It's 6:30 A.M. I once read that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith said he likes to write early in the morning, since his head hasn't completely cleared away the disorientation of sleep and being in that state allows for more creativity. Based on the dozen or so times I've tried it, I will back him up on early morning writing often turning out to be very different. Not sure about more creative, but certainly more bizarre.
Today is June 1st, and with the turning of the calendar to this new page comes a more tangible embrace of the upcoming summer. To celebrate, as I have done for at least the past eight or so years, I'm sitting here with iTunes on making sure the first song I hear this month is "June" by Spock's Beard, a song with lyrics that to this day I still don't completely understand, but puts me in mind of a summer evening graced with a pleasantly warm breeze nonetheless. (I'll credit Steven Tyler for that sentence being more blatantly descriptive and grammatically dubious than anything I would have tried past noon.)
I had Bomani harpin' on me last night about being grateful for all the time off I get in the summer. Trust me, my man -- it does not go unnoticed or unappreciated. The simple glorious fact of it is that sitting here at forty-one years old, my life since the last day of school in kindergarten back in 1974 has always had a summer vacation. Sure, I had to work some of those in the high school / college years, but it was still drugstore / Boys and Girls Club work, so it was still vacation. And now, knowing that I could literally choose to sit on my couch in front of the XBox for two straight weeks and still have a paycheck show up in my mailbox? Life is good.
Except.... I can't be true to myself if I don't complain about something. Since it's early, I'm going off on one of my alarm clocks. I have two of them, you see. The old reliable standby sits well out of reach of my bed so I have to actually stand and walk to turn the thing off. This one is the truer of the two alarm clocks since it's set to go off twenty minutes later than the first one. It would even start up playing a CD if I wanted it to, but for my purposes the unholy electronic bird-chirp-of-death is more effective. Now, the OTHER alarm clock is the one I have issues with. Right beside my bed, and you'd think this would be the favored son of alarm clocks since I can dock my iPod right into the top. But NO! First of all, the thing loses about four minutes every month. How that happens with such consistency I have no idea. Secondly, the control buttons on the top? I've played slot machines with more reliability. If I just want to turn on the radio for some music to fall asleep to, I have to push the "radio" button at least eight times before the thing will understand what I'm going for. Once out of frustration I literally gave up and pressed a different button randomly, and it actually worked. If I try to set the time, it will either switch to the AM tuner or shut off. If I try to set the sleep timer, it will start flashing the alarm time at me, waiting for a new setting.
Thankfully in a mere two more weeks I won't be needing it at all....
1 comment:
Just throwing this out there: that alarm clock has achieved consciousness, and is absolutely effing with you. Just wait until it starts going off at 3 in the morning, despite the fact you never set it. Trust me, this is first, and then the robot revolution.
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