Nap session

This morning I had to attend a seminar at work. The overly conscientious and enthusiastic speaker had prepared a long presentation. I started out bright-eyed and bushytailed, a happily fed attentive listener. I probably lasted about 10 minutes in that erect posture. Then my posture began a downward inverse logarithmic decline, slumping lower and lower with each growing minute. The familiar signs of the alluring promise of sleep beckoned. The brightly colored presentation with its dazzling colored proteins began to sway and blur and melt into a potpourri of colors. The droning of the speaker became white noise that sashayed in the background and hummed in my ears, dimming away. My eyelids got heavier and heavier…

Okay, I think I’m feeling a bit too poetic today. The truth is, I started nodding off very ungracefully. My head very conspicuously falling down and then jerking back up abruptly, much to my embarrassment. Over the course of that tortuous hour, I must have tried every possibly permutation of positioning myself comfortably in a hard plastic chair so as to continue my snooze more cozily. The result was that I settled into a fitful nap, in the netherland between wakefulness and being zonked out. I had attempted valiantly to follow the speaker’s experiment for about 10 minutes or so and then I completely gave myself up to my lazier self. I woke up in time to hear the speaker thank all the lab members of his group in a very heartfelt manner, since apparently he’s leaving soon. Oh well…so much for endoplasmic reticulum associated degradation.