I'm struggling with a bit of the sleepiness this morning. Maybe because I took an allergy pill a couple of hours ago. Those things kind of put me out. Even the non-drowsy varieties. Especially the non-drowsy varieties. But the itchy scratchy eyes, the peppery nose, the sneezing at regular intervals . . . well, it finally got the best of me. And it was worth dealing with a bit of the sleepy to stop the madness. I don't know what it is that's wreaking havoc on my head, but man I want to shake it's hand for a job well done.

Or it may be that I'm sleepy because C and I did our regular Tuesday morning 5 am trip to the train station so C could be at her office in New Jersey by nine. Admit it, C has the kind of commute you cross your fingers and wish for all your life, doesn't she? Lucky girl. On these mornings, the dance goes like this: 4 am alarm. C gets up and showers. She dresses and prepares her suitcase, using the light from the hallway so I can put in another 45 minutes of semi-snoozing. I roll out of bed about 4:55. Cold water to take the stick out of my eyes. Throw on warm clothes. Wool socks. Crocs. Take C's packed suitcase downstairs. Meet in the kitchen for a quiet bite together. Then it's a 5-minute ride to Penn Station. Out of the car. Taxis, florescent lighting. Morning commuters catching the train. Zombies, most of them, on their way to DC. Suitcase out of the back. Kiss goodbye. Car door closed, and one exit north on 83 and I'm back home, where the kitchen clock radio reads 5:35 am. Some mornings I put out the lights and put my head back on the pillow. Other mornings, like this one, I take care of some busywork because, for some reason, I seem to mind it less before the sun rises. I focus best in the dark. And I guess it doesn't really matter if the dark is late at night or early in the morning. But if I do this — if I fight the urge to go back to bed — I inevitably have to take an hour's nap before noon. Which is what I did this morning. Around 8:30.

So yeah. Take your pick: allergy pill or early rise. One of the two, or both, put me in this sleepy state.

And the busywork this morning? It was a much-needed cleaning up of my Mac. A deleting of files. An installing of updates. I've been putting off all of this because I've had a project on my plate. But I launched phase one of that yesterday. And so there's a bit of a breather. I still haven't installed Leopard, but I've gotten all the other stuff done so as to make way.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject, I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon on the phone with Western Digital's tech support so they could help me figure out why the My Book Terabyte drive I bought for backups was having Mac configuration trouble. And that was, as you might expect, about as great a way to crash back to reality after a holiday as you can finagle. With extra points for style.

Four separate calls. Each with a hold time of 30 minutes or more, followed by a conversation that seemed to be in English, though if you really broke it down and tried to identify a particular word, you'd be hard pressed. There was a lot of guessing involved. We each repeated syllables in patterns that made sense to each of us in our mind, but as they entered the ether of phone line, all meaning got lost. So each of us made what we could of it.

One particularly frustrating exchange — which took place after about 32 minutes on hold listening to music that I'm pretty sure was designed to make you commit suicide before anybody actually picked up — went something like this:

"Hello, this is . . . indecipherable . . . Please . . . indecipherable . . . serial number or case number."

"Yes, I have a case number. It's 123-XYZ."

Pause . . . then, "Hello?"

"Yes. Yes? I'm here. Case number 123-XYZ. Did you get it?"

"Hello? Is there anybody on the line, please."

"Yes! There is most definitely somebody here! Hello, hello!? Can you hear me? Please, please don't hang up!"

"Hello?"

"Please, I don't think I can handle another 30 minutes on . . . "

Click. Silence.

It's times like these I'm thankful to be one of those liberal gun-control types. Because if I weren't, my house might be a far more dangerous place to hang out on Monday afternoons.

Actually, I don't know if it was the recent holiday break, or my new goal of keeping my blood pressure down, but I was remarkably able to sluff all this off. Maybe it was the Valium and Dewars that did it. Come to think of it, maybe that's what's got me feeling sleepy.

Whatever. It's working, I guess. And so is the My Book Tera drive, by the way. But if you have a Mac, you might think twice before getting one of these. They're not very "plug-and-play" with Tigers or Leopards.

But maybe, just maybe, you're the kind of person that likes that sort of thing. I mean plug-and-play is kind of boring, right? Sometimes plug-and-fight-like-hell is much more fun. A little clawing and tearing. A vigorous slap across the face. Because the greater the work, the greater the reward. Or something like that. And dammit, I'm subscribing to that shit now, brother. Believe it. I am the warm fuzzy center of the world. I am the zen caramel filling.

Bite me.

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