2001-06-27 - 12:21 p.m.
"Rain, Rain on my Face"

Oh! That's it! *lightbulb going on* I just realized what must have happened this morning!

My answer isn't going to make much sense, though, unless I first tell you what my problem was. *grin* It's like this: I went to bed at the normal time last night, enough to get five hours of sleep. Not really good for me, but since I only work 4 days a week, I sleep in on the weekends and it all works out. I grumble when my alarm goes off and sometimes drag myself into work a few minutes late, but everything is A-OK. Today, however, I seem to have completely missed my alarm. I don't know if it wasn't set, or if I was "sleepwalking", but there you have it.

The first thing I heard was my cell phone beeping its "Unanswered Call" beep. It's an unusual enough sound that it cut right through my dreams and startled me upright in bed. I tottered out into the living room, not even looking at the clock, and picked the phone up. At that moment, the landline rang. I blinked, wandered in that direction, and muttered a sleepy "Hello?" into the receiver. It was my boss, wondering where the hell I was. She thought maybe I had crashed and died, since I am never more than fifteen minutes late, unless I call ahead. "Huh?" At this point, I looked over at the cable box and saw it staring back at me with large red LED condemnation: 9:02. AAAAGH!!

Needless to say, I panicked and rushed into work, totally confused as to the source of my misfortune. All I could think was, Damn, I need to move my alarm clocks again and try to get to bed earlier ... Ugh. I thought perhaps it was my body's way of telling me I was being a real idiot with my sleeping patterns. You see, even when I don't hear my alarms at 5:00, I usually wake up at 6:30 thinking, Why am I not on my way to work? But there is another answer!

In last night's entry I mentioned that I will always be a Texan, despite my years of removal from the heat, smog, crowding, and muggy weather ... Heh. It was the weather that did it to me this morning. My boss was so concerned about my perhaps crashing because it was pouring down rain heavily today! It NEVER rains hard in the Willamette Valley, you see; it's more a continual drizzle or mistiness. That's how we can have so many days of rain and yet get fewer inches than places with long dry seasons. I always adored the bad weather when we lived near Houston; it was comforting to me. So the fact that I was a little short on sleep, which would normally not be such a problem, deep-sixed me when combined with the comforting patter of emphatic rain on the window. *laughing*

I'm thinking about joining some diary-rings, so don't be surprised if links appear on this page. I considered joining the Christians one, and the Conservatives one, but had second thoughts. I am both, but both labels tend to have poor associations, and both groups tend to be exclusionary. I don't want to get booted because of the occasional swear words or strange questions, or a round of applause for a liberal idea. Well, they might not actually boot me for such; but the possibility would remain, and the whole limitations idea would bother me. I do not always talk about Jesus or politics anyway. Some of the more general-category rings sound more interesting: bookaddict, everydamnday, and not-a-teen. I'm going to check them out some more and then link up if the idea still appeals.

I had more to say, but hunger is short-circuting my train of thought; I think I'll go dig my leftover "General Tsao's Chicken" out of the fridge and go on lunch break.

P.S. Please go take a look at this test:The Cube Game. I took it yesterday and was fascinated by the results. I'll post my Cube later, but it spoils the test if you see someone else's answer ahead of time, so I'll wait a little while first.