Monday, May 21, 2007

Rude awakenings

I've lived in my apartment on 1st Avenue for four years now. Since my bedroom is behind the living room and away from the street noise, I have always been able to sleep through the various nocturnal sounds of New York. Until today, that is. I was blissfully asleep early this morning when a car alarm outside my apartment jarred me awake at 4:15 AM. This alarm, which belonged to a while Nissan sports car parked right in front of my living room, kept going off every few minutes for about an hour. It was a steady, pulsing alarm, like a clock has, not one of those alarms that plays five different sirens repeatedly. After 10 minutes I called 311 and must have mentioned the word "emergency" somewhere, because the operator got a 911 operator on the phone with us. So I had to explain that it wasn't an emergency per se, but that I would appreciate it if there was anything they could do to take care of the problem. I didn't stay in my living room to see if anything happened; instead, I went back to bed and tried to sleep. I don't think my phone call made any difference. Because my cat likes to come and go at night, I couldn't close the bedroom door the whole way. I turned on my bedroom air conditioner and tried putting a pillow over my head, but I could still hear the alarm. It must have stopped eventually, because I fell asleep again around 5:30 or 6 AM.

So thanks to some yutz who obviously wasn't nearby this morning to attend to his car, I'm operating on about 4 hours of sleep. This is on top of losing some sleep this weekend with my mother in town and the two of us staying up late and getting up early. If I'm less than pleasant to deal with today, that's why.

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