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October 19, 2005

492: A Sleep Odyssey

And so it begins...

Pete bought that slightly creepy white noise machine I'd mentioned before. It claims to use sounds recorded in outer space to soothe your brain into a coma-like state, enabling you to attain an unnatural level of rest. OK, I'm kidding about the coma but I'm honestly not kidding about the space noises. At first, I laughed at the idea but when we switched the machine on, the laughter stopped. I'll never really know what space sounds like, but I'm willing to bet it sounds like our white noise machine.

How we fell asleep to something so creepy, I can't say. It wasn't easy at first, but the space-sounds setting was my favorite of the 3 zillion sounds the machine came programmed with -- everything from crashing waterfalls, to babbling brooks, to giant birds of prey catching small, terrified animals. Well, actually, I don't know about the last one but I haven't made my way through all the sounds yet -- it might still be there, who knows, it's got everything else in the world outside of Dio ("HOLY DIVAH!").

Once we overcame the strangeness of sleeping with the white noise machine running, we slept pretty soundly. I had a dream about Hindus crawling into narrow concrete caves, a kitchen with no walls, and a dance class everyone was going to be late going to and blamed me (wrongly) for the delay. I'm not kidding about any of that.

I can't say it was a particularly restful sleep but I don't blame the machine; I blame my brain.

The only downside to the machine is the way it lights up. It's got a soft, glowing dot of light on its front side, kind of like HAL. Maybe there's a way to dim it, but I don't want to risk the machine figuring out my intentions and destroying me before I have the chance to crank down the light's intensity. Maybe we'll just have to lay in the dark, prisoners of the booping space noises and the ever-watching light thingy.

I don't know much about the white noise machine except that it shouldn't be questioned -- it knows how to make me fall asleep even against my own will, and it probably knows if I've been good or bad, so I'll be good for goodness’ sake.

Posted by ashley at October 19, 2005 10:15 AM

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