11 17 pm pdt   [ begin rant ]

<begin rant>

I didn't get paid for Yom Kippur. I'm a little angry about that. I am a salaried employee, but my cheap-ass company can't pay me for the single religious holiday I will take off for the year. My only consolation is that I get paid so little that my one day's docked pay isn't any great loss.

And though I am glad I got paid today, it has all been spent already. I was able to just scrape together enough to start a Roth IRA. But now I am super broke and having Christmas looming ahead of me is a bit disconcerting.

I woke up last night to a beeping sound. I wasn't a distressing beeping, like a fire alarm, but rather a more subtle, persistant beep. My alarm doesn't beep; it's set to the radio. It was very dark and I could hear a heavy rain outside. I looked towards the beeping and saw the power on my stereo/alarm flash on and off. It took several seconds more for me to realize that the beeping was from my UPS -- a battery designed to provide power to my computer in the event of a power outage. My computer wasn't on, so it didn't need to be shut down, but I did have to get up to turn the UPS off, so that it would stop beeping. I thought about the fact that my alarm would not wake me for work in the morning but I could think of no solution. I fell back asleep to be woken at 7 am when power was restored and the radio by my bed came on. It took me several second out of bed to figure out that you cannot turn the radio off (I've never used it before), but you can snooze it and set the alarm to off.

I actually reset my stereo clock and the alarm so that I would be woken again in an hour for work. Only I was woken a half hour later when my dad asked me to drive him to the airport. I was not happy to be awake. It had stopped raining. My dad got in the shower. I was (and still am) out of soy milk, so I didn't bother dragging myself into the kitchen. I keep frozen waffles at work for emergencies such as this.

As I was about to crawl into the shower, my dad warned me that it wasn't very hot. He said if I used only hot water it would be warm enough. So I went in the bathroom and set the hot water running. I took off all my clothes and removed my hair clips and scrunchie. Then I stuck my finger in the water. Not ice cold, but certainly too chilly for me to bathe in. I put my pjs back on for the trip to my bedroom where I put on my outfit for the day.

My dad and I were shortly out the door and on the road. Lights were out all over Santa Monica so the going was slow. The radio reported that a transformer had exploded underground. They closed Lincoln Boulevard between Santa Monica and the 10. Thankfully my dad circumvented that closure by chance.

After dropping my dad at Continental, I got on the 405 going north. This was a large mistake. I had been planning on taking it to the 10, but I got off at Venice and that was delightfully empty. I was so glad not to be inching along anymore.

To top off my day, the water heater is dead. Hopefully it is just the pilot light. I knew this was a distinct possability in the morning and I discussed it with my dad. Now I have to call the gas company in order to take a shower. I will leave this activity for tomorrow night...