I felt pretty tired this evening, so around 6:00 I decided to take a nap, for if I didn’t, there was a good chance I would just collapse right on the spot. Why so tired? Well, no doubt part of my fatigue can be attributed to work. I’ve had a lot of reading and a fair amount of writing to do lately, so I’ve been staying up kind of late. There’s also the small issue that I have a nice phone call to look forward to every morning at about 6:45 AM. Yes, that’s right—my roommate’s girlfriend still calls at 6:45 most mornings (which includes a 7:45 phone call on Saturdays; I guess I should be thankful those mornings). She does, in fact, talk to my roommate more than I do, which is sad, since I live with him. Of course, he hasn’t really talked much to me since last November, when I asked him if he could ask his girlfriend to stop calling so early.

Why does she call so early? Well, my roommate claims that it is a “wake-up call”, but that claim falls flat for three main reasons:

1. He sets an alarm to get up for the phone call. That’s right, his alarm clock (which blares country music, ugh) goes off at 6:30 AM, followed by a call around 6:45.
2. His first class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays is at 9:00—the same time as my first class. Yet she still calls at 6:45 on some of those mornings—a full two hours before he needs to leave for his class. Even assuming he had to take a shower in the morning (which he doesn’t, because she showers at night), there’s still little need for a call that early in the morning.
3. My roommate bragged to other people on my hall that his girlfriend was calling so early just to annoy me.

We reached an agreement last fall that his girlfriend would only call twice a week, but that agreement has never actually been honored, and it’s certainly been forgotten (by him, at least), since he came back from break.

I personally don’t understand what the big deal is about the morning phone call. It’s not as though they never talk to each other—in fact, the only thing he does between about 5:00 PM and 11:00 PM is talk to his girlfriend. Surely you think I exaggerate, but try calling my phone and see what the likelihood of it being busy during that time is. I’d wager you’d find a frequency of at least 80%. In fact, due to the frequency of the phone ringing, I’d bet that there’s rarely more than twenty minutes of silence in my room, even when I am alone. (For you see, my roommate and his girlfriend don’t talk constantly; he often hangs up and waits for her to call back in fifteen or twenty minutes.) I hate telephone rings. I’m not really a phone person at all, but I especially hate being disturbed by a ringing phone when I am trying to read Plato or understand how artwork helped encourage ancient Romans to join the cult of Jesus Christ instead of the cult of Mithras. I’ve partially remedied this problem by turning off the ringer on my phone, so I’m not as startled by the phone ringing, but if I had three wishes, one of them would certainly be to never get another phone call again in my life.

So we’ve established that I am largely unable to sleep after 6:45 in the morning, considering there is a phone conversation in the room for a few minutes, and my roommate isn’t quite as quiet as a mouse. (Turning on his desk lamp, which is just five feet or so from the edge of my bed, doesn’t help either—but at least that is necessary, unlike the damn phone call—which he could at least take out in the hallway, for God’s sake.) After reading all about my trials and tribulations with my housing arrangement this semester, you’re probably wondering how my nap this evening went. Well, rest assured that it went quite well—for about ten minutes. Then, of course, my roommate decided to blast music. Yes, while I was clearly trying to sleep, he thought it would be a good idea to play “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” or whatever the hell that song is called. In case you hadn’t heard it, I’ll forewarn you that if someone released a CD entitled “Worst Hits of the 21st Century”, this song would kick off the album. Of course, my roommate cannot listen to the song just once; oh no, he has to keep playing it over and over again. He did this once when I was trying to study for finals back in December; for an hour, I heard nothing but some untalented country hack crooning “All the girls say, save a horse, ride a cowboy.” Not wanting to suffer that most peculiar form of torture again (and because I was in too passive-aggressive a mood to say anything) I finally got up and left.

Cliff Notes version of this post: Still no sleep, and still tired.

By the way, if any fine readers have an open spot available in their room this semester and would love for a self-described Internet celebrity to make their home with you, by all means, let me know. I don’t eat much and I smell nice. You won’t do much better than that, and you’d really help me recover what’s left of my sanity. Thanks!