warning: this post includes silly comics 🙂

Sleep deprivation is no laughing matter – especially when talking to parents of new babies. Given that I have not experienced the privilege of parenting, I won’t even pretend to understand what ‘lack of sleep’ means to a parent of an infant. For example, this 2010 medical news article cites survey results indicating that new parents end up with a sleep deficit equivalent to 6 months (?!) during the first 2 years of a child’s life!

My experience with (lack of) sleep is not as dramatic…

• I haven’t been diagnosed with insomnia
• I am blessed to have a comfortable and warm place to rest my head each night
• I rarely recall any nightmares
• I find it easy to doze off in any moving vehicle (even on a 10 minute LRT ride…)

This past weekend we gained an hour by turning the clocks back. So for a brief moment, there really were more hours in a day 🙂 But year ‘round we commonly hear the phrase ‘not enough hours in a day.’ I find it interesting that some researchers have found that 24-hours isn’t quite enough since our bodies may prefer to operate on a 25-hour clock.

There have been many late nights over the past few weeks (okay, maybe more…). In my past student life, late nights usually occasionally were the result of procrastination (…so it’s no surprise that I posted on the topic before). But I think I have found my cure –I am so interested and involved right now that I actually don’t have time to procrastinate!

So I have been running a little low on sleep and high on coffee these days.

Don’t get me wrong…yes, I am a keener…but this is also the first semester where I have been travelling (twice)
(…another first was submitting a paper  using my laptop in the airport last week – moments before boarding a plane…)

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I enjoyed travelling to research conferences this year.
So it was quite funny that while being a tourist (and not conference presenter) for the first time in the City that Never Sleeps, I saw this:

…Frank rolled his eyes waited patiently…I just couldn’t resist taking this photo…it looked so lonely without a conference poster 🙂

…and yes, I also took a lot of the typical touristy Vegas photos too
(but I won’t subject you to that mega-gallery…)

I enjoyed seeing the sights of Vegas – and indulging in chocolate and coffee….favourite go-to treats when sleepy 🙂

(…but then I read this this article on the connection between lack of sleep and weight gain…thank goodness I recently joined Curves again!)

Soon it will be time to travel again – over the Christmas holidays!
But first…I have a list of things to finish and more coffee to drink…

P.S. I also earned another diploma while in Vegas 🙂