Trivialities

I had grand plans that this blog wouldn't turn into simply a chronicle of my everyday life. I was going to write only journalistic style posts, with point and purpose, but looking over my previous posts (not just the last one) it would seem inevitable that there will be a fair bit of chaff amongst the grain. And I suppose that isn't a bad thing. I'm willing to accept, if you are, that some of my posts will be trivial in the extreme. I warn you that this is one of them!

So, at the end of week three (UoW) and week two (UNE) I'm already behind. That won't surprise anyone at all, I'm sure, except possibly Damian, who doesn't know me nearly as well as my other likely readers. And I'm sure that you'll all have plenty to say about that, but I've never listened to you before on this matter, so why would I start now?? I take Damian's weekly declaration of up-to-date-hood as a challenge and a rebuke in one, and anything that helps me to get up to date is a good thing, so keep it up, Damian!

All my problems would be solved, solved I tell you, if only I could get out of bed in the morning. It is simply impossible to do everything that I'm attempting to do when my day starts at the crack of noon. Fire and brimstone alone isn't enough to get me out of bed, as has been demonstrated frequently in the past. I need some carrot, as opposed to just stick, as Blayney aptly put it.

Which brings me to the reason I actually sat down in front of the computer to write a post. I bought a clock radio! (I did warn you this was a trivial one.)

So I went in to town this weekend to buy it. I was thinking that I'd spend, oh, $20 or so. Well, it wasn't to be. All the clock radios that had what I wanted were $50 or more. And man, were they ugly! There was no way I was going to get to sleep next to one of those things. So after umming and ahhing and general wandering around, I bought this thing:



(I haven't yet bought a digital camera, so this blurry image was taken using my phone.)

OK, so it's a bit more than a clock radio. But now I can play CDs in my room, fall asleep to soothing chant, play study music when reading, and most importantly, wake up to the radio!

So here's the plan: I get ten minutes of news on the radio, allowing me to get used to the idea of being awake and eventually getting up before my real alarm goes off at ten past seven. And if that doesn't work, I'll migrate from Radio National to Triple J. And if *that* doesn't work, I can choose a CD to wake up to instead of the radio. I can borrow a death-metal CD from my brother if it comes to that.

And if all this fails, there's one last strategy: to ask Girl to refuse coffee with me after a particular time, so I'll have to be in before then. But then we're back to the stick, rather than the carrot.