This morning, while still in the realms of sleep-dom, I decided to start playing with gas.

Well, it all started when the usual morning-boiler-gurglings just weren’t up to their normal banter. My water wasn’t heating up. I went got out the wee mirror to angle it at the hole where the pilot light shows through. All black.

So (of course) next I went away to the kitchen to have a cuppa tea and a wee inertia-stress to myself , then tried to remember how to re-light the pilot.

After a few failed attempts, and the dawning realisation that I wasn’t going to make it into work for eight, I eventually had the patience to get it lit (and stay lit). All fine and well

Next for hot water and/or central heating. But, oh no, that wasn’t happening. Time flying by meant it was time to run for my work train, so I had a few mins of failure before relegating the issue to the “to solve later” braincell.

On coming home, I tried again. No good. Then I stared at my boiler in frustration…

I hadn’t switched the main gas back on after relighting the pilot!

du-uh![/homer, the greek poet]

So yeah, after periodically stressing all day that my boiler was bust there’s actually nothing wrong but my brain-connections.

*goes to sit all curled up next to the radiatior with a good book*

Ok, I’m one of these people who just would never ever remember to open her eyes in the morning if it wasn’t for her trustily annoying rude awakening.

So, an alarm clock is pretty much an essential item of any finitely-expandable-inventory. However, with the advent of those things they call mobile phones, I got one with this “alarm clock” feature. At first I thought it was crazy – whyever should you need 4 different alarms set at once!?

But then I cottoned onto the idea of using the alarms as reminders for my daily life. (Yes, I am slow!) I set alarms to:

1. remind me when an ebay auction ended
2. time how long my camera batteries had been on the charger
3. …. plenty other equally mundane and trivial matters…

But just yesterday I have launched forth into new alarming territory: I decided to set an alarm to tell myself to go to bed.

You see, I always have these grand ideas of “I’ll go to bed at time X, then if my (morning) alarm is set at time Y and |X-Y|mod24~=8 then all is rosy”. And seeing I mostly fall asleep pretty quick, this kinda works.

Or it would, if only I could persuade myself to go to bed at the right time

You see, there’s just sooo much *life* to get done before bedtime! It sometimes seems like the daftest idea in the world to head off to be unconscious just when you’re getting into the swing of things!!

Why do I have to be a late-night owl!? I suppose its my Daddy’s-genes fault…

By the time I’ve finished doing all the fun things, its usually already past Time X, and then there’s still the mad prepare-for-tomorrow rush, and actually getting ready for bed. By that time, I’m so late compared to plans, that it hardly seems worth aiming for anything in particular any more, and I drift into dreamworld while still completing the house-tidy-process.

So, now I’m setting the alarm for 10:30. That gives me half an hour to get ready for bed… and if I’m quick, that still means potentially 27mins of book-reading while snuggled up in my duvet.

Thankyou to the inventor of the alarm clock