I have about 20..

electrodes glued to my head with various colored wires dangling down and plugging into a box that I have to carry around with me all day. And night. Because I have to stay up for 38 hours. Sleep deprivation. Ugh! At least the guy that's on shift watching me and another kid doing this study is pretty lenient, I'll be able to go out for a smoke around 1 in the morning and not get caught, plus I'm allowed to use the internet for the time being.
Why'm I doing this?

$1300.

The kid that I'm doing the study with is really cool, I'm not terrible sick or him or anything, we get along well. We give each other our space. I wasn't sure how it would go in the beginning because I had learned that he was a traveling youth leader for his church and also in a christian band type thing, but I'm glad to say he hasn't really pushed any of his beliefs on me. We just watch movies, or I read while he plays around on his laptop. The one thing that sucks is the tests that we have to do every two hours. The first test, I have to stare at a blue dot on the wall while my electrode box is hooked up to a laptop so the nurse can see my brain waves at a base level, while there's no activity going on. I have to stare at this dot for 4 minutes every two hours, and after that test is completed I'm handed this old school gameboy-looking contraption that has two black buttons on it and a screen where red numbers come up. I have to press one of the black buttons when a red number pops up on the screen, it tests my reaction time. You try and get the lowest number you possibly can. That test is 10 minutes long. On top of those tests, the food absolutely sucks. The other kid I'm doing the study with, Kris, and I filled out menus of what we thought we'd want to eat daily for this study about a month or so before. We came here and all of our food was in this small refrigerator, seran-wrapped on trays or in bags. Nothing was heated up, we had to do everything ourselves with just a microwave. So, say goodbye to toast, or the advertised "hot english muffins," or salisbury steak and mashed potates, all the food sucks. Oh well. What really sucks above all else is the claustrophic feeling I'm getting from not being allowed to go outside or walk around anywhere but on this small floor, the 11th floor. Even though I'm not allowed to leave this floor I still got dressed and cleaned up, just to feel less lazy. AND I miss people :[ I almost got a kind of homesick feeling from being around no one I know, and knowing that I'm going to have to be around just these people for 4 days. It kind of made my stomach lurch. I miss my Charles. And my puppy.

The basic gist of this rant is just to say: this sleep study sucks. It's definitely an interesting experience but I'm so ready to go home now. And it's only really just started!

AKA Livi's a baby.