Another item of no surprise to any readers of this site is my enjoyment of, and insistence upon, and devotion to, difficult sentence structures. Also naps. I love naps. Didn’t use to; then we had a child. At first I napped on the floor, thinking it Spartan and manly, but eventually I saw the case for sleeping on a surface that did not leave flat indentations on my skill if I slept for more than 20 minutes. I don’t believe in napping on the sofa, Dagwood style; I don’t believe in napping while reclining in a chair. There’s a reason we sleep in beds. No one ever says “I don’t know how much sleep I’ll get tonight, so maybe I’d better sit in a chair and see how it works.” Bed. The humidifier for white noise. Phone on Airplane Mode. Set the alarm, and see you later.

It’s never occurred to me to study my naps, or chart them, or pick them apart for quality. There are good naps and bad ones. There are short naps that leave you refreshed, and short ones that leave you groggy. Long ones that seem to add a year to your life, and long ones that make you feel as though you emerged from a bog of tar. To be fair, long naps never leave me logy. Short naps can make me feel angry, because they weren’t longer naps.

But. I read a review for an app called Power Nap HQ, and it seemed interesting: it took nap data, based on your movements. You entered how much time you wanted to sleep, set a backup alarm, chose a sequence of sounds, and laid it next to you. It would report back on your movements, indicating the depth of the nap, and it would also record any abrupt sounds you made. Nicely designed, too. A buck. Bought it.

Calibrated the device, set all the options, and pressed the button to start the nap. Laid it next to me.

Got itchy. Dry skin. Scratched a little, and wondered if this would register on the device. This was the signal for my upper lip to report in as “slightly chapped,” requiring more minor motion, and I thought I might be confusing the app, which thinks this is light sleep. Or perhaps it doesn’t take any motion seriously until I’m inert for a long period of time. So I laid still.

Then I thought: now it’s going to think I’m asleep.

This nap wasn’t working out very well. You start to think about napping, napping doesn’t happen. You start to wait for the between-two-worlds moment when you’re aware that you’re having a dream, or are thinking of something you certainly did start but grew out of something you’d already forgotten, then the moment never comes. But the next thing I knew I was awake.

Sort of. Half awake. The alarm had not gone off, so I had not reached the desired quantity of sleep. I was up because my body was done with the noon ration of Diet Lime Coke, and wished to offload it. This I did, wondering how the app would read my absence. It would detect the motion, then the absence of motion, then motion, then - providing I got back to sleep - the absence of motion. I did what a man’s gotta do, then returned to bed to complete the nap. Fell back asleep. No dreams.

Woke, and thought: damn, I beat the alarm. Must be close. If I have one superpower, it is the ability to gauge the passage of time; if I knew what time it was 35 minutes ago, I can tell you what time it is now within a minute or so. This extends to naps: if I wake before the alarm, I usually know what the time will be. I laid there, waking, considering how the rest of the day would play out, then realized that the app would interpret my motionlessness as sleep. THE DATA WOULD BE IMPRECISE.

So I picked up the phone to see how long I’d actually slept.

I had overslept by 40 minutes.

The alarm had not gone off. The backup alarm had not gone off. It had not collected data. Other than that, best dollar I ever spent. Now I can remove it from my phone and sleep without worries.

Pupdate for Friday: one of daughter's pictures.

He is in ill favor today, having ripped apart a sofa cushion for amusement and tried to bury a bone in the stuffing.

It helps to know what your name is. It helps on so many levels.

And these were the days before you could google Ester Lucille Tull-Plum Sterling. (Which I did.)

As usual for Friday, the Music Cues. This year we'll be showcasing more peculiarities from old-time radio - dialogue, themes, and so on. But of course we begin with the Couple Next Door.

CND Cue #508 The painful-walking music, also useful for confusing revelations.

Now. There was a series of CBS radio ads in early 1960 advising people who listened to CBS radio to listen to more CBS radio in 1960. You ought to be able to tell who this is.

That's they way the cookie bounces in the old executive suite. This was intended as a joke, since ad-man lingo was already the subject of endless parody.

They don't name her. Either they didn't have to, or there was no point. I suspect the latter. She wasn't unknown at the time, but was she nationally famous? Don't think so.

I wonder how well these went over with Mrs. America, sitting at the kitchen table, looking through the magazine for dinner ideas. "She sounds drunk" may have been a common thought.

Wrapping up the old radio offerings: why don't you manifest the visual attributes of satisfaction?

Put a smile in your smoking!

This week: the Sentimental Gentleman of Swing.

This will be up today, and then it won't.

Work blog around 12:30, maybe - Tumblr's already loaded. Have a greand weekend - see you Mondayw!