The day after staying up too late, I’m often running on adrenaline so I do OK. The day after that is the one where I’m dragging around. I don’t think I did too poorly at work, but that’s just because they provide free coffee.

So last night I went to bed a little early. Just barely. And I also remembered to take my “Atomic clock” back upstairs. It sets itself via radio, and the radio sends signals from the National Bureau of Standards atomic clock in Boulder, CO. It was inside the house, however, and didn’t really hasn’t been quite right since the change to daylight savings time. Somehow, I hit the alarm button and the geniuses who make alarm clocks have them default to an alarm time of 12:00AM. Since the clock was off by an hour (PST vs. PDT) it started beeping at 1:00AM.

Because I only had 3 1/2 hours sleep the night before, and because I’d been asleep for an hour, my brain could not figure out what the damn noise was. I flailed around until I hit the snooze bar, but that just postponed further beeping for ten minutes. I finally had the sense to wake up and turn the alarm off after the alarm went off again. Keep in mind, I never use the snooze button, because when the alarm goes off I have to switch it off and switch the radio back on so NPR can give me my left-wing liberal marching instructions for the day.