Waking up with a bang

I have two alarm clocks side-by-side, one of which has two separate alarm settings. One of the clocks (the one with two settings) I have set to play music in the morning - WVIA-FM, the local NPR station. So when this goes off at 5:00 I'm usually greeted with classical music. I usually hit the snooze bar, once my mind has solved the "right or left?" puzzle presented by the two clocks (it's the one on the left), and roll over for more sleep.

At 5:03 my second alarm goes off. A loud, rude tone. I usually hit snooze on this one, too.

I've never worked out how long the snooze time is for each of these clocks. I think it's something like eight minutes. Most mornings I will repeat the snooze bar ritual until the music coming from NPR gives way to the 6:00 start of Morning Edition, which is the second setting of my left-hand clock. At 6:00 it's time to get up.

I must have worked through the snooze process several times this morning and was in the middle of an extended dream. Strangely enough, I know the exact basis for this dream: it was this post from The Daily Reflections of a Diet Coke Addict. I was in England, at Heathrow Airport. I've never been to Heathrow, so my dream substituted Shannon airport, slightly rearranged. I was at the check-in desk, checking in, I suppose. I was going through the usual airport rigamarole. It's hard to understand how my mind stretched out so little action across several snooze periods, but it did.

Anyway, the reason I believe my dream was based on the Airport security: feel the irony entry is not just that it was set at Heathrow airport, but because of the tanks.

Well, I'm assuming it was the tanks. I was almost done with my business at the check-in desk when the sound of a huge explosion rolled through the airport lobby.

The sound, but nothing else. No shrapnel, no smoke, nothing to tell us that an explosion had happened besides the sound. Everyone in the airport was a little confused and bewildered, but nobody seemed scared. Until the second one.

At that point there really wasn't a panic. I guess the characters in my dreams are made of pretty sturdy stuff. No, after the second boom everybody hit the floor and scrambled for cover - a pretty reasonable thing to do, I guess, since if you don't know where the trouble is, you're just as likely to be running toward it as you are away from it.

And then there was a third boom. And a fourth. A fifth. A sixth.

I think at this point I thought It must be the tanks, they must be shooting at something. But what?

I don't know. That was when I woke up and saw that it was 6:00. Time to stop hitting the snooze bar and get up.

I wonder if the dream will continue tonight?