Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Nothing To Lose Sleep Over...

Windy City!

No, not Chicago. I'm talking about Basel!

Man, it's been really windy here the past couple of days. Me? I don't really care. But Mrs. TBF? She doesn't like it one bit. As a matter of fact, she's kind of afraid of wind. Whenever we're watching TV at night and the wind howls and rattles the blinds, she kind of moans out something like:

"Noooooo, wind scaaaaaaares me!"

See? Told ya...

Now that I think about it, I guess I DO really care about the wind - seeing how it's cost me a lot of sleep over the past couple of days.

Yesterday morning, the howling wind rattling the blinds woke me up and I got up to close the window which was cracked open. I fell back to sleep, but I kept waking up because the blinds/window kept making a strange noise - kind of like rubber squeaking against rubber and what sounded like something tapping the window. I finally got up at something like 7:30, but I felt totally exhausted because the last couple hours of sleep was not the normal deep sleep I experience just before waking up. But that wasn't the end of it.

This morning, I woke up at 4:30 and I heard the noises again. I got out of bed and stood by the closed window to try to figure out what the problem was. I couldn't see anything tapping against the window, so I just went back to bed, but...I couldn't fall back to sleep. I tried listening to my iPod with earphones, but it didn't help - I could still hear that tapping. At 5:00, I knew there was no chance of falling back to sleep, so I just got up, made some coffee, and read in our living room until I heard Mrs. TBF's alarm clock go off. Yes, she was completely unaffected by the noise. I brought her some coffee, and then I went over to have another look at the window.

ARE YOU KIDDDING ME?!?!?!?!?

As it turns out, I had closed the window incorrectly the day before, and what I was hearing was the the sound of the two floor-to-ceiling windows rubbing together as the wind blew. The tapping noise was the base of the windows tapping against the frame. I opened both windows, closed them again - correctly, this time. And...?

NO MORE NOISE!

DOH!

I estimate that my stupid mistake cost me at least a good five hours of sleep over the past two days. Fortunately, my mistake cost Mrs. TBF ZERO hours of sleep. But I guess when you can sleep for nine hours on a thirteen hour flight like she can, a little tapping noise isn't such a big deal.

I think I'll be going to bed early tonight.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'll gladly take a lesson or two on how to get 9 hrs sleep on a long flight! I've got the same problem as you TBF, can't sleep when I hear noise..

Michael Lehet said...

I was at a friends condo in a high rise (on Sheridan Road) and he hadn't quite gotten his windows shut and boy what a racket they made.

It was so windy though that he was afraid to open them and reset them for fear that they'd be ripped from their foundation.