Semifinal action in our Stargate: SG-1 Greatest Episode Tournament has begun and, ten hours in, Window of Opportunity has the early edge over The Fifth Race. But with fourteen hours until the poll closes, there’s still plenty of time for comeback. Head on over and vote!
Here we go! It's the semifinal round of the #Stargate #SG1 Greatest Episode Tournament.
Which of these two episodes will advance to the finals?
YOU decide!— Joseph Mallozzi (@BaronDestructo) September 7, 2019
Well, the Toronto Film Festival is in full swing. Today, on our way back from the farmer’s market, Akemi and I passed Willem Dafoe graciously posing for fan photos outside a middling Latin tapas restaurant. I’ve been invited several industry parties and I was actually considering attending one or two until I noted the time: 10:00 p.m.! And no one shows up to an industry party on time. Things won’t be heating up until midnight at least – and that’s way past my bedtime. So I figured that, at the very least, I could catch some movies – but apparently this year’s event is so disorganized and understaffed that purchasing tickets is an exercise in futility. And so, instead, I watched kpop dance videos and took a nap.
Back when we were on Stargate, my former writing partner, Paul, was all about the afternoon naps. He’d claim that one hour and he would wake up feeling refreshed. Now I may be in the minority here, but I have never awakened feeling refreshed. Moreover, I am still sleepy, occasionally, confused. Half the time, when I wake up from a nap, I’m nursing a slight headache.
So, expert nappers, I call on you for your professional opinion. What is the secret to a good nap? According to Akemi, Japanese nap science holds that one should never nap after 2:00 p.m. This, if you ask me, sounds ridiculous. 3:00 p.m. is prime napping time, is it not?
Secret to a good nap is to get up immediately when you wake the first time, whether it’s in 5 mins or 30. If I do that I’m refreshed, but if I try to fall back to sleep and then wake up again I feel like crap.
Well, I hope you gave Dafoe your autograph when he asked!
Still have the hatches battened down here waiting out Hurricane Dorian. Rain and winds have been bad here for hours, with the house occasionally shaking from the wind! Not nearly as bad as they’re having it in Nova Scotia, though. The construction crane coming down in Halifax looked scary!
https://twitter.com/cbcns/status/1170430734831706114?s=21
The 90-minute nap often works for me. Sometimes, it’s only an hour; sometimes it stretches to two hours.
On the other hand, once I’ve had a nap, I often choose to stay in bed…which leads to another nap. Can’t win for losing.
As for prime napping time, I say any time you’re droopy is a good time for a nap.
BTW, I have my most memorable dreams during daytime sleep. Joe, you and Akemi, along with multiple white, fluffy puppies, featured in one of my dreams just the other day. It was just after you posted about possibly adopting another pug.
NOW you’re talking my language!
Naps. I LOVE naps. Back in kindergarten we took naps. One day I didn’t come home from school (it was a mile walk down a rural road), and mom panicked. She went to the school and they looked all around…and finally found me sound asleep, behind the piano. That was one glorious nap! 😀
I napped everywhere. On the sled as my big brother pulled it through the snow. I napped with my grandpop, even though he coughed terrible due to emphysema. I napped on the bus coming home from school. I napped in the AV room when I worked at the school library. I am a professional napper, from birth! So I know this science well.
Ninety minutes, hands down. A 90-minute nap will make me right as rain. I wake up focused, full of energy and ambition. It can also help me snap out of a downward depression spiral, not in that it ‘cures’ my depression, but that it gives my mind a rest, shutting down the barrage of negative thoughts that are overwhelming it. If it is deep enough, I might wake up confused as to time and day and place…but that’s just until I get my bearings.
The best time for a nap, imho, is from 2-3:30 pm. That way I wake up with enough time to prepare dinner, and enough energy to take me into the night. However, I’m often busy mid-afternoon, so sometimes I snooze around 4 or even later, and that messes everything up. Dinner is late, bedtime is late…everything is late! Worse, however, is when I crash after dinner (often watching tv), and wake up around 10 pm. Ugh. When that happens I’ll be up until 4 am! So I try to keep busy after dinner so that I don’t do that.
Now, there is also another element involved in my napping – the tv, and it must be on. Not just any tv show or movie, but very specific ones. I call them my nap shows. Firstly, I must love them, and have watched them many times over. Film noir works great, with the dark scenes and low key music and smooth-talking private dicks. Columbo is also a good one because, during the set up for the murder, there is usually just music – that low key music again – I start watching and off to la-la land I go. Anything Charlie Chan will put me right out before the opening credits end. There are others, but those are my main go-tos. I cannot sleep well to anything too upbeat (musicals, comedies), or anything where at cat meows (I think it’s my cats, and it wakes me up), or any movie that has a scene that disturbs me (animal being hurt, or a favorite character killed, for instance)…if I know that the scene is there, I won’t be able to relax enough to go into a deep sleep.
There are other factors, such as location, room temperature, pillow type, blanket type, cat location, etc…they all play a part. And unless I’m sick, I cannot nap in bed as if I’m going to sleep for the night; if I sleep in the bed I have to sleep on top of the bedspread, across the bed, with a blanket and my feet sticking out. I also sleep better on sunny days because rainy days excite me, making me restless and unable to go into a deep sleep.
Yes, I could be a one-woman nap study subject. 😀 (I come from a long line of nappers, too…so it must be genetic or something.) Oddly enough, I didn’t get a nap today…and here I am, after 1 am and still wide awake. 😛 My nap tomorrow will be HUGE! And, hopefully, not in church…
das
Who’d have thought it would be a post about napping that would bring Das roaring back?
Hi @Das! Always a wonderful Sundae surprise to hear from you. 🙂 XO
@Joe :I usually nap 10:30-noon or 11-12:30 and, as Gforce said, make sure I get up the moment i wake up the 1st time to avoid the overly groggy feeling. On busy work days when there is no time for a 90 minute nap, or I find myself in need of a nap after 3 pm, I just rest my eyes for 20-25 minutes and picture myself floating in outer space while listening to a heavy thunderstorm on youtube. Slowly counting backwards from 1,000 for simple mental distraction also works sometimes when i cannot coax my mind to drift. The problem with REM napping later in the day for me is I can never seem to fall back to sleep until 3-4 am. It just seems to perpetuate never having my batteries fully recharged
or having the energy to do much of anything the next day.
RE: Naps…
There are two golden rules when it comes to naps:
(1) All naps are good naps
(2) Anytime is a good time for a nap*
*Just don’t get caught at work… 😀
Because my insomnia is so horrid, naps are taken whenever I need to whatever time it is. And I don’t wake up until I have to (hopefully) but if not I’ll wake up long enough to be clear when I drive to wherever I need to go. The naps do not interrupt my nighttime plan.
There is this about naps:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/10/health/nap-heart-health-wellness-intl-scli/index.html
And
https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a28981570/naps-prevent-heart-attack-stroke/
Speaking of being tired, I think I can catch an hour or two of sleep now so I’m going to try.