signal interference

I'm also the kind of guy who needs 8 hours of sleep to function.

I usually get them between 4am and noon.

(Last weekend, finishing up my spectrum article, I sat down to write at about 3pm and didn't get up again until 3am. These are the kind of working hours I can only manage when Professor Marcus is away at a conference. )

This morning -- late morning -- when the rest of the world was awake, I still wasn't. I heard a knock at the door. That only happens when we get a UPS delivery, so I threw on some clothes, wiped my eyes, started to clear my throat ... and opened the door.

Standing before me was a smiling, middle-aged woman with an enormous VOTE KERRY button. You should hear my voice in the morning. The first words out of my mouth sound like a truck tire on gravel. And I'm told I don't need to try very hard to express patience at its limit. I barely needed to say anything to make the poor woman shrink into herself and back away, head down, eyes averted and apologies under her breath.

Actually, for an anarchist, that's not a bad way to start the morning. I thought I'd be in a bad mood all election day, but I got the worst of it over with early, and found myself almost cheerful throughout the afternoon.

But toward evening, awaiting the return of my breadwinner, I discovered I'd never made the bed!

See? I'd thrown on clothes to answer the door. If I'm not in my pajamas, then the bed must already be made. Never gave it a second thought.

Maybe I need to start developing backup signals.