Sleep deprivation & memory retrieval

I haven't whined much about how little sleep I've been getting with Little T
recovering from his surgery and waking up at night. The sleep gods tend to take revenge if I comment on my children's sleep patterns. But I'm going slightly mad from lack of sleep.

I tried to deliver some chocolate to a friend who's having a hard time. Last time I spoke to him, I asked "Did you move recently?" "No." he replied. "Oh, I thought you did." I said. "Why'd you think that?" I mumbled something about him having a housewarming party recently. He replied "Yes, that was a year and a half ago and you were there." "Oh." I said, rather confused.

I drove to his apt and on the porch was a cigarette lighter and 2 cans of Bud Light. My friend writes poetry and drives a Prius. This was definitely not his apt. I did have enough sense to call a couple of our mutual friends, but none were available. So I called C and asked "Can you check email to see where he lives?" C checks and comes up with the same address. "That's not right." I said and I described what was there. I asked for the date of the email. It was in 2003. C checked a later email. It was the invitation for the housewarming party. It was a different address. Fortunately this address was only a couple blocks away from the old address.

Now I know what happened. When my friend moved, I told myself to update my address book at his housewarming party and then forgot. My poor brain was trying to nudge me, but I had no idea what about. When I'm chronically sleep deprived, my memory often simply fails and I'm left asking silly questions.

Though inability to retrieve a particular memory is pretty typical for me. My memory retrieval system is good, but very context based. I can remember all the items I need to buy if I walk down the aisles of a grocery store and see the items, or if I know the store, the items near the items I need. If I miss an aisle, I'll forget to buy all the items in that aisle. Computers have been a godsend for my memory. At work, I used to carry around a Palm Pilot, which was my little context holder to jog my memory. I would put in enough cues, so that I could remember all I needed to know. What type of memory retrieval system do you have? What's the craziest thing you've done due to sleep deprivation?