The Emergency Alert System

Revealing fact # 374 about living with Joe.
His alarm clock is the loudest thing I have EVER heard.

I am not a light sleeper. I have -- in the past anyway -- slept through tornado warnings, alarms at finals time, bats in my house and who knows what else. Now, I don't sleep as well but that is because I have to get up several times a night to use the bathroom. Which for someone who likes their sleep (me) is a bit of a pain in the ass.
My sleep is normally only interrupted by one of two sounds...1) my alarm or 2) my cell phone ringing.
This morning, in what I am sure will be about a once a year occurrence, Joe had to be out of the house before me.
And when his alarm went off this morning, I swear I jumped about 6 inches in bed from the shrill, 80 decibel, eardrum shattering sound it made. Now, keep in mind, in recent days things like getting out of chairs, getting up from the couch and getting out of bed have become a multi-step process. So anything that made me move that quickly was LOUD. I mean, we are talking the monthly testing of the emergency alert system loud. If I was sitting right by the speakers when they tested it loud.
It was so loud in fact that it "woke" not just me, barely woke Joe but the little leprechaun as well. Within minutes of that thing going off and launching me -- somewhat violently from my well-earned sleep -- little man was all over the joint. And by joint I mean the roughly soccer ball size area that is my insides. And frankly, he didn' t really stop all morning.

Spent the weekend down at my Dad's house for the annual block party. Like many an event that I have loved, this one too took on a new point of view when you are sober. It's not that it still isn't fun. The people are still great - but come about 11 PM when everyone has been drinking for oh, about 7 hours and you are on your 4th version of cranberry juice and... insert non-alcoholic mixer here, you just don't have the patience to sit around listening to drunk people try to out-drunk-people each other. My brother and his pressing desire to be the biggest drunk there, leading the way. Seems 2 weeks down in Texas has already instilled a "everything is bigger in Texas" mentality as he was drinking out of one of our European liter mugs. Which means, in normal people terms a big-ass glass of beer that gets warm when normal people drink it because there is SO much in there.
My same brother that it seems, will be going back to Iraq in January. For the third time.
Yeah, we will visit that topic on another day.
That is the weekend in a nutshell. There should be more -- there should always be more -- but that is what I got for tonight.

Now Watching: Monday Night Football. Oh yeah, how about those Bears last night?!? Woo Hoo.