I have the weirdest alarm clock ever.

Normal alarm clocks don't always work with me. I still manage to sleep through them far too often.

For a while I was able to use the alarm function in my cellphone. So great was my fear that I'd miss a call from you know who, any noise whatsoever coming from that phone would find me springing out of bed. So I set the alarm noise to the same ring as the incoming call noise.

But after a zillion years of disappointment, I started sleeping through that noise as well.

Lately, and when I say lately I mean for the last several weeks and maybe even months, I've come to rely on a novel new way to know when it's time to get up. At least on the weekends. On weekdays I seem to be on my own.

What happens on the weekends is that, 700 miles away from me, a girl writes me an email. She writes me an email, and I wake up.

Doesn't seem like it would be possible, does it? I mean, even if she was really pounding the shit out of those keys I shouldn't be able to detect it from more than maybe 30 yards or so. Certainly not 700 miles.

I don't know how it works. I just know that it does. When my friend RockGirl sends me an email, I'm up within 5 minutes of when she hits the send button. Sometimes it's 5 minutes before, so that gives me time to get myself a drink and take a piss and shake some of the cobwebs out of my head. Sometimes it's 5 minutes after and so I postpone those usual morning activities until after I've read the message.

It's a nice way to wake up, that's for sure.