11.21.2002 - 10:29 a.m.

At my desk at 9:05 today, better by one whole minute. Hah!

In light of a guestbook suggestion by Justin, Operation Encourage Timely Wakefulness (ETW) has been changed to Operation Punctually Acquiring Nominal Time to Sleep, or PANTS, because �everybody needs PANTS to get out of the house.� I am not sure that PANTS makes quite as much sense as a phrase, but it�s most definitely a catchier acronym. Priorities, you know.

I gave up on the across-the-room thing. (See yesterday's entry.) It just made me set the snooze for longer each time, to minimize trips. And nobody I live with needs to see me sleepwalk. So, today�s PANTS initiative was to decide that I am not allowed to snooze for more than eight minutes at a time. Enacting said initiative taught me three things:

1) While my previous practice of resetting the alarm for at least twenty minutes later generally improved the quality of whatever dream I had interrupted, eight-minute snoozes make my dreams loop. Like my brain forgets where it was, but by the time it backtracks and catches up, the alarm is beeping again. (I was in the middle of a hoverbike chase. You have no idea how frustrating it is to almost catch the bad guy five times in a row.)

2) I�d forgotten that I have an aversion to waking up at odd times. It�s not a superstition, exactly�I don�t worry that I will have a bad day if I wake up off-kilter�but I just feel cheated unless I wake up on a multiple of five minutes. Preferably a multiple of ten. I mean, you can�t really accomplish anything in the three minutes between 8:07 and 8:10, now can you? So why should you spend them awake?

3) Loopy dreams and odd times make me GRUMPY.

But it did get me out of bed after only thirty-five minutes. So now all that remains is to find out if I can keep PANTS on tomorrow, too.

-stonebridge

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