The alarm goes off and it takes a moment for me to become cognitive and realize what is happening. It's always harder after a night when I actually found myself dreaming. It's been hard some times to get dreams. I love dreams. Even when I have to settle for dreams like I had last night.** In the movie Stranger than Fiction (which apparently I'm hung up on) the main character uses his watch (the same watch I own) as an alarm clock. That wouldn't work for me. I don't think. I'm surprised that the alarm clock I use is working for me.

As a child working his way towards manhood I was able to take a few side steps off that path. I became oblivious to any form of alarm or alert that was to bring me to consciousness. It was to the point that I bought an alarm clock that could play CD. It was made by Sony and you could set it to a specific track if you like. At first it wasn't too successfull. I like music, I would go to sleep listening to music, when I heard it in the morning it was peaceful and I did not rouse. I ended up getting a sound fx CD. Track 69, believe it or not, was an air raid siren. This seemed effective for a while. Then I had to move it away from my bed to actually make me stand up to turn it off*.

I later became dependant upon my mother to wake me up. My bedroom was on one side of the house in the basement and the light switch to my bedroom was at the other end of the house. This was because originally the basement was just a place to store things, we converted it into a bedroom so my parents could hide the mess of my bedroom from any guests. My room was lit by four sets of four foot long fluorescent light fixtures. It was like waking up to the sun, six feet away from your head. This all lead to my wife keeping the alarm clock on her side of the bed and telling me when to get up. I was getting a little tired of Keely being in control of the alarm clock and sounding more than agitated when she had to scream at me to get me up in the morning. It was emasculating me to a level I could no longer tolerate. I think over the duration of her having to wake me up in that fashion she actually started her day with disdain for me.

One Christmas my parents bought me a Spongebob Squarepants alarm clock. Now this very simply alarm clock with a Spongebob toy melted to the top of it, sits on my side of the bed. It's surprisingly has done more than that. It also tells the time and wakes me up in the morning. Who would have thought. Having my own alarm clock and taking care of it I think has bettered the relationship I have with my wife. She still asks me every night if it's set and if it's armed but that is only because she cares.

I think this entry was going to be about my daily routine. I don't have one. I add and remove processes on a whim. It's hardly ever the same and I normally forget to complete one vital task. It's not the same task everyday but most of them are equally important. If I forget to shave, shower, exercise, comb hair, brush teeth, eat breakfast, watch TV, get on the computer, feed the dog, let the dog out or once a week take the trash out it's not always the end of the world. I normally don't forget any of the important hygiene ones.

I got up this morning put on my glasses. I used to go to the computer and put in my contacts but I am currently waiting for my new pair to come in. At the computer I would become distracted by the things I feel I need to look at daily.

It's starts with woot.com where I look to see what the one item for the day is that they are selling. [BTW for the past three days it has been some sort of optical mouse, each one has been a different color, they don't seem to be that popular] Then I look at techdeals.net to see what tech I've been drooling over may be cheap enough for me to afford (fun to look at almost never applies to me). I go to TMBO.org, which is now by invitation only (and sadly I don't know anyone who wants to be invited). I check out the torrents that have been added to my browsers "torrent bar" and if anything seems interesting I start the download and walk away as my computer slows down to the speed of a 386 and requests to be left alone while it does what it wants to.

This is the point when I walk to the little bedroom across the hall from my room. I take the second remote from our dish network DVR522 with me. It's our work out room and for at least twenty minutes I ride an exercise bike watching a 13" TV from far enough away it appears to be the size of a hand held television (that's why I need my vision correction application in full effect before the exercise begins).

[today is different because just like two days ago I am writing in my blog]

This isn't supposed to happen because with my glasses I am expected to stumble into that next room immediately. That is what Keely does. She's a trooper. I'm soft, and need something I don't know a warm up period for life. A mediation into full on willing myself to so something other than lie around and age. That's not always true. On some rare occasions I feel so energized from my sleep that I get up with a feeling of purpose and take care of things I may have been too tired to be bothered with the night before (such as dishes from dinner or picking up the shreds of something one my dogs destroyed).

I had heard from my sporadic listening to NPR, a recent study showed that the application of bright light to a sleepy person actually activates (and terminology escapes me) a reaction in the brain to become more alert. Not in a moment of shock, but in an evolved understanding that light comes from the sun and is the start of the day. It's a whole process that is based on the body wanting to sleep when it's dark and be active when it's light. I forget what it's called. The story was about the productivity in children at school based on the amount of rest they had the night before. Interesting stuff and very insightful considering my own educational past and the influence that sleep had in it.

*CD alarm clocks - need to bring the CD to top rotation before they can play the track you've selected. If you have it too close to your head you may involuntarily learn to listen for the noise of the disc spinning and turn it off before the sound kicks in. Then you fall back asleep and regret you spent that much on a useless alarm clock.


**The dream most prevalent in my mind is the one that ended when I woke up. I was with someone I could have sworn it was Tony but sometimes it seemed like this guy I work with named Carl. To be more correct Carl works under me but that really isn't important to the story. We had driven for some unknown reason to my friend Justin's house. I do not regularly speak to Justin nor have I spoken to him in about a year. This is a pattern that i rotate to all my friends. It doesn't mean anything. I do not intentionally not speak to him. It just doesn't happen. The house we go to is set back on a driveway behind two other houses and pole barn. This is not what I know to be Justin's house (the mind is a strange thing). We get to the house and get out of the car I was driving. I don't know why we're there. We knock on the door and go inside. We were invited inside by a large man with no teeth. He was holding a baby. It was another one (and I don't know if Justin has more than one child) of Justin's children. The man with no teeth was not Justin. Tony/Carl stayed quiet and out of my line of sight. Justin came from the back of the home with the normal long lost friend fan fare. The old man shared a short story about the baby's recent ordeal involving it trying to eat or drink something that was not intended for child. The story ended with the man making a face and moving his tongue in and out of his toothless mouth to demonstrate for me what the infant had tried to accomplish, because it too had no teeth and I was obviously beyond having an imagination for the inner mechanics of the efforts of babies. We left the house quickly. We did not get back in the vehicle we drove there. We also did not make any mention of how it was suddenly gone. We walked to the pole barn. Inside we were greeted by a woman who was playing Justin's wife. She was not Justin's wife as I know her at this time. She handed Tony/Carl and I yoga mats and had us take positions on the floor to exercise with her. I had to use the restroom. I walked to the end of the pole barn where there was a little room. I suddenly had a body guard with me. I'm not sure if he hated the menial task of protecting a person in the bathroom or he enjoyed the opportunity to interrupt progress and frustrate at will. The bathroom was horrible. It was the kind that had half residential, half industrial fixtures. The toilet paper dispenser was larger than the toilet itself and pretty much became a gigantic obstacle in all efforts of that type. Above the toilet paper was a paper towel dispenser. The toilet was the kind that used to be white but aged to a dingy yellow, the sink looked the same way. The toilet seat was black. Lighting was a mystery in this room because it was not dark but there wasn't any visible origin of light. At one point I was peeing in a paper cup and amazing myself at the capacity I was producing. I then went in the sink and some time later in the same urination attempted to angle it into the toilet. The time I was taking not only agitated the body guard who at one point was played by Robert De'niro but Carl/Tony was not too pleased that he was forced to complete a series of compromising stretches in front of a strange lady. This was roughly the end of the dream. I woke up needing to go to the bathroom pretty bad. In a dream drought I will settle for this variety.