(untitled 130)

I woke up to the insistent clanging of my twin-bell alarm clock at 6.45. I'd gone to bed late the night before - foolishly late. I always remember being tired in the morning, but somehow, it's hard to bring that to mind when I'm talking to friends at 2.30 AM. I'm never talking about things that are critically important, either. I just feel a need to keep talking and not go to bed. (Sometimes, I even dread going to bed, and I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps that's a topic for another day.)

I digress.

I woke up to the insistent clanging of my twin-bell alarm clock at 6.45. It looks like one of those clocks you see in old cartoons - the kind that you activate the snooze feature by smashing it with a rubber-tipped mallet. My mallet wasn't within reaching distance, so I had to settle for manually hitting the snooze button. I hit it several times, since I just wasn't ready for my day to start. I wasn't looking forward to going to school. The weekend felt like it had gone by too quickly, as though it had gone past at double speed. By the time I looked at the clock again, it was already 7.10. There wasn't going to be time for a shower, and that wasn't going to help things at all. This was going to be a rough day.

And then I remembered that it was Sunday. A contented smile creeping across my exhausted and sleep-disfigured face, I fell back into my bed and asleep.

When I woke up again at 9.45, I felt a certain uneasiness about getting out of bed. I didn't have anything to be worried about, but I felt that if I got out of bed, I'd set a chain of events in motion that would lead to pain, suffering, and general discontent on my part. E-mail was going to play a pivotal role in this crisis, and I knew it. I could just feel it. From the safety of my bed, I cast a glare at my computer, knowing that within its silical catacombs, it held the key to my undoing. I had a meeting at 10.30 and knew I had to get up to start preparing, but the portent of an evil e-mail kept me cornered in my bed.

By 10.15, I knew I couldn't avoid it any longer. I needed to get up, out of bed, and face the day. I flipped open my laptop and stared at the screen through bleary eyes, dreading my fate. The computer, sensing my trepidation, prolonged my agony by taking an extra long time to connect to the wireless network. Eventually, Google Talk vomited out the e-mail that was going to ruin my whole day. I squinted at it, so as to properly read my fate.

"1/1 - Slate Magazine: Today's papers: A Surge of Discontent - Slate Magazine today's papers A Surge of Disconte"

Not surprisingly, today was a mostly ho-hum, ordinary day. Looks like the morning e-mail sets the tone for the day, after all.