I'm a dope

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I had a touch of insomnia last night. I gave Hook a miss, and crawled into my rack about 9:30. Woke up about an hour later. Then I went to sleep and woke up again at 02:30. Tossed and turned, and wasn’t feeling sleepy; so I got up at 03:00 instead of my normal 05:00. I added water tothe coffee pot (which obviously hadn’t turned itself on yet) so I could have 12 cups of joe instead of my weekday-traditional six. (Eight on weekends, in case you were wondering.)

So there I am; drinking coffee, watching Headline News, and posting to the boards and checking my e-mail. Suddenly it was time to get ready for work! I get up two hours early, and still I procrastinate enough that I’m right down to the wire. Shower, shave, dress, make a couple of turkey and lingonberry sandwiches, and put the crab I caught and cooked yesterday into the cooler to take in to the boss. On the road.

When I got to the office the blinds were closed and the lot was empty. One of the guys was loading equipment into his van, so I entered through the shop and opened the office. As I was walking in, one of our customers showed up asking if the boss was there. No, just me. I took the information and told him I’d pass it along. I wrote down the message, then checked the voice mail and copied that message as well. Checked e-mail and started up the CAD program to work on the gate I was drawing.

I don’t like to do a slapdash job on my drawings. The boss likes my work, and I want the quality of my drawings to match the quality of our product. It’s close work. From time to time I’ll rest my eyes by reading the news online or visiting the Dope. (I don’t post from work, though.) Since I don’t log onto the boards, the times are off – Central time instead of Pacific. I was looking at a message and calculated the time of posting.

Wait. That’s not right. That post says 07:23, and the clock on my computer says the same. Huh? :confused: I looked at my watch. 07:23. I checked a wall clock. 07:23. Finally I went back to the shop and asked the guy if it was 07:26 (by the time I got back there). He said it was. I said, “That explains some things.”

I’d left for work in a big hurry, thinking I was running late. In actuality, I was an hour early. :smack:.

I’m such a dope. :frowning:

(On the bright side, I got out an hour early.)

2

I did that once. Surreal, isn’t it? I’m so totally not a morning person that although I’d noticed that the light seemed different, the shadows somehow … longer … I didn’t process the fact that that meant it was an hour earlier than I thought it was. And the lack of traffic? Just one of those things …

3

I once managed to accidentally set the time on my alarm clock forward an hour the night before an exam, then sleep through the alarm. I woke up and saw that according to the time on my alarm clock, my exam started in 5 minutes. This of course led to a panicked dash of throwing on some clothes, rushing out the door and sprinting to the site of the exam. I came running into the building 15 minutes late, or so I thought, to find two classmates I vaguely knew calmly sitting outside the exam room reading over their notes. I managed to gasp out something semi-coherent about hadn’t the test started already. They just looked at me like I’d gone crazy and informed me that it didn’t start for another 45 minutes. That did explain why the streets had seemed so deserted on my way there…

At least I managed to make it to the cafeteria and get some coffee and a muffin before the adrenaline wore off and I more or less collapsed. I then had just enough time for the caffeine and sugar to hit my bloodstream and allow me to make it through the exam all right. I think I managed to score in the high 70s or low 80s, which all things considered wasn’t bad.

4

I went to school on a public holiday once. I did vaguely wonder why I didn’t see another kid in school uniform the whole way there, but not enough to actually remember what day it was. Nor did my father or anyone en route wonder aloud why I was wearing a uniform on a holiday …

5

You know, I was wondering why you were replying to this thread so early on a Sunday morning.
Do you always work Sundays?

6

No, I just happened to get up early this weekend. (I hate it when that happens!) By the time I finished posting on the Dope and drinking my coffee, it was still early. I was hauling up my crab pot by 10:00. (I used the GPS this time, so my buoy was much easier to find. Erm… I don’t really know how to navigate with it because I hadn’t practiced that; but I roughly remembered the coordinates.)

Okay, here’s another time-thing from when I was ten. I woke up without an alarm at 6:00. I looked at the light coming into the bedroom window and surmised I had overslept. I jumped out of bed and scrambled to get ready for school. When I came out to the dining room my mom was chatting with a friend. I told her I was sorry I was late getting ready for school, and she looked at me with a quizical expression and wondered what I was talking about. Turns out that I had awakened from a nap (I’d been tired after school and lay down and dropped off), and it was 18:00! As it happens, the afternoon light at that time of the year was the same as the morning light.