Alarming
Posted By Phil on October 16, 2009
Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep.
I can only assume that that’s the sound of an unplanned almost one-month hiatus on this website. The amount of shit flowing through my brain1 has been staggering, really, and I’ve had every reason to want to write every day. Only I’ve been devoid of any energy to really do so, and I have a thing about always wanting to be at the top of my game when I write.
Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep.
Much of my writing energy at this time is being consumed by grad school. This bothers me less than I imagined it would, actually, except for the fact that the topics about which I’ve had to write don’t exactly have top billing for me. Still, at least I am writing, and kicking ass at it, yo.
Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep.
My little brother and his girlfriend are visiting for the weekend, and so far we’ve managed to tear it up quite a bit out here.
Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep.
A little over a year ago, I bought a watch because I was told I needed one for my clinical therapy time. I went to Target and bought a $40 watch that was on clearance for $17 or so. I had no intention of wearing it save for the four hours a week of therapy time, so I begged the poor Target employee to set it for me. She was sweet enough to do so, or else I was belligerent enough that she was begrudgingly humoring me. Since then, the only function I’ve figured out how to use is the stopwatch, and its usefulness is overshadowed by how much effort it requires for me to get it to work.
Needless to say, the watch spends half the year at the correct time and the rest of the year at the correct time for my neighboring time zone. I tried to read the manual once, but its tiny print, not to mention it’s sixteen tiny pages, made me give up after all of five seconds.
About two months ago, I heard the beep-beeping of a tiny alarm, and for the life of me could not figure out what it was. It was 7 o’clock in the morning, and what I was doing awake at that hour escapes me. The beeping stopped after thirty seconds and I forgot about it until the next morning at precisely the same time. I keep the watch in my bag, and perhaps my stoic gait one day caused it to bump a little button here and there, and consequently set the alarm function.
The alarm goes off daily at 7am, and short of throwing the watch into a pool or giving it to someone who wasn’t asking for a watch, per se, I have no idea how to turn the damn thing off. So it serves, forevermore at this time, as a daily reminder that yet another day has passed and there is so much that I still have yet to do.
Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep.
1That’s right, I’ve been listening to Ben Folds again.
I’m assuming these things don’t come with manuals… but some beers and a little ingenuity, I bet we can figure it out.
1. I ALWAYS appreciate a Ben Folds reference, and that one is a good one. 2. You’re the only person following me on tumblr, and I appreciate that. Though I did just join yesterday, so maybe by tomorrow I’ll have two people? Irregardless, you are the first! 3. If my watch (which I don’t wear, they hurt my wrist when I type and I’m on a computer 75% of the time) beeped everyday at 7 a.m., I’d have to get a new watch for that sole reason.
This post kind of makes me wish I had a stopwatch. I would time EVERYTHING. Like, the time it took me to write this comment. My whole life would revolve around the words-
READY, GO!
and it would be awesome.
I have totally had this problem before. There was a beeping sound that would happen in my classroom at 11:12 every morning. It drove me insane for most of the school year, until I found someone’s old watch in one of the cabinets!
I had a clock that my exroommate set to go off at 9:30 am. For YEARS it went off at 9:30/8:30 depending on the time of year. I finally just threw it in the trash. My life is much better now.
I have a watch like that, too, except I bought it for Italy. So it goes off around 7 a.m. Italy time. Midnight here. Every day. And I have no idea how to change the time OR turn off the alarm.
Glad I’m not the only one who has issues like this…