Improv Resource Center - Forums
The following things are true:
- I'm single.
- I'm single because I'm coming out of a long relationship / engagement.
- People around me do strange stuff.
- Being a single guy leads me into a lot of memorable situations and stories.
- I don't write much anymore and I really want to get back to writing.
- These other journals rule and being in the company of such greatness is inspiring.
- Highlighting memorably daily events and distilling them to a single "snapshot" moment seems pretty cool.
Notable Event of the Day: Friday, 5:00am, October 10 - The Sleep Burglar
It seems no matter what happens, I can't get a good night's sleep lately. I am one of those people who consistently needs 7-8 hours of sleep or else I really suffer the next day, yawning and just feeling mentally "sluggish" all day. I've been exercising lately, so that helps me feel marginally more rested, but time after time it seems events conspire to keep me from a peaceful night's rest.
Last week, on a Thursday night, I was really tired from a long week at work. Things have been a little stressful at the office here, mainly because this economy just makes it harder and harder to sell software. I made a promise to myself Thursday night to get to bed early, not only to catch up on sleep but also in anticipation of a promising Happy Hour the next night. A "girl I used to date" was going to be there, I hadn't seen her in a few years, and of course my normal group of guy friends that I've been hanging out with the past month and a half since I've been single.
At nearly 2am I find myself still laying in bed, glued to the TV screen, unable to fall asleep. I adjust my alarm clock to 8:45am to compensate for this unfortunate turn of events. A sense of dread creeps over me as I realize I am already behind-the-eight-ball in accomplishing my slumber goals.
As luck would have it, at 5am on the nose, my doorbell rings very loudly. It's doubly loud since my house has minimal furniture (my fiancee took most everything when she moved out, and since I had thrown out my bachelor furniture when we moved in together, the place is bare mostly bare walls and bare tile with a bed, a couch, and an entertainment center). So this terrible chiming noise wakes me up in a total panic. I fly out of bed, more asleep than awake, and grab my trusty .45 from under the bed. With hair poofy hair and breath that could kill any intruder, I slink towards the front door in traditional "combat position".
Let me pause for a second. Why would I grab a gun just because the doorbell rang at 5am? Honestly, I have no idea. Somehow through the mental cobwebs I thought this might be some sophisticated robbery attempt. The "robber" would ring my doorbell, hide out of the line of sight of my peephole, and then clobber me when I opened the door. Or something like that. Only later did I realize that the doorbell is awfully loud and the neighbors can probably hear it, and plus, what would he do if I didn't open the door? His plan would be foiled and he wouldn't be left with much of a backup plan since, being wide awake, I'd be very keen to hear any other suspicious noises such as a window being broken or a door being jimmied. That strategy seems a little flawed.
Maybe I also thought it could be my ex-fiancee - that's the time she gets off work and maybe she has gone a little weird on me. But I didn't really think about that until much later.
I look through the peephole - no one is there. I look through a window that gives me an angle to see the front door area - no one is there. I popped open the door, gun in hand, and stepped out. No one around. By now I'm wide awake. I tried to go back to sleep, but I wasn't having much luck.
30 minutes later the doorbell goes off again. To make a long story short, it goes off every 10-15 minutes after that until I have to finally get dressed and ready for work. I didn't get another wink of sleep. Only after the first few times did I remember the previous owner of the house making a flippant comment that bears further scrutiny.
ME: How come the doorbell doesn't work?
FORMER OWNER: Oh, I unplugged it.
ME (thinking that I can't understand how you "unplug" a doorbell since it's based on wiring): What happened, is it broken?
FORMER OWNER: No, but for some reason it started going off one night in the middle of the night and wouldn't stop ringing all night, so I opened it up and unhooked the wires.
So there you have it. Of course the first thing I did when I bought the house and moved in was re-attach the wires in the doorbell, test it out, and think to myself smugly how foolish women are. I guess I sorta thought either someone had played a prank on her, or that the button had simply been stuck. Six months, 9 days after I moved in it was still working fine. Six months, 10 days after I moved in, it's ringing all night long.
I planned to unhook it again this past weekend but ya know, oddly enough, it hasn't happened again so I'm gonna take a wait-and-see approach.
Snapshot of the day: Standing by my door in my boxers, alfalfa-sprout hair, pitch dark, ready to confront the "doorbell bandit" with the business end of a Springfield 1911 A1 .45 caliber.
- I'm single.
- I'm single because I'm coming out of a long relationship / engagement.
- People around me do strange stuff.
- Being a single guy leads me into a lot of memorable situations and stories.
- I don't write much anymore and I really want to get back to writing.
- These other journals rule and being in the company of such greatness is inspiring.
- Highlighting memorably daily events and distilling them to a single "snapshot" moment seems pretty cool.
Notable Event of the Day: Friday, 5:00am, October 10 - The Sleep Burglar
It seems no matter what happens, I can't get a good night's sleep lately. I am one of those people who consistently needs 7-8 hours of sleep or else I really suffer the next day, yawning and just feeling mentally "sluggish" all day. I've been exercising lately, so that helps me feel marginally more rested, but time after time it seems events conspire to keep me from a peaceful night's rest.
Last week, on a Thursday night, I was really tired from a long week at work. Things have been a little stressful at the office here, mainly because this economy just makes it harder and harder to sell software. I made a promise to myself Thursday night to get to bed early, not only to catch up on sleep but also in anticipation of a promising Happy Hour the next night. A "girl I used to date" was going to be there, I hadn't seen her in a few years, and of course my normal group of guy friends that I've been hanging out with the past month and a half since I've been single.
At nearly 2am I find myself still laying in bed, glued to the TV screen, unable to fall asleep. I adjust my alarm clock to 8:45am to compensate for this unfortunate turn of events. A sense of dread creeps over me as I realize I am already behind-the-eight-ball in accomplishing my slumber goals.
As luck would have it, at 5am on the nose, my doorbell rings very loudly. It's doubly loud since my house has minimal furniture (my fiancee took most everything when she moved out, and since I had thrown out my bachelor furniture when we moved in together, the place is bare mostly bare walls and bare tile with a bed, a couch, and an entertainment center). So this terrible chiming noise wakes me up in a total panic. I fly out of bed, more asleep than awake, and grab my trusty .45 from under the bed. With hair poofy hair and breath that could kill any intruder, I slink towards the front door in traditional "combat position".
Let me pause for a second. Why would I grab a gun just because the doorbell rang at 5am? Honestly, I have no idea. Somehow through the mental cobwebs I thought this might be some sophisticated robbery attempt. The "robber" would ring my doorbell, hide out of the line of sight of my peephole, and then clobber me when I opened the door. Or something like that. Only later did I realize that the doorbell is awfully loud and the neighbors can probably hear it, and plus, what would he do if I didn't open the door? His plan would be foiled and he wouldn't be left with much of a backup plan since, being wide awake, I'd be very keen to hear any other suspicious noises such as a window being broken or a door being jimmied. That strategy seems a little flawed.
Maybe I also thought it could be my ex-fiancee - that's the time she gets off work and maybe she has gone a little weird on me. But I didn't really think about that until much later.
I look through the peephole - no one is there. I look through a window that gives me an angle to see the front door area - no one is there. I popped open the door, gun in hand, and stepped out. No one around. By now I'm wide awake. I tried to go back to sleep, but I wasn't having much luck.
30 minutes later the doorbell goes off again. To make a long story short, it goes off every 10-15 minutes after that until I have to finally get dressed and ready for work. I didn't get another wink of sleep. Only after the first few times did I remember the previous owner of the house making a flippant comment that bears further scrutiny.
ME: How come the doorbell doesn't work?
FORMER OWNER: Oh, I unplugged it.
ME (thinking that I can't understand how you "unplug" a doorbell since it's based on wiring): What happened, is it broken?
FORMER OWNER: No, but for some reason it started going off one night in the middle of the night and wouldn't stop ringing all night, so I opened it up and unhooked the wires.
So there you have it. Of course the first thing I did when I bought the house and moved in was re-attach the wires in the doorbell, test it out, and think to myself smugly how foolish women are. I guess I sorta thought either someone had played a prank on her, or that the button had simply been stuck. Six months, 9 days after I moved in it was still working fine. Six months, 10 days after I moved in, it's ringing all night long.
I planned to unhook it again this past weekend but ya know, oddly enough, it hasn't happened again so I'm gonna take a wait-and-see approach.
Snapshot of the day: Standing by my door in my boxers, alfalfa-sprout hair, pitch dark, ready to confront the "doorbell bandit" with the business end of a Springfield 1911 A1 .45 caliber.