My Internal Clock (Fancies Carsten Tice)

I have a fine-tuned internal clock. When I want to take a power nap in the afternoon, I will wake up precisely 20 minutes after I lie down. When I set an alarm for the morning--regardless of what time--I will wake up 1-10 minutes before the alarm 90% of the time. So long as I have a definite idea of the time I need to be awake, I typically will be.

And then there are Mondays. On Monday mornings I am scheduled to begin work at 7:00am. It takes me fifteen minutes to eat breakfast, ten minutes to shower, five minutes to shave/brush teeth/deodorize, and ten minutes to get to work. That means I should be out of bed by 6:20am to make sure I can accomplish everything and be to work on time. I set my alarm to make sure I am up by 6:15am. However, for whatever reason (it's neither here nor there) my body has decided that I should wake up at 5:00am. No matter when I set my alarm, it seems, I will wake up at five on Mondays.

There is a definite benefit here, however, and I believe it is partly to blame. If I had nothing better to do with my morning I would definitely try to go back to bed; but waiting at my place of work is a groggy, loopy, eccentric and fantastic* individual named Carsten Tice who is counting down the minutes until the end of her** grave shift, and as soon as I am awake enough to produce a coherent thought it comes to mind that I could either a) attempt to go back to sleep or b) go to work early and be entertained, encouraged, and overall made a better person. Clearly the latter wins out. Plus it's an excuse to have doughnuts and hot chocolate for breakfast. There is no negative here.

This blog could alternatively have been titled, "How I Spent My Morning (Minus the Doughnuts)."



*I realize that my choice of this word is precarious. To call a person fantastic does carry a certain weight, but based on these synonyms I believe I am fully justified. 95% of the words in that link accurately describe Carsten Tice. Ignore all words with negative human connotations (e.g. artificial, massive, and grotesque).

**For those who have never come in contact with the name, Carstens can be found in both the male and female variety (much like gazelles and other animals). This particular one is female.