So not a morning person

It's the worst part of the day. My eyelids snap open.

Emotion: denial. Sunlight spills onto the pillow next to my head. Somebody left the blinds facing down.

Emotion: furious anger. I glare at the offending alarm clock with disgust and deftly swing my furious fist downward to the source of the incessant stabs of cacophony. There's a reason I have several large chunks of plastic missing from the clock's face.

Emotion: bargaining. The snooze provides me with nine glorious minutes of tranquil repose. If I can just have a few more minutes of silence, I'll be ready to get out of bed. Until ... SQUAWK! I'm already in position, and strike the snooze before the second buzz sounds.

Emotion: depression. I reach for the TV remote and turn on a bad rerun. (See: Saved by the Bell, Inspector Gadget.) I close my eyes for another nine minutes. Maybe the background noise will ease me into a more alert state of mind in the next 81/2 minutes. The alarm shakes the walls for a final time. It's 7:52. Jessie experiences the dangers of caffeine pills and is about to miss Hot Sundae's performance at the Max.

Emotion: begrudging acceptance. I am going to be late to work.

Ever since elementary school, I haven't found a way to convince my body to rest at a reasonable hour; ipso facto, I would sleep until the afternoon every day given the opportunity. During the best four years of my life, I could (and did) sleep in until 1-2 p.m. Classes be damned. I got all kinds of good sleep in college. I'm not afforded that luxury now that I have a steady 8 to 5.

Recently, I decided to tackle the reasons for my late-night restlessness. I requested a day off at work and scheduled an appointment with the most insane morning person I knew: good ol' Dad.

I made the appointment for a Friday morning so I could shadow him and his ludicrous early-morning routine. I planned to meet him at his house at 5 a.m.!

Unfortunately, I overslept and missed the interview. (Who am I kidding? Three-day weekend! WOOO!) Forget that. Like I'm going to get up at the crack of dawn to talk to my dad? Christ, he's my dad! I can talk to him any afternoon.

Check it out: Dad wakes up every morning promptly at 4:30 a.m. He showers. He gets dressed in khaki shorts with a T-shirt tucked in the elastic waistband, slips on his Rockports and drives across the street to Starbucks, where he waits in the car listening to the Beatles until the staff arrives and opens the doors at 5:30 a.m. He marches in with a newspaper, and spends $1.35 and four hours reading. After that, he, A) reads more, or B) watches sports (and we're talking the full gamut: baseball, football, tennis, Nascar, LPGA, college softball; you name it, he watches it).

Now, sorry, Pops, but if that's the early-morning excitement I'm missing out on, I think I'm OK with that. Besides, I think there's a College Years episode on tomorrow. Nothing like Professor Laskey hitting on Kelly Kapowski to get me ready for work.

Jim Wolff is a management consultant who currently resides in Newtown. He swears he watches Sportscenter, too, and not just bad pre-teen shows. Seriously. Spell it M-A-N.