I met Erin Judge through the Ginger Ninja, back when they both worked at Harvard. Erin’s very funny, a trait that comes in handy in her calling as a stand-up comedian. Being based in Boston, it’s hard for us to catch her gigs, but we lucked out this weekend because she was booked for a couple of gigs at The House of Comedy at Niagara Falls. It takes just over an hour to get there by car, so Wendy and I, along with Rannie and Jay motorbootied for the Falls on Saturday afternoon, did a quick walk up and down cheese-a-riffic Clifton Hill and then went to the House of Comedy to catch her show.
Even though the first act was at 9:00 p.m., Erin told us to make sure that we were there by 7:30. It was good advice — when we arrived at 7:25, the place was already packed. The House of Comedy is a “dinner and a show” kind of place; the cover charge includes a salad-and-pasta dinner. We got to hang out with Erin and her fiance Jesse on the patio before and after the show, which was nice, and the show itself was quite good. Erin’s was one of the opening acts and she was quite funny and in top form.
If you’re in the Boston area, you can catch Erin at a big gig tomorrow (Tuesday, July 10th): she’ll be in Comedy Central’s Open Mic Fight Contest, competing with other Boston comedians for a shot at the next round in Los Angeles. She says “No matter who wins, this will be a FANTASTIC comedy show. Get there early or buy tickets in advance!” The Open Mic Fight Contest takes place at the Comedy Connection, and the fun starts at 8:00 p.m.
In response to the article Where I Slept Tuesday Night,, my article about my night at the sleep lab at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, a “goatchowder” commented:
If you’d been living in the USA, that test would have cost you US$6000.
The flipside in Canada is that it takes about 6 months to get an appointment with a sleep specialist (and you need to see your GP first to get a referral) who can prescribe the sleep study.
That wasn’t the case for me.
So How Long Did I Have to Wait?
I had an appointment with my GP on June 5th. She said she could book me into the sleep lab on the week of Monday, June 18th, a mere two weeks later. I told her that I couldn’t make it then, as I would be in Boston all that week. I asked for a later date, and the booking people at the lab suggested July 3rd, the Tuesday after the long weekend. So I took it.
Simply put, I could’ve had the sleep lab appointment in 2 weeks, but since my schedule didn’t allow me, I got it in 4 weeks. And with a referral from my GP, not a sleep specialist, with a single phone call and for no direct charge (universal health care comes from taxes).
Sleep Lab and Auto-CPAP Costs in the U.S.
While I’m on the topic, can anyone in the U.S. who’s had a sleep study done on them tell me how much it costs, and whether or not it was covered by your insurance?
The anonymous commenter also included quite a bit about auto-CPAP machines. Here’s an excerpt:
Once you’ve figured out what you need, the big expense is buying the machine. I’m not sure about the States but in Canada the government pays for half, and often your work insurance pays for the other half. If you don’t have insurance, you pay for it yourself (about $1000).
So the Canadian system stills finds a way to screw the under-privileged.
My belief is that the deal’s about the same in the U.S., especially if you’re living below the median. Can anyone with experience or data confirm or counter this belief?
Most stores that specialize in hemp products try to downplay the toking aspects of hemp and focus on the fact that it’s a pretty versatile plant that has a lot of non-drug-related uses, such as being a basis of a very durable kind of cloth. These guys just skip the pretense entirely. I didn’t see any hemp-based clothing or bags, but I did see an excellent collection of pipes and bongs, as well as a lot of pretty decent rock paraphernalia. The proprietor was a very friendly greybeard, but that’s too be expected — grouchy head shop owners don’t stay in the business very long.
I asked him if I could take a photo of his licence plate for the blog, and he said “Sure, maaaaan, take as many pictures as you like!”, so here it is…
For the curious, Hemp on Wheels has a website at HempOnWheels.com.
The Ginger Ninja was a bit concerned about my snoring and claims it sounds as though I stop breathing in my sleep — a sign of possible sleep apnea. Although I generally wake up feeling rested, I thought that it would be a good idea to get myself booked into a sleep lab. Hence I spent Tuesday night here:
It was simple enough. After going for 24 hours without caffeine (which gave me a headache, a sure sign that I really should cut down), I showed up at 9:30 p.m. and was led to my room, where I filled out a couple of questionnaires about my sleeping habits and then read while waiting for the tech to prep me.
About an hour later, I got wired up — quite literally — with a number of sensors:
On my forehead
Behind by ears
On my head (which meant that I had hair full of electroconductive goop)
On my neck (a piezoelectric sensor to detect snoring)
On my nose (to detect nose breathing)
A band across my chest
A band across my stomach
On my lower legs (to detect leg twitching)
On my right index finger (heartbeat monitor)
Once wired, the tech went into the control room and asked me over the intercom to do a number of things to calibrate the sensors, such as:
Alternating between looking up and down
Alternating between looking left and right
Pointing the toes in my left and right legs
Closing my eyes
Breathing only through my nose
Breathing only through my mouth
In addition to all these sensors, I noticed the night-vision camera on the opposite wall pointing at the bed. I’m pulling out this wedgie in the bathroom, I thought.
Once this was done, they brought me a reading light to my beside and told me that I should try to fall asleep between 11:00 p.m. and midnight. I was already feeling tired from a lack of caffeine and after reading a few chapters of Everything is Miscellaneous, I decided to turn out the light. It was around 11:30.
In spite of being in a strange bed, having all these cables tugging at me and the bright red light of the fingertip heartbeat sensor, I fell asleep quickly (as I normally do). The bed was comfy and the room was quiet and had a decent air conditioner. They woke me up at 6:30, and after disengaging me from the sensor pack and filling out a one-sheet questionnaire on how I slept, I headed off to work since it was really close by.
Like all things, vacations must come to an end. Here’s my final shot of the trip: the Air Canada Dash 8 that we took from Hartford back to Accordion City:
The Ginger Ninja doesn’t like flying in general and wasn’t all too keen on boarding a propeller-driven plane, but I reassured her that propellers worked out quite well for the first half of the entire history of powered flight.
Besides, the plane looked better put-together and more sturdy than Bradley’s Terminal B.
They’re slower than jet-powered craft, but speed isn’t always everything, if the rather luxurious service offered by Porter Airlines is any indication.
The Ginger Ninja and I were going to have to travel some distances that weren’t very well served by public transit if they were served at all, so we decided to rent a car. We needed a car that we could pick up at Logan Airport and drop off at Bradley (Hartford’s airport), and Thrifty was offering the best deal.
“I’m hope we don’t get a PT Cruiser,” she said to me at the rental counter.
“Why not?” said the Thrifty rep as he tapped at his computer keyboard. “They’re pretty easy to drive, and you’re probably going to get one since you requested a mid-size car.”
“I kind of wanted a car with a real trunk,” she said. “One where you can’t see all our luggage.”
“Well, you could upgrade to a larger car,” he said, “but that’ll cost more.”
We were going to have the car for a week, so springing a not-so-insignificant amount of money for a trunk seemed a bit much. We stuck with the medium car.
“Hmmm,” said the Thrifty guy. “PT Cruiser.”
He must’ve seen the look of disappointment on Wendy’s face because he did a little mor etyping and said “Wait, I’ve got another car here.”
He handed us the keys and pointed us at this car:
Looking at our rental agreement, we found that the Thrifty guy had exercised his discretionary powers and gave us a free upgrade to a Dodge Avenger. Thank you Thrifty guy, and if any of the Powers That Be at Thrifty stumble across this post, you’ve got a couple of pleased customers here.
The car handled pretty nicely and had some decent power under the hood. Wendy thought it “felt as if its nose was too wide” — meaning that she found ti somewhat difficult to pull into parking spaces, but I didn’t think so.
My only complaint was the car’s colour, a shade that I referred to alternately as “Obnoxio Blue” or “Trying-Too-Hard Purple”. I will admit that it was easy to spot in a crowded parking lot.
The car had a couple of luxury goodies that served us well on the trip from the Boston area to Hartford. One of them was Sirius satellite radio and the other was this:
I noticed it when we first took the car off the lot and Wendy was doing the driving. I was putting the rental agreement in the glove compartment when I noticed another latch on the dash. Opening it revealed an extra compartment on top of the dash, and inside was a diagram showing its purpose.
“Cool, I’d read about these!” I said. “In-dash fridge!”
It was clearly meant for standard soda cans, but it could accomodate a couple of bottles if you laid them on their sides. It may seem a silly luxury, but if you’ve ever gone on a road trip of at least a couple of hours, it’s actually a nice thing to have. Besides, the auto companies’ market research have shown that cup holders are an important part of the North American driving experience, and a lack of them have proven to be a deal-breaker in a car purchase.
Maybe it’s the way they name cars these days, but “Avenger” seemed silly to us. Through out the week, I ended up singing the song that the Russian guy from Clerks sang, substituting “Berserker” with “Avenger”. In case you don’t remember that scene, here it is (warning: it gets sweary)…
All in all, not a bad car, and a pretty nice deal.
