking shields (which were made out of boards laid side-by-side, not plywood like these fakes) usually had handles made of wood. But sometimes the wood handles were covered by a gutter-shaped iron covering, making them stronger.

When I bought the wood molding (it has a precise name, but I’ve forgotten it) for my handles, I worried that it wouldn’t be sturdy enough. Finally I decided to buy some thin steel bar stock in a 1” width. I drilled holes for my fastening bolts through both steel and wood, and came up with a fairly light, pretty strong handle, based on the Viking principle.

I’ll see how it works tomorrow.

If I’m able to move after all this shoveling.

I never stop to wonder why I left the farm. I left the farm for many reasons, all of which I remember vividly.

But if I had forgotten why I became an urban drone, dwelling in a ticky-tacky house, this evening would have reminded me.

The storm we’d been told to expect began as promised, and it ain’t over yet. It started last night. I was worried that I’d need to dig out before going to work, but it had only snowed a couple inches, and I drove out. Then I spent all day at work worrying that I wouldn’t be able to get back home.

I did get in, though, and then I set to work with my master plan to get my neighbor’s snowblower (which, as you know if you’ve been following the last few episodes, he keeps in my garage in return for clearing the shared driveway) going. As you doubtless recall, a tire on the blower was flat last weekend, when he tried to use it. He took it someplace and got some kind of wrench that allows you to squoosh the tire down so that the bead seals, so you can pump it up again. He refilled the tire, but it went flat again. Probably a puncture.

And then he left town on business.

But I figured I could do the same squooshing thing with a length of rope and a tourniquet. And I have an air compressor of my own.

Story in short—it was tougher than I thought. I gave up at last. I took up my shovel and went to work. It took two hours, but I got it done.

And the snow was already beginning to accumulate behind me.

But I hope I can get out to go to work tomorrow, and then I’ll have the evening to repeat the process. We’re supposed to get up to ten inches more before it finally relents sometime tomorrow.

I could have taken a picture while the light lasted, to show you how much deeper the snow is, but I wanted to get to work before I lost the light.

I was also going to share a picture of my completed shield, which I finished last night, but Photobucket is down.

So you’ll have to settle for this.

It’s winter. We all have to make sacrifices.

Or if you don’t, I want you to feel guilty.