Live in Thy Shame

I was soooooooo ashamed I couldn't even post last Thursday. I missed my show. I mean I really missed it. Normally, I wake up at 3:45am on Thursday mornings and leave my home at around 5am to make it to the station on time. I woke up at 8:15am this past Thursday, and only when my downstairs neighbor called me on my cellphone. I'd slept for TEN STRAIGHT HOURS.

I have no excuse, except for this one (hush now, I feel bad enough as it is): on Wednesday night, I smelled gas in my apartment. I opened the windows and, briefly, the smell seemed stronger. I thought maybe it was coming from outside, but I do have gas heat and a gas stove. I opened all of my windows as a just-in-case measure and got ready for bed.

I'm not used to gas, so I was alarmed to think I smelled it. I called my downstairs neighbor and left him a message, wondering if maybe his heat had kicked on for the first time or something. He wasn't home and I finally went to bed, closing the sliding glass door in my bedroom (the only window in there) and shutting the door.
I had quite a headache.

I woke up TEN HOURS LATER, having slept through all three of my impressively loud alarms. This hasn't happened since maybe 4 years ago when I had a terrible cold/flu type thingy and slept maybe a half hour past my alarms. How startling to wake up to sunshine. Sunshine doesn't happen at 3:45am. I knew right away something was wrong. I answered my ringing cellphone, which was the only thing that could wake me, apparently, and immediately blurted expletives at my downstairs neighbor, asking him if was REALLY after 8am on Thursday morning. Oooooooops.

So, you decide. Did I smell gas and it put me into a coma that allowed me to sleep through a very loud radio alarm, a very loud beeping alarm that goes off ten minutes after the radio alarm, AND an enormous wind-up ringing alarm that goes off ten minutes after the beeping alarm? Or am I just someone who, roughly every four years, sleeps through a veritable battery of alarm clocks, for no reason at all?

I'm sorry, listeners. For what it's worth, though, WVUD's Steve Klinge wrote me an affectionately sarcastic email to let me know that last Thursday's edition of Radio Africa was riveting...

My apologies.