No Sleep ’til Brooklyn.

“Foot on the pedal – never ever false metal
Engine running hotter than a boiling kettle
My job’s ain’t a job – it’s a damn good time
City to city – I’m running my rhymes”

Can’t use a Beastie Boys reference without giving out some lyrics.

Seriously, though, I haven’t been sleeping very well lately.  Not sure why.  I usually go to bed around 8:30pm and get up around 2:30am.  Pretty standard for a morning radio personality. Six hours of sleep should be plenty.

Up until about two weeks ago, I was one of those guys who could fall asleep in less than 15 minutes.  Lately, though, I end up lying awake for at least an hour or two and when I do fall asleep I dream non-stop.  Usually vivid, active dreams.  My alarm goes off and I’m exhausted.  With a little help from Diet Coke, I am awake and ready to go for the show, but usually dead tired by early afternoon.  I try not to nap though… because I can’t sleep at night!

I don’t eat for more than two hours before I go to bed, and I don’t drink anything caffeinated after lunch.  If you have any home remedies to help you sleep, I’d love to hear it.

It’s not so much the heat…

It’s the darn humidity!  I made a trip back to the midwest in the past month and the difference in temperature (upper 80’s there/mid 90’s here) hasn’t been as drastic as the difference in comfort.

So, I did a little research.  Humid heat is worse for us than dry heat, because humidity interferes with our body’s temperature regulating mechanism. When the temperature is very hot outside, the body’s regulating mechanism prevents heat from building up inside by releasing the heat from the surface of the skin through the evaporation of sweat.

On the other hand, humid heat does not allow sweat to evaporate from the skin. This makes a person stay hot longer and prevents the body from cooling down quickly. Thus, you feel hotter.

Here in Denver the relative humidity in the afternoon is around 40%, which up to 90 degrees is pretty much air tempurature.  In the midwest, because the relative humidity is so much higher, it can feel up to 15 degrees warmer!

It’s going to continue to be hot all week, and dry or not, upper 90’s is still hot.  Drink lots of fluids or do what I do… stay inside in the air conditioning.

Dish to Pass

I recently returned from a trip back to my home state of Wisconsin, where people turn every statement into a question by adding the phrase “or no” (ie. “We going to lunch, or no?”), where a little is a “skosh” and where people live on “hot dish”.

While discussing the ingredients in my Grandma’s tuna salad, Vicky said that it sounds like simple tuna casserole.  I could see that an intervention was in order.  Salad is cold, hot dish is hot, and casserole is the pan hot dish is made in.  See the definitions below from Wikipedia.

Casserole: from the French for “sauce pan,” is a large, deep pot or dish used both in the oven and as a serving dish.

Hot Dish: a variety of casserole dishes popular in the Midwest of the United States and especially in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and northern regions of Iowa. It consists of a starch and a protein (meat and/or a vegetable) mixed together with a binding ingredient (most often canned soup or a sauce) and a topping.

Salad: a mixture of cold foods, usually including vegetables and/or fruits, often with a dressing, occasionally nuts or croutons, and sometimes with the addition of meat, fish, pasta, cheese, or whole grains.

Therefore, tuna salad is cold and made with macaroni noodles, mayonnaise, tuna, peas, onions and celery.  Tuna hot dish is hot and made with a box of mac & cheese, cream of mushroom soup, and a can of tuna.

Both are delicious.

Going on Vacation

I’m heading out with my girls on vacation this weekend an into next next week.  This will be our “big” vacation of the summer and it’s based around my wife’s family’s reunion, July 12th.

In order to get some sightseeing out of a trip to visit a bunch people the kids & I don’t know, we’re renting a car and taking the long way back to Wisconsin.  We’re heading up through Wyoming and the Dakotas so we can see Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands, etc.  We’ll get back to Wisconsin early next week and spend a little time with my family, then complete the trek to Green Bay and on to the reunion in Wisconsin Dells (which is pretty much underwater).  The reunion is my wife’s dad’s family.  Good people, so it should be fun.  We hop a plane back to Denver the day after the reunion.

When I was about 11, I took a similar trip through the Dakotas and up to Yellowstone Park with two of my cousins and my grandparents.  We camped all the way and it was a blast.  I don’t remember all the tourist sites though and my wife has never been there, so if you have any suggestions of things we should see on the trip, or want to mow my lawn, let me know.

Have a great Independence Day!