National Napping Day: To sleep, perchance to dream

10.03.2009
The obscure national holidays keep rolling in. Last week we celebrated by drinking root beer and listening to , the squarest musician in history. Monday, of course, is National Napping Day, which since 1999 has followed Daylight Savings Day when we drag ourselves out of bed an hour earlier despite what the clock sayzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Sorry, dozed off there for a moment. Where was I? Oh yeah. This napping thing is no joke; according to the :

A recent article in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health said that fatigued workers cost employers US$136.4 billion a year in lost production. Moreover, a NASA study shows that a few winks after lunch can boost worker's output by as much as 34 percent.

So if your boss catches you nodding off in the telecom closet, just tell him or her that you're saving the country billions of dollars by being more productive. It might work.

Never one to squander an opportunity for cheap PR, is using Monday to promote its "pillow protectors" for midday droolers:

On this National Napping Day, Protect-A-Bed has chosen to salute the most magnificent of our napping species: the drooler. Droolers are particularly special because they fall into such a wonderful napping slumber that a puddle of drool is the inevitable result. ...The average pillow is a veritable Petri dish of allergens, dust mites and bacteria. The drooler often compounds the problem by introducing extra moisture to the pillow. The warm, moist environment offers the perfect haven for allergens and bacteria to grow.