Good evening to you, dudes and ladies of the internet!  It has been a long, stupid, sweaty day here in New Wye, but it is finishing on a good note.  Let me just tell you how it started, though, just for fun, before I get to the pleasant parts:

First off, may I mention that my alarm clock is exhibiting some seriously psychotic tendencies of late?  Sometimes, when I am up at night reading in bed, I notice it switch from displaying the time to displaying the FM frequency, even though the radio is off.  Then it starts whirring and whizzing through all the frequencies, all flickering and flashing.  This happens for about 2-3 minutes, then it goes back to normal.  Then it does it again.  Weird, right?

Last week, it started fucking with me in the mornings — instead of the snooze alarm going off every 10 minutes, it started going off every ONE minute.  Basically, you have time to hit the button, lay your head back on the pillow, get comfy, and then it starts beeping all over again.  I am so out of it in the mornings, though, that I have been just letting that happen for, like, half an hour.  That’s THIRTY snoozes, in this crazy scheme!

This morning, some extra excitement was thrown in, however, by the fact that the power to my building was cut off.  (This occasionally happens in the morning, why I do not know, but I will tell you that it is one of the many reasons why our local power company is on my shit list.)  The alarm still sounded due to its battery backup, but the number display remained dark — I suppose that’s to save power.  It was impossible to see what time it was, though, as the lighted numbers are, you know, kind of necessary for the telling of the time and all.  Anyway, let me again say how out of it I am in the mornings: just completely oblivious and really more in the realm of dream than that of reality.  As such, I am easily confused.  So, despite the alarm’s going off every one minute, I still didn’t manage to get up on time.

Worse than that, the alarm clock COULD NOT BE TURNED OFF.  I hit the “off” button, not just the snooze, and it wouldn’t stop snooze-beeping EVERY ONE MINUTE!  I unplugged the damned thing, and searched all over for the battery compartment, and it STILL KEPT BEEPING EVERY MINUTE.  God, it was awful.  I wound up wrapping it in a towel and burying it in my laundry basket just so the neighbors whose place abuts my bedroom wouldn’t decide to murder me.

My friend K. was there to witness the whole spectacle, as she had come by to give me a ride to school (my car was still in the shop).  And dog, what a spectacle it was!  I was running around trying to get ready, and I had no time to shower, meaning I probably looked like hell and smelled even worse, thanks to last night’s beers and cigarettes at Pub Trivia.  Thank goodness I have a huge supply of default clothes that can be worn like a uniform on mornings that I can’t come up with anything better (trouser-jeans, black tee shirt, black cardigan, black ballet flats, in case you are wondering).

The morning was off to a disastrous start, and I spent the hour of office prep time before class knocking back advils, laying my head on the desk, and occasionally looking up words from the DFW story I had assigned.  (Dude’s got a wicked arcane vocabulary, you feel me?)  Luckily, I was free to leave campus immediately after class, if by “free to leave” I mean “only able to leave because I had decided to shirk my grading duties for yet another day.”

I walked over to the garage where my car was being repaired and picked it up, and once again, the saintly mechanic there had found the problem, which was just another fuse that needed replacing, and had fixed it for free.  I swear, that man is my future husband (despite the fact that he is so country that I literally cannot understand him — this will mean we won’t have to bother with any meaningful conversations when we are wed, and we can thus just ignore each other, me doing my things and him fixing my car and stuff).

The day continued to get better when I got home, where I lounged around in the delicious air conditioning, which was much needed after my walk to the garage, and then took a nap on the couch with the dog.  Favorite afternoon activity ever.  And do you know what else?  Tonight was another fab episode of So You Think You Can Dance, and my favorite dancer, Twitch, got to do a hip-hop number that was completely fantastic.  Excellente, I say!