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Tuesday, Apr. 8, 2003 - 2:54 p.m.

Wake me up before you go-go

Something not good is happening to me. I've been waking up with an unsettling feeling for maybe months now, and it doesn't seem to be improving.

I hate to admit it, but I think I'm now a morning person.

Not Morning Person in that I have to be up in the morning, I can only function as the sun rises, I need to get my day going. Instead, I think I'm a morning person in the sense that I am becoming more accustomed to it, I'm doing more and becoming more comfortable with those earlier hours of the day. I'm not a Morning Addict, nor am I one of those Morning Nazis who criticizes anyone who sleeps past 9 a.m. or goes around intentionally being loud so that everyone else gets up when they're up.

I just think that now, for the first time since high school, I have enough of a routine where I wake up in the morning, leave the house, spend the day in a structured environment, return home, have dinner, enjoy my evening, sleep, repeat. Working in the sports department of a newspaper, my schedule was all over the place. I'd work from late afternoon (4 p.m. or so) until midnight or 1 a.m. I'd be in the office or at a game. Sometimes, when games � either high school, college, minor league or professional � were in the afternoon or late morning, I'd be out the door early and home by 5. Most importantly, I also worked weekends, which meant that I had weeknights off, sometimes not consecutive nights.

So I think this new routine is becoming THE routine. What I'm still learning is that it's OK not to sleep late. On Saturday, I couldn't sleep anymore after 9 a.m., yet I continued to shift and adjust and lie there next to Casey, until I realized that I didn't have to sleep as long as she did, I didn't have to wait until she woke up. So I got up, got me some Cheerios, and popped in a DVD of HBO's fabulous home-movie documentary When It Was A Game. (Thanks!)

Last night I came home at 11 p.m. because one of our small research staff was out sick and I had to stay until the magazine was put to bed since it was a closing night. So I walked out of the office 13 hours after I walked in, already having told people here that I wouldn't be in until about 11 this morning (I have a rule, which I'm told they also once � if not still currently � had at Sports Illustrated in which you have to have at least 12 hours off between shifts). I even stayed up until after midnight watching the end of the basketball game and playing Sims. But by 8 a.m., I was hungry and restless and I shuffled out of the bedroom to find Casey looking at me like I was dressed for Halloween on April 8. "Why are you up?" she asked. It was simple: because I didn't want to sleep anymore. I was rested enough with seven hours of sleep, and frankly, when I get home at 11 p.m., I don't want to spend 90 percent of my time at home asleep. Normally, I leave work, come home, enjoy several free hours before bed. If I come home, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, I have no free hours. This way, I was up at 8 a.m. and had two free hours before I even got in the shower. I'm feeling fine and it's a Tuesday (a light day in the office) and I'll probably be out of here at or around 6 and Casey and I will be off to IKEA to pick up the ellusive Markor base cabinet which will, once we follow the Naked Man's instructions and assemble it, allow me to be rid of the last boxes in the study. Woo-hoo!

���

So you know how the Weather Channel does the Local on the 8's? (You don't? So, what, you live in Hawaii?) And you know how they have music playing during it, and how at Christmas the music is usually from the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas? Well, the Charlie Brown part has nothing to do with my point. That music is already just instrumental and jazzy, so there's no manipulation needed. But sometimes they use what may not be the actual trademarked form but for lack of a better term I'll say Muzak. You know, the computerized instrumentation of pop standards to be used in elevators and doctors' offices and law firms so as not to make the mentally questionable customers go on shooting rampages (or is it causing them to do just that?). Well, the Weather Channel has gone to Muzak, or at least it did the other day, because I heard a Casio keyboard rendition of that classic club tune that invites everyone to "Come on ride the train (Get on it!)." I think we need a new term for Weather Channel Muzak. How about Wuzak? Lame and uncreative, sure, but it gets the job done.

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