I woke up a little early today. The idea was, that an electrician would come over this morning to look over some things with the heater, and I didn’t want him to show up while I was in the shower, so I made a point of getting up something like 6:45am or so. So when my mind rose drowsily from happy dreams into semi-awakeness, I briefly looked at the alarm clock and then decided it was time to get up.

So I got up. Went through the normal routine; I showered, shaved and brushed my teeth, clothed myself; spent a couple of minutes hunting down a matching pair of socks, as I always do; and in my rather good mood this morning, I was middle in the process of making breakfast for myself when I noticed that the clock on the microwave was totally off. It said “02:14″. I thought that was odd – there must have been a power outage or something – so I went to look at the big clock on the wall. It said the same thing.

At this moment, a hint of dark suspicion began to rise in my mind. I went to check the alarm clock beside by bed. It said “02:14″.

It took a few moments before the realization dawned on me that the reason why this night went by unusually fast, was not because I had slept so deep, but because it was still in the middle of night, and here I was fully clothed and ready go to work.

This does not happen often to me.

For a moment, the thought occurred to me that I might read a little in bed until morning, so I wouldn’t have to undress and go back to bed, but then a follow-up realization suggested that I had only been asleep for two hours and it was five more until I logically should wake up.

I went back to bed.

It took a while before I fell asleep again, mostly because I couldn’t stop laughing in the darkness, at the silliness of the situation. At point I felt rather thankful that I didn’t have a girlfriend – I suppose she would have looked rather curiously at me as I stood there by the bed, fully clothed, eating from a pack of youghurt at 2am in the morning.

Thank God for small mercies.