I Got No Sleep Last Night But Presumably I Won

Why would an old couple get married, since presumably they're not pregnant and don't have parents insisting?

If the only reason you'd marry is pregnancy and annoying parents, that's rather depressing. It suggests you know little about what marriage actually is and does.In the U.S., at least, marriage has enormous implications for the elderly: hospital visitation, power of attorney, insurance, government benefits, and inheritance.

Have you ever slept on the streets of a city or town?

In 1977, I slept rough for a week. It wasn’t that I had no home to go to. In fact, I had two homes - my family home and my student accommodation. But I was bunking off university to see a girl and I didn’t want my parents to know.My days were spent in the public library. It was warm and dry though - much as I enjoy reading - it got a bit boring after a while. I soon noticed that there were a few others who spent a lot of time in there.In the evenings, I would see my girlfriend for a few hours. I had no money whatsoever so she would bring me food that she’d sneaked from home. It was my only meal of the day. If she had a bit of cash, we’d go to the pub. You can make a single pint of beer last an awful long time if you have to. She must have been keen because, as the week progressed, my lack of a bath or shower presumably became noticeable.My bed was a bench in a park shelter. I sometimes had to wait past midnight for it to be vacated. The shelter kept out the rain and/or snow but temperatures went below zero each night and I was so, so cold. I’d drift of to sleep for an hour or so and wake up shivering. This pattern would repeat until dawn.Fortunately, I didn’t encounter any real trouble. Twice, I was propositioned by elderly gentleman who thankfully took no for an answer. I also had two visits from the police. On the first occasion, they were responding to reports of a body in the park. They left after I assured them I wasn’t dead. The second time, they brought me a companion. He was a drunkard who had been removed from a train for unruly behaviour. The bastards left him with me. He was much like the clothes he wore - quite posh but had seen better times. The guy was so inebriated that he thought he was still on Paddington station, some 250 miles from his actual location. He kept me awake for hours with his drunken ramblings then set off walking for who knows where.At the end of the week, I walked the five miles home and told my family that I had just arrived for the weekend. Never was a bath and a proper bed more welcome. That weekend, I broke out in clusters of spots which turned out to be shingles. That got me some more time away from my studies.A week sleeping rough in winter was a bit of an ordeal. I pity those for whom it is their normal existence.

How could I have lost weight with no exercise? Over the past months I have apparently lost 3 lbs, but I don’t know how or why.

I could lose 3 pounds in my sleep.No really, I weighed myself last night before bed and I was 177. This morning I am 173.3. What changed? Well over the night I sweated away some water weight and lost water through my lungs from the dry winter air. I also got up to pee once in the night and again this morning. I also presumably metabolized some glucose and breathed out C02 in the process, to keep my brain fed. My scale could also be off.All of these factored conspired to have me dropp a few pounds overnight with no effort.It began the question, are you weighing yourself at the same time every day and eating exactly the same amount of salt each day? Because if you dont your weight is bound to fluctuate day to day let alone in three months.What I'm really trying to say is dont focus too much on that scale. All it is good for is telling you how much you and everything you've injested since your last BM weigh, it doesn’t tell you your health or how you look and feel.

Why do I wake up so early and can't get back to sleep?

Maybe the sunlight is coming in, if you don’t have room darkening curtains or shades, or you wake up to use the bathroom. Maybe there’s an issue with adrenal stress. Drinking a lot of coffee or too much sugar and refined carbohydrates, or foods with aspartame, MSG or other excitotoxins…especially late in the day. Alcohol in the evening can make you sleepy but it can also change your sleep cycle. Sometimes it’s mental stress, stress hormones, or changing hormones for women. Could be not getting enough sunlight during the day to make melatonin, or not enough physical exercise…or the blue light from screens and all the technology altering the sleep-cycle.

Why do thousands of homeless people sleep in the subways in NYC as opposed to in shelters, where there is (presumably) heat and plumbing?

According to the coalitionforthehomeless.org,Fact: There is a longstanding myth about a large population of homeless tunnel-dwellers in New York City. This myth dates back to a 1995 book called The Mole People, which claimed hyperbolically, and falsely, that there were “thousands” of homeless people sleeping in New York City tunnels.The reality is that only a very small number of homeless people sleep in train and subway tunnels, largely because they are dangerous and inaccessible. The large majority of homeless people in New York City sleep in shelters.The latest figures (from last year) count approximately 1,800 homeless people sleeping in the subway system, compared to 58,500 in shelters, and a city population of 8.4 million.So if the question is about the magnitude of the problem, at 3% of NYC homeless and 0.02% of the NYC population respectively, that's not the issue.But if it's about the psychology of the problem, that's  a different question.  In fact, a significant percentage of the homeless population in general (and likely the subway homeless in particular) is afflicted with some type of mental disability. Whether this results in paranoia, a desire to be alone, an aversion to staying in the same place, or some other issue, these people would simply rather be 'free' in the subway than 'controlled' in a shelter.That said, despite the best efforts of the City and volunteers/advocates for the homeless, shelters are NOT a fun place to be for anyone at any time. The image many people have of 'shelters' is from emergencies and other civic incidents, where middle class citizens are temporarily housed in the local school gym.In reality, city homeless shelters are neither safe nor comfortable. You are surrounded by hundreds of people with mental issues, your meager possessions are likely to be stolen in the middle of the night, violence is far from uncommon, there is zero privacy and silence is rare, and despite frequent cleaning, sanitary issues (because of the population) are significant.It's therefore not surprising that even a functional homeless person might elect to try his or her hand living on the street, using the bathroom at Starbucks, a shower at the Y, and dinner from a soup kitchen. But when the temperature hits 6 degrees, street sleeping is no longer an option, and the heated subway system begins to look pretty inviting.Update February 17, 2015:This pair of OpEd pieces appeared in today's NY Daily News:

Men who exercise regularly can last twice as long in the bedroom, according to a study. Do you agree?

I personally am able to last longer when I excercise regularly and as such I certainly believe the literature on it is true, but is that /should that really be a priority of ours? It’s hard to let go of things that make us feel good, like huge swooping dopamine and endorphins responses. The Stuff is like heroine without the OBVIOUS side effects. Why not pursue it?That is until you realize you’ve made yourself into a monster that can’t sleep beside your spouse without requiring sex of him/her because you haven’t retrieved your dopamine and endorphins fix for the night.He or she is tired, let your spouse rest. If you can’t function properly without your chemical fix you’re an addict. So we see how an overly vigorous pursuit of such goals can be bad for us, even if it isn’t as obvious as meth. That’s why so much of the wisdom of our human history warns us of prioritizing vanity. The word vanity comes from the Latin vanus, meaning empty. So you need to see some physical fruit of your endeavors for it to not be so.I will leave on saying that if you scrutinize life rigorously enough all things will boil down into vanity. So you do have to find that line where things are meaningful to you, but choose very carefully, more lives than you know hinge on the decisions you make concerning those things which you believe are meaningful. Kids, grandkids, spouses, coworkers, friends seeking advice. You are more powerful than you know and your desires matter. Best to try to align yourself so that you desire the most wholesome things possible for you. So use that ancient collective that reminds us there are greater things than our own desires. At least try to. Of morality was easy we’d all have the answers.I’m certainly not preaching, but I, with you presumably, am also trying to be a better me. I’m right there struggling with you on how to be the best me. Sex was a huge priority of mine for too long. Don’t get me wrong, I need to get back in the gym but so I’m healthy and able to perform for my family and friends. Bedroom health among many other aspects but no longer so the random young ladies in my life are dumbfounded by my performance in the bedroom and no longer because I want to impress people. At least hopefully not.

What is the grammatical difference between the following two sentences: "I slept in my room" and "I was sleeping in my room"?

Both sentences are in the past tense.“I slept in my room.” is in the perfective aspect. It means that an action started and ran to completion, and had a consequence. The perfective aspect differs from the perfect aspect in that it does not specify a time at which the consequence obtains/obtained. In this example, the perfective aspect implies that the speaker felt different (presumably rested) for some time afterward, but does not specify whether the speaker still feels rested at any specific, subsequent time.“I was sleeping in my room.” is in the imperfect aspect. It refers to only one moment of time. Although the speaker presumably started sleeping at some earlier time and woke up at some later time, and felt different as a result of the sleep, the imperfect aspect says nothing about those possibilities. For this reason, if the speaker made that statement in isolation, the hearer would probably say “And?”.Grammarians of English tend not to use the concept of aspect, the distribution in time of an action, probably because most Indo-European languages have relatively little expression of aspect and because grammarians try to make English grammar resemble the grammar of other Indo-European languages, especially Latin. However, the concept of aspect is useful for understanding English verbs.(The other aspect that is prominent in English grammar is frequentative, which means that the action occurs frequently, routinely, habitually, in someone’s nature. It is expressed by what is usually called the “simple present” tense. For example, “I drive a car.”, and “I am typing.” are two correct sentences at this moment, but I am not stupid enough to do both simultaneously; one is frequentative and the other is imperfect.)

Have you ever slept for 24 hours or more because you didn’t sleep for days? What was that like?

When I was 15 I didn’t sleep for almost 4 days (83 hours). My insomnia was hitting a maximum. I’d lay in bed, lights off, phone charging, laptop away, TV on to something incredibly boring just because I like the sound a TV makes when it is on (even if I can’t hear the show, I can hear the stuff that powers the TV). I’d lay there for hours, trying out different positions, to no relief. School that last day before I passed out was weird. I felt like I was swimming while moving around. At one point I legitimately forgot that I had legs, and was sort of shocked when I realized that legs were how I was moving around in my fishbowl.I got home that day at around 5pm. I ate dinner, sat down, looked at my laptop and sort of fell backwards onto my bed with that oh so hot teenage ambivalence. When I woke up, my phone was dead.Weird, I thought. Looking at my laptop told me it was not some time after 8pm. All of that didn’t matter much, I super had to pee. I get up to go to the bathroom, and my sister is cooking food. “Did someone eat all of the other stuff?” (I think it was spaghetti but I’ll be honest I don’t remember).Without moving her head she said “no, I put that in the fridge yesterday night if you want some.”what? Yesterday?“Barb, what is the date?”She cocked her head at me, “the 18th?”I had gone to bed on a Thursday some time around 6pm. I had woken up on a Friday at around 8pm. I slept 26 hours.I had also missed school, which was an awkward conversation to have. Though most of my teachers were forgiving of the fact — apparently a good chunk of them know what it feels like to have insomnia. My mom more or less understood, she suffers from insomnia as well, she was just worried my college teachers wouldn’t understand my absence. Luckily that particular semester i didn’t have any college courses on Fridays.After I peed, it hit me that I had missed an entire day. It also hit me that I was probably not going to go to sleep until the next day because I had literally just woken up (I was right, for anyone curious. I went to sleep at 12am Sunday mornight). It was also pretty cool because I went to sleep after eating dinner, and then got to eat dinner again. Ballin!