Happy Friday and Happy Spring! Another random funny deployment story for you.

So here it is…6:15pm on a Friday night, and I’m still awake.

“Hey, me too! Let’s go hit a club and go dancing later!”

No no no no no. I’m not supposed to be awake! For those unaware, I’ve been on the night shift my whole time on this deployment. I won’t give specifics, except to say that I usually sleep from about 4pm-11pm.

You saw my post from a week or so ago. Sleep, or lack thereof, can be a plague on one’s good attitude and overall productivity. I don’t think I get cranky, but I start doing strange things.

My first month here, I took a trip off base in the evening. I didn’t sleep all day, then went out to dinner in downtown Doha with friends. It was a fun time out but I didn’t sleep between one day’s work and the next.

I thought I was fine. I distinctly remember thinking how resilient I was considering my lack of sleep. The weather was keeping my adrenaline up, I recall. At about 4am I went out to the latrine trailer. Where I work, we have to leave our building and walk out to a row of latrine trailers outside. Not far, probably a 1 minute walk. Picture three construction office trailer-looking buildings…all in a row. Don’t fret, they aren’t bad. The leftmost and center trailers are for the men, the right hand trailer is for the women (since women are probably less than 20% of the population here, we have a pretty good deal).

I walked into the trailer, chose a toilet, and proceeded to do my thing. While I’m in the stall, I notice that the walls are black — when I’m used to them being off-white — and I began to ponder:

“When did they paint the insides of the toilet stalls?”

“WHY would they paint the insides of the toilet stalls?”

“And how come I can’t smell the fresh paint of these newly painted stalls?”

“Wait a minute! How did these paint flecks and scrapes appear on these walls covered in non-smelling, newly applied black paint?”

I finished my business, flushed and walked to the opposite wall of the trailer to wash my hands. It’s at that moment that I noticed (a) the wall of urinals that I didn’t notice before and (b) the MAN standing in front of one of them!

You guessed it — I had marched right into one of the mens’ latrines and did my thing. I guess on that day I was more tired than I thought.

This was back in early February, before the insomnia fatigue had kicked in. So after that lack-of-sleep shift I remember going back to my dorm and sleeping straight through until I had to get up to work again.

Stay tuned, maybe after tonight’s lack of sleep I’ll have a new “How Tired Were You?” story to share!