Third time's a charm

Have you ever seen the movie Signs? Besides having two extremely terrifying scenes in it, it also featured the adorable Abigail Breslin, prior to her Little Miss Sunshine fame. In Signs, her character is always drinking water and leaving half-filled glasses all over the house. I, too, have been drinking water and habitually leaving glasses of water all over the place, making me think of the movie every time I go around picking up after myself.

In her case, the water she leaves everywhere saves the world when it turns out to be the downfall of the invading aliens. When the water is thrown on them, it burns through their flesh and kills them. In my case, my water didn't end up killing aliens or saving the world. It ended up burning through and killing my alarm clock.

I woke up one morning, for whatever reason, very flustered. I turned to hit snooze and knocked over my glass of water, which dumped right into the top of our alarm clock. I unplugged it immediately and turned it over, hoping to salvage it. After drying upside down for a few hours, it was clear the alarm clock was a loss. It would turn on and keep time, but wouldn't let me set the alarm, possibly the most important feature of the whole device.

I went to Target to pick up a new alarm clock. I bought a cool one that let you change the colors of the numbers and even turn off the light for total darkness. The catch: It only let you snooze three times. Well, after a few days of Alan cussing at the alarm clock for not going off continually, I took it back and traded it in for a new model. Ah! The frustration! On attempt two, I bought a battery-operated alarm clock. And not just battery as a backup, but battery ONLY. Needless to say, that was not going to work for us. So after a third trip to Target, I have now purchased a corded, repeating snooze, non-waterlogged alarm clock. It even has two alarms, so that I can set one for myself and one for Alan. Turns out that the third time was a charm with the alarm.

But as I was taking back version one, I got to wondering. Although it was clear that we needed more than three snoozes, should we really need that many? Isn't that a little much? Are we a little lazy? Are we the only people in the world that have a history of sleeping through three snoozes and not even realizing it? So, to satisfy my curiosity, I thought I'd take a poll of your snooze practices to get a feel for what's going on out there in the general sleep world. Just click your answer and click Vote. You can also go to View Results to see what everyone is saying...and to see if you're a weirdo too, although you probably already know that you are.

How many times do you hit snooze?

• None. I'm up and at 'em with the first alarm.
• Once or twice. I like that extra snooze time.
• On occasion, more than twice. Sometimes I just can't get out of bed.
• Regularly more than twice. I'm lazy and/or don't have to be anywhere at a certain time.

Created on October 11, 2007

View Results

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Three words

In college, when I had some free time and wanted to procrastinate, I would fill out those "All About You"-type email surveys. I got this one as a bulletin on MySpace, and thought I'd fill it out for old times' sake. Plus, I thought it'd be fun to see how I do whittling it down to three words. See, I really am an editing nerd.

The rules: You have to use three words to answer each question. No more, no less. It’s harder than you think.*

1. Where is your cell phone?
In purse, maybe?

2. Your girlfriend/boyfriend/hubby?
Wonderful, hilarious Alan

3. Your hair?
A big mess

4. Where is your father?
In heaven above

5. Your favorite thing to do?
[Erin's explanatory note: many contenders here, all use three]
Travel with Alan
Hang with family
Play with Marti
Laugh with friends
Read a book
Watch The Bachelor

6. Your dream last night?
Don't remember one

7. Your favorite drink?
Right now, water

8. Your dream car?
Hybrid: Toyota Prius

9. The room you’re in?
Living room office

10. Your fears?
More vet bills

11. Who did you hang out with last night?
My dearest Alan

12. What aren’t you good at?
Fixing the toilet
Neither is Alan

13. Muffins?
Sometimes, if blueberry

14. One of your wish list items?
A new dresser

15. The last thing you did?
Answered question above

16. What are you wearing?
Nothing. Just kidding.

17. Your pet?
Loveable, snuggly Marti

18. Your computer?
Monitor needs enlarging

19. Your life?
Quite an adventure

20. Your mood?
Content and calm

21. Missing?
Family in Kansas

22. What are you thinking about right now?
See above question

23. Your car?
Needs oil change

24. Your work?
Super busy now

25. Your summer?
Gone, now fall

26. Your relationship status?
Married: Anniversary yesterday

27. Your favorite color(s)?
Shades of green

28. When is the last time you laughed?
Watching The Office

29. Last time you cried?
The other day

30. School?
I love crayons

*Erin's explanatory note: Not that hard. Quite enjoyable really. Ok, I'm done. Notice the threes. Ha ha ha.

Happy Anniversary!

On this, the most romantic of federal holidays, I would like to wish Alan a happy anniversary! Two years of wedded bliss and to many more!

The Rock

The next day, after a blister-inducing exploration of San Francisco, my mom, Kyle and I set out for a well-known landmark: Alcatraz. Alan didn't go because, after having swam 300 meters in Lake Shawnee one summer, he isn't that impressed with the one-and-a-quarter-mile swim it would take to escape from the prison in the freezing and very strong currents of the bay. I, however, was impressed with the prison. And by impressed I mean, "I would never want to serve time there."



When you got up to the prison, you were issued a headset that led you on a guided tour, giving first-hand accounts of escape attempts and tantrums over spaghetti. The standard cell:



If you were brave, you could get locked into one of the solitary confinement cells, in the dark, but we bypassed that option. Here the super cheerful recreation area:



The view of San Francisco from Alcatraz.



After the Alcatraz tour, my mom and I limped to Pier 39 to have lunch while Kyle called us wimps. Then, as I was going into the bathroom at the restaurant, I underestimated the heft of the door, didn't get it open all the way, and banged my knee into the corner of the door. Really, really hard. I was then seriously gimping around the rest of the day. We did some souvenir shopping, and while Kyle really wanted a souvenir "Alcatraz Psycho Ward Outpatient" shirt, he left with a pair of sunglasses instead. And because my mom and I were in such bad shape, we threw in the towel and passed up a trip to the top of Coit Tower and opted to head back home for a nap and ice packs instead.

A September to Remember

Alan and I have a few months of California living under our belts, and now we have successfully had two rounds of visitors out to see us. My mom and Kyle arrived on Thursday after spending a day at Pebble Beach. I took them on a thrilling tour of the apartment and the dog park, and then Alan and I took them out to eat and showed them a bit of campus. Mostly just the creepy parts: the mausoleum, the Angel of Grief and the cactus garden. We saved the big campus tour for Friday, when we went up in the Hoover Tower. This being my third time up, I learned that you can actually seen San Francisco from the tower. We ended up walking miles around campus. It was great.

In the Rodin Sculpture Garden. Mom, putting her hand upon a naked hip; Kyle, palming a head.



After lunch with Alan, we headed up to "the city" to show Kyle the famous Lombard Street and the Golden Gate Bridge. I think I was even more impressed with the bridge this time around. It's truly an amazing feat of engineering.





From the bridge we headed to our Fisherman's Wharf hotel. After a quick "break" (aka dropping off our bags) we headed off to explore the city by foot. We walked around North Beach (SF's Little Italy) and found Chinatown, which we had fun exploring.



Chinatown was pretty much exactly as I had imagined and seen in movies. We even saw two women having a turf war over which corner each one was allowed to pass out her restaurant pamphlets. I couldn't understand a word, yet knew they had to have been yelling Chinese curse words at each other. We continued on from Chinatown and kept walking...and walking...and walking. We definitely got to see a lot of the city, thanks to the young 23-year-old in the group. Old ladies prone to foot problems like my mom and I never would have made it alone.

Happy Birthday Miss Marti!

Two years ago today little Martikins came wriggling into the world. When she was born, Alan and I hadn't gotten married yet and didn't even know we'd be in the market for a little pug that had already been born. To celebrate Marti's special day, I'm going to take her to the dog park for an extra long time, and then maybe take her to Petco to pick out a toy. It'll be huge.

The birthday girl!


Cute little Marti with her hind legs demurely crossed.



Marti and her favorite duck. Notice the gouged-out eyes. That took her one minute to do.



You can't get more precious than this.



And to top off a Marti-filled post, I might as well share this video. I gave Marti broccoli as an experiment one day and she fell in love. It's a fantastic new toy for her. And yes, she does eat it eventually. Funny pug.

A Bed of Pillows

I got on the computer tonight to see if I could upload our whale watching video--I forgot to mention that Alan got the breach on video. But I can't upload it because it's a certain file type that I can't upload. Ah well, I'll just have to do it the old fashioned way: pull it out home-movie style for all of my guests in the future.

Anyway, I felt so unfulfilled and restless because of my failed video-uploading attempt that I had to get out of bed and blog about something. Marti, of course, is my fall back topic of choice.

Sometimes when I'm doing chores and and other various activities around the house, Marti will tire of following me around, watching my every move. I say "tire" because I think I literally exhaust her. When I notice that she's disappeared, I inevitably will go into the bedroom and find her doing something adorable. Tonight it was this: