Who disturbs my slumber?

I was hoping my first post would be more profound, as my goal for this blog is to share with the world thoughts that will win me at least one major award. Alas, all I can think about writing currently centers around sleep. Last night I did not get a particularly good night's sleep, and I was forced to wake up earlier than I had hoped. I am not sure how many people get as upset as I do when I am forced to wake up before I have to. After getting up, I discovered a couple of small coincidences that made me laugh and more or less corrected my bad mood.

Generally, the first thing I do when I get up is check my email. As I opened up my gmail account, I noticed my status read, "Who disturbs my slumber?" Just writing it makes me laugh. First of all, I love Aladdin, as you can probably tell. When I saw my status I thought of the giant sand lion better known as the Cave of Wonders growling at the humble thief Gazeem. My morning growliness was no doubt just as impressive! I love how small things make me so happy. As my grandma told me, "Ain't life funny?" I couldn't agree more.

After that little laugh, I noticed a magazine sitting open on the dining room table. It had a picture of a face bathed in blue light. Naturally, I assumed it was something about Avatar, and I was immediately drawn to it. While Avatar is no Aladdin, I am still obsessed with it. I am actually obsessed with most movies. When I picked up the magazine, I saw it was not about Avatar, but about sleep. Yet another one of life's little coincidences that made me laugh.

Now that I was feeling better about things in general, I decided to take a look at the article. The latest National Geographic has a section on the science of sleep. I started reading, thinking the article would explain why I get so upset when something disturbs my slumber. While it did not explain my rude mood, the article did have several interesting things. The basic premise of the article is that sleep is clearly important, but we don't really know anything about it. I really enjoyed the article. I think the brain is amazingly fascinating, yet we know so little about it. Apparently there is some super rare sleep disease that actually kills people because they are no longer able to sleep. Yikes! Some research has shown that a lack of sleep is equivalent to being drunk, which I have heard of in the case of driving. A sleep scientist from Harvard says getting only 5 hours of sleep a night for a week is equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.1%. I think he makes a good point that there is a disconnect between companies that celebrate such devotion to a job, but would certainly fire anyone who came to work drunk. Another study showed that one in five medical residents makes fatigue-related mistakes that cause injury, and one in twenty residents makes fatigue-related mistakes that cause death. On the other hand, people who take naps are more productive. It is clear to me that my sleep is important not only for me, but for society as a whole! Thus, I should be allowed to sleep in.