Start: Friday, March 16, 2007, 9:22 PM.
First off, the snow day was sweet. I finished all my homework and studied for chemistry last night (the only thing I didn't do was study for APUS), and then Rebecca convinced me to resist the temptation to play StarCraft. So, not feeling like studying for APUS, I went to sleep instead. I didn't wake up early this morning as I planned; I slept through my alarm. My dad came for his first wake-up call and I grumbled and went back to sleep. When he came for his real wake-up call, he told me I had no school today. Then I started fist-pumping the air and got all hyper. Now I was awake...not really. I went back to sleep and woke up around noontime.
I did some stuff on the computer and searched for possible Kocotter extra credit projects. Then I went back to sleep. I slept for about half an hour.
I ate and did some calculus studies and then it was mid-afternoon. I slept again and woke up around nine. I've eaten dinner. What an awesome day to have a snow day on! And it's now the weekend, too!
Today, I did this problem that involved dropping a rock into a crevasse on the moon, and that's when I learned the proper spelling of "crevasse." I always thought it was spelled "crevace" before. Oh! Upon looking the word up again just now, I realized I was thinking of the word "crevice," which means essentially the same thing as "crevasse." Ah, that explains it. This puts my spelling bee days to shame.
I was thinking about energy efficiency today. The world is always searching for ways to conserve energy, to improve energy efficiency. Then I thought about the human body. Would I rather have an energy-efficient or energy-inefficient body? Taking into consideration that consumption is our method of energy intake, I think I'd choose the energy-inefficient body. Having such a wasteful body, I wouldn't need to watch my weight or diet. I would just use up all my energy before it was stored as fat.
Muscle burns more energy than fat. Apart from the benefits of weight training, are you also creating for yourself a more inefficient body?
Then I considered times of intense procrastination. All-nighters. Sleep generally makes you feel more energized. But you're not actually intaking anything. (Maybe there's a biological explanation for the effects of sleep. I'm not much of a biology person.) After an all-nighter, I feel terrible in school. With a more energy-efficient body, would I feel less awful? I've discovered that sleep-deprivation causes weight loss for me (not that that's motivation for me not to sleep; I heart sleep). This makes sense because you're certainly expending more energy awake than alseep. So if I had a more energy-efficient body, maybe I could sleep less, giving me more time to expend energy (making up for my energy-efficiency) and also giving me more time to do things (Note how I chose not to use "to be productive.").
In periods of sleep deprivation, exercise actually helps. You usually feel spent after a workout (a good feeling), so it seems contradictory that exercising (expending more energy) when you're sleep deprived would help you feel more energetic. Short term, I can understand how exercise gets the blood flowing and gives you a short burst of energy. For example, playing DDR in gym class second period wakes me up for the rest of morning. (Band helps, too.) But I'm not sure I understand how exercise helps you combat sleep deprivation after that. When your blood flow returns to normal, won't you feel more tired than before? Perhaps it's because the energy bursts exercise gives you allow you to focus more and be productive for a period. This helps prevent further sleep deprivation. Exercise slows your heart rate, making your body more efficient, so maybe the enhanced efficiency overbalances the lost energy in attaining it. It seems that no matter how I look at it, exercise is a good thing and would help me achieve my energy-needs.
End: Friday, March 16, 2007, 9:56 PM.
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