No alarm

Today (Thursday, June 4, 2009) Linda is supposed to work all day at the Post-Office, so last night we dutifully set our clock-radio to come on at 5:40 a.m. — we get up at six.
Dubya-Hex-Hex-Hi is the classical-music public-radio station in Rochester we listen to, although at 5:40 a.m. it’s still the nationwide all-night satellite feed. They don’t start local talent until 6 a.m.
I wake up at 6:09 a.m. Sunlight is hitting our room-darkening shade.
No radio.
“I thought I set this thing last night,” I say.
I look at the radio; armed for 5:40 a.m.
(Right about this time the almighty Bluster-King will weigh noisily in, telling me to “just deal with it!” But not without badmouthing me first as a stupid liberial-arts perfectionist — and that my wife is a circling bloodthirsty shark.)
“Deal-widdit” is of course what we did. 6:09 a.m. isn’t that bad. Not so late she can’t show up on time.
“Has some mystery taken over?” I think to myself. There certainly have been enough unexplained mysteries with cellphones and similar gizmos. (“Must be this — nothing in the manual about it.”)
I had hit the on-off switch by mistake last night, instead of the alarm switch. And seeing no indication the alarm was set, turned the radio back off.
I thereafter set the alarm. Still on this morning; 5:40 a.m., but not the radio.
Maybe it needs a ballpeen hammer.
Better yet, test the sucker tomorrow morning, and set the backup alarm-clock Saturday morning; the next day she works.

“Linda” is my wife of 41+ years. Like me she’s retired, but she works part-time at the West Bloomfield post-office. (We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western N.Y.)

“Dubya-Hex-Hex-Hi” is WXXI-FM, 91.5, the classical-music radio-station in Rochester we listen to, publically supported.

The “almighty Bluster-King” is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. —“Liberial” is how he insists “liberal” is spelled. Unlike him (who studied engineering), I majored in History at college (liberal-arts), so am vastly inferior.

RE: “Maybe it needs a ballpeen hammer......” —My blowhard, macho brother-from-Boston has been known to fix things with a liberally applied ballpeen hammer.