Et tu, alarm?

My alarm clock has a vendetta against me. Twice this week I set it for an early morning run, and twice it has not gone off.

On Monday and Wednesday nights I set the alarm for the once-ridiculous, but now-acceptable running hour of 5:30am. I went to sleep both nights. Then I woke-up by myself at 6am to find that the alarm never went off. WTF?

Turns out that in addition to my alarm's awesome ability to set itself (it tunes into the atomic clock every morning at 2am, no lie) it also has the ability to switch alarm settings from "weekday" to "weekend" at will. So my 5:30 alarm would only go off on the weekend. Love it.

Despite that, I did get to go running once this week. Tuesday morning I bolted out the door at 6:10am to get four miles in. I only got to 3.6 before my body realized that it was awake and needed to go to the bathroom to clear out the system. Yes, I mean poop. So before there was a disaster on the treadmill, I high-tailed it to the bathroom.

In other news, work is going crazy. The toy account that I had been working on since January fired my agency. The client loved my team and wanted to keep us, but the call was make from her higher ups. Now I'm working on my first non-profit client, which actually makes me feel really good about what I do. Unfortunately, they want to start advertising right away, so we have to pull plans together incredibly fast. The good part is that instead of selling a product or a service, this advertising actually tries to help the greater good.

However, this non-profit client only pays for 50% of my time; I have to work on a second account in order for my paycheck to be covered. In a very poetic turn of chance, the second account I will be working on is a casino. So half my time I work for a non-profit that is trying to right the faults of society, and the other half of my time I work for a casino, which is classically known to exploit those faults. Wow. Oddly enough, this doesn't constitute a conflict of interest.

Continuing along the work lines. Thursday night was our big annual Karaoke night. While your office may have it's annual picnic or cold-cut laden holiday party, my agency has an all-out Karaoke slam fest. It was fantastic. The exact reason I enjoy doing what I do.

To give you an idea, I was told about this Karaoke party during my interview, and it has been hyped up continuously since I started. Anyone who started working at my agency since the last Karaoke party has to perform, which included me and about 15 other people. We were judged by a panel of our clients (none of which were mine, fortunately) and the prizes were pretty spectacular for first, second, and third places.

This was competitive Karaoke at it's finest. Since we all lack musical talent we had to make up for in it audience participation, costumes, and balls-out bad-assness. There was some cross-dressing. One duet brought props. My direct report busted out a hot pink cowgirl hat and showed that she has a knack for singing hardcore country music. The open bar definitely aided in the hilarity.

And me? I decided to go the mid-90s cheese route and sing "I'll Make Love To You" by Boyz II Men. It was awesomely bad singing paired with awesomely good performing. Two lucky ladies in the audience got a little love from sRod in perhaps the best performance of that song by a white man, ever. After the performance a few girls threatened to call HR, all in jest...I hope.

The party went on late into the night. I didn't see the end of it because I had to get home and pack. My wife and I had a 6:55am flight to see her parents in NC the following morning. I met my wife for a much needed fried food dinner and got home at around midnight. Five hours later the alarm sounded and we washed up, headed out to the airport, and made it out here to the wonderful NC mountains. And yes, my alarm was correctly set to "weekday" on Friday morning.