Bad decisions

Today was exhausting and it basically a form of self defeat.  Last night I decided to ignore the area of my brain that produces common sense and just stayed up until I became tired or a bit sleepy.  It was one of those, "why not?" situations.  This didn’t happen until I realized it was around 3:30am.  I generally wake up around 6:30am or 7am for my work at 8am which meant that my allotted sleep for the night would be less than four hours and this entire situation was completely avoidable.  I’d spent the last  4 nights staying at my girlfriend’s parents place, cat-sitting, and this was my first night back in my place, so it was now that I realized I'd forgotten my cellphone and it’s basically my only alarm clock these days.  So, here I was; no sleep, no alarm, and definitely starting to really feel the weight of the situation.  I checked everything I could think of, my TV’s alarm would require music or something on it to wake me up.  My iPod Classic had an alarm but it simply made a single *beep* sound then asked if you wanted to hit snooze or dismiss.  I played with it for another 10 minutes before I realized that it wasn’t going to make a second beep, I’d sleep right through that.  My only option was the stove.  Basically, if I keep my bedroom open I can hear the stove’s timer beeping but I didn’t know if it was going to be enough to wake me up, also the timer was really old so the longest time you could put on it was about 2 hours.  By this time it was almost 4:30, it took a while to exhaustively search for my phone and determine the uselessness of the iPod alarm clock.  This was actually ok though, I’d wake up at 6:30, if I felt ok maybe go from there or reset the timer and get going at 7, or 7:15.  All set!

Dude, could've been worse

I don’t remember lying in bed for more than two seconds before I woke up to the oven timer and when I cleared the flashing "0:00" and the oven displayed the time, it was 7:45.  I was like, “shit, I am not going to be on time!”  but also, “holy shit, if I’m on time then I’ve probably gotten the most sleep I could’ve gotten given the situation.”  I sleepily rushed around my house, getting work shirts, pants and snacks.  I grabbed my bicycle from the deck and got it ready.  I threw my jacket on, 7:52, I started down the 4 flights of stairs to the main floor, hopped on my bike and rode into the cold Nanaimo morning.  I arrived at work about 7:58, perfect! 

Here’s the thing that gets me, I woke up at the perfect time, but that oven timer was beeping for probably an hour and 15 minutes.  That means I could hear the buzzer but it wasn’t effecting me until 15 minutes before being late for work.  What the hell work me up?  I was dead asleep and having intense dreams.  Was it purely luck?  I had been playing with the kitchen timer for a bit before I slept, had I subconsciously made a note of the duration of each beep and the time between?  Had my mind determined that after 4500 beeps I really needed to wake up or I risk looking unprofessional?  Regardless, I was able to get through a potentially shitty situation and survived without the aid of a loud and practical alarm and I don’t even know if it’s something I could pull off a second time.  Oh well, pretty sweet, trying not to think about sleep~.