May 13, 1994
Dear Everyone:
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been making a really serious
effort to get to work late.
For years now, I have worked from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with an hour
off for lunch. Before that, I
worked 7:30 - 4:30. Why did I
change to the earlier time? You
may well ask, since it is widely known that I am
not a "morning person".
Getting out of bed is probably
the hardest thing I do every day. I
live for Saturdays when I can sleep until noon.
There were two reasons for switching the times.
The first was that, by going to
work a half-hour earlier, I could change from my existing van pool to
another, thereby getting as far away as possible from a certain
individual who was driving me (pun intended) crazy.
She was the driver of the
aforementioned existing van pool. She
was also my boss and thought nothing of asking me to fill in for her as
driver whenever she felt like it.
The second reason was that, by getting off work at 4:00, I could be home
by 5:30 (yes, it does take
that long), which would leave me enough time in the evening to put in
some exercise, which would be very healthy.
But the facts of the matter are these:
1.
That person left the Company
years ago. So why am I still
coming into work at 7:00? Habit.
2.
My second van pool has long since folded and I have been taking BART for
quite some time now. And, far
from leaving work at 4:00, I often stay until nearly 6:00, which leaves
no time for exercising. So why am
I still coming in at 7:00? Bad
habit.
All of this occurred to me when my job changed and someone asked me what
time I would be coming into work each day.
Up until now, the morning ritual
went something like this:
3:53 am Clock radio goes
off. Lamp on the desk comes on.
No, I
don't get up.
Do I look crazy to you?
I hit the snooze bar and go
straight back to sleep. (Sometimes,
I hit the snooze bar without ever actually waking up.)
Important note: The "Alarm Off"
bar on the new clock radio happens to be in the exact same position as
the snooze bar on the old clock. Some
retraining of reflexes has been necessary.
4:00 am Clock radio goes off
again and is summarily silenced. I roll over.
4:07 am Clock radio makes another
attempt, which generally lasts about 5 seconds before the snooze bar
goes back into action.
4:14 am Etc.
4:21 am Etc.
4:28 am I have to seriously
consider actually getting up.
If I wait until 4:35 (you will have already figured out that the snooze
bar is on a seven-minute cycle), I'm officially "late".
As an added precaution, there is
another clock on the bottom shelf of the bedside table.
If I haven't gotten up by 4:30,
it proceeds to chirp aggressively ("chirp-chirp!
chirp-chirp! chirp-chirp!")
until someone, grapping blindly, finds a way to either shut it off or
kill it.
The rest of the morning follows a normal routine and I'm generally out
the door by 5:40, which gets me to the BART station in time for the 6:00
train, which arrives promptly at 6:02 (unless you're counting on it, of
course). This gets me into the
Montgomery Street Station at 6:42-ish, which gives me plenty of time to
get a bagel and get into the office well before 7:00.
I decided last week to try getting to work at 7:30.
So I reset the clock radio, the
timer on the lamp, and the chirping clock to all go off 15 minutes
later. I missed the 6:00 train,
as planned, but the 6:09 was a few minutes late and, by catching it, I
arrived at work just before 7:00. Obviously,
I needed to try harder.
I'm sure that, with enough effort, I will succeed.
In other news…
Movies:
Schindler's
List.
I went back to see it again and,
I must say, it's even better the second time around. Once you get past
the horrendous subject matter, you can start to appreciate the many
nuances and subtleties, not to mention the
haunting music. Definitely
worth a second trip.
Unfortunately, my viewing was disturbed by two old biddies who sat with
their feet on the seats and talked all through the show.
Really, we
must do something about these people who talk during movies.
Personally, I've always preferred
burning at the stake; but getting the
EPA permits would be a
major hassle.
Bad Girls.
This is what happens when four
men get together and come up with a story about a group of women in the
Old West, then hand
the whole mess over to a female script writer to try and make sense of
it. She was less than successful.
Serial Mom.
Director
John
Waters is, in “Jeannie's” words, "Not quite ready for mainstream."
This is not the comedy that the
advertising leads you to believe. It's
about a "perfect" suburban family who gradually come to realize that Mom
is really, really killing
people when they do something she doesn't like.
Kathleen
Turner plays Mom to perfection. Rikki
Lake has lost a ton of weight, but she is still too old to be
playing teenagers. Sam
Waterston’s talents are wasted as the husband.
All he gets to do is reaction
shots. There are only so many
ways that you can look at the camera and think, "My wife is crazy."
Still, it does put real life into perspective.
If you've ever found yourself
thinking, "I could kill that little so-and-so" for whatever
transgression they may have committed, this movie gives you an idea of
what things would be like if people went ahead with these little
impulses.
Maybe burning at the stake is a trifle extreme, after all.
Love, as always,
Pete
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