Overnight Adventures of an Engineer

The other night, I was finishing up a class project till about 12:30am. I was quite pleased that I had finished in enough time to get home and still have a decent amount of sleep. I left the lab, but when I reached my car, the locks were frozen. I tried to get the doors open for about 15 minutes and realized that I should probably just give up. I went back to the engineering building in order to find a place to sleep. I didn't want to choose a classroom, because it would be really awkward to have people show up for class in the morning and find some bum sleeping in the corner. I first thought of sleeping in a study room in the Warnock Engineering Building (WEB). However, as I entered the main atrium, I realized that the cleaners were vacuuming and would probably take awhile. I continued wandering through the corridors, racking my brain for an alternative. While I was thinking, I decided to get myself some food, since I had worked in the lab straight through dinner time. I went to a vending machine in the basement and, after studying the Net Weight of the items, decided on the Cheez-It bag, since it would give me the most mass of food for my money. I only had one dollar bill on me and the machine wouldn't take it. I quickly fixed that problem by sticking my dollar into one of the drink machines, which can recognize a dollar better than the snack machine, and directly hitting the Change Return button. With my newly acquired quarters, I bought my White Cheddar Cheez-Its. I continued my pursuit of a resting place while eating away at my dinner. As I wandered the halls, I decided to go sleep in the TA room in the Merrill Engineering Building (MEB). I doubted that many TAs would be in there very early. Who meets with a TA first thing in the morning? I reached the TA room and went to the back of the room, behind all the desks, so I could sleep on the floor without being seen from the hallway. Unfortunately, there were a couple of guys still working on a project in an adjacent lab. I could hear them through the air vents. I figured that I could probably sleep through most of the noises, so I used my jacket as a pillow and laid down on the ground. That puts the time at about 1am. While I was trying to get to sleep, I heard one of the guys mention the t.v. show "Heroes." Before I knew it, they were watching one of the online episodes- at a high volume I might add. Between the occasional explosions, shouting matches and soundtrack, I was not having much luck sleeping. The noise, combined with the fact that the building was cooling down quite a bit and I was no longer wearing my jacket, finally left me uncomfortable enough to encourage action on my part. At about 4:15am, I gathered my belongings and headed back to the WEB. I hoped that the cleaners had finally left the study room areas. When I reached the upstairs of the WEB, I found a study room that seemed promising and went inside. Unwilling to remove my jacket any longer, I sat in one of the chairs and laid my head down on the table. I tried a few different positions, but never quite found a comfortable one. By that time, I realized that, even with my jacket on, it was going to be too cold to stay. The particular study room that I had found had a large window that went to the outside. With the heat off for the night, this was not the place to stay. I remained on the same level and finally settled on a chair in the back corner of a hallway. The spot was warm and I could lean my head into the corner made by two walls and just fall asleep. For the first time, I was getting some much sought after rest. I suppose that it was getting towards 5am by this time. Although my sleep was finally deep enough that I felt like I was getting it, about an hour later, I was interrupted by a few crazy people that start there day at unholy hours. After that, I slept off and on, occasionally being interrupted by "morning people," until a little after 8. At that point I figured that I had given the whole idea of sleep a worthy effort and went downstairs, bought myself a blueberry bagel and a cup of hot chocolate, and grabbed a newspaper. I was ready to start the day, bright eyed and bushy tailed.