Last night just as I was going to bed (around 10:30 pm, because the boy usually wakes around 5 am), the INCREDIBLY LOUD fire alarms went off in our building. We woke the baby, threw on some clothes, and went down the stairs to the street. There was clearly no fire, and only about a third of the residents bothered coming out, but we've got a baby, so better safe and so on. River was pretty freaked out and cranky at being awakened. The fire department showed up (after, like, 20 minutes) and discovered that somebody had messed up a sprinkler, which set off the alarms. We got the all-clear to go back inside, and with much effort got the kid back down to sleep about quarter after 11. Which would've been fine... except the alarms kept going off again and again, at random intervals, for durations ranging from a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes. It finally stopped about ten minutes after midnight, as I saw the last fire truck drive away -- they must have been testing the system or something heinously annoying like that.

Despite being awake (and eating!) so late, the kid still woke up at 5:30 am. I was one grumpy dude when I got up, y'all. Five hours of sleep does not a happy Tim make. I was also dreading all the physical work I knew I had to do at the day job -- it's summer, and that means trimming back trees and putting down tarps to catch rotting plums and other sweaty outdoor crap. (Yes, being a "senior editor" involves getting on rooftops and chopping tree branches, for me, anyway. It's a strange life.) So I was pretty grouchy, though the kid was cheerful, at least.

Terry Pratchett wrote once about how humans never live in the present; we're temporally-fuzzy blobs of thinking about the past and worrying about/hoping for the future. I often find myself in just such a mental state. I was definitely feeling that way this morning -- resentful about stolen sleep from the night before, cranky about work I hate in the future. (Though I don't hate my day job at all in a general sense -- I love working on the magazine. I could do without all the non-magazine-related stuff I have to do though.)

Then I read this xkcd comic, which led me to this video, and I got cheered up, and started singing improvised lyrics to the song and dancing around with my kid, and the morning got a whole lot nicer. Sometimes it's good to live in the present. I'm going to work on that.

Boomdeyada!

(Oh: Heather uploaded more lovely baby pictures! Also some video!)