The Morning Routine

My friend Wes Molebash (Legendary Cartoonish of Legend) has a web comic which is most excellent, and a blog on said web comic that I find very worthwhile of my RSS feed.

So yesterday Wes posted a blog entitled "The Morning Routine" (which you can go and read by clicking the linky-thing there) and not only was the blog post entertaining and thought provoking, but the responses (22 at present) were also great fun to read.

I started to respond, and whilst typing in that general direction realized two things… 
1. that my response was getting terribly out of hand, and 
2. that I haven't blogged in a really really long time.

Thus I decided to take my long-winded reply and turn it into a blog-post of my own, which I will refer to in the comments of Wes's blog for anyone who cares to read my rambling.

if you've read this far and not lost interest…

1. I commend you

2. Here is the good stuff

The Morning Routine

I used to be a morning person…  I don't recall exactly at what point in my life this changed, but I suspect that my discovery of alarm clocks with snooze buttons during while at college had something to do with it…

I (like many people, I think) use my cell phone (read iPhone) as an alarm clock.   I set three alarms, beginning at least 30 minutes before I need to get up, just so I can smack the snooze button a few times.   The times these alarms need to go off depends on whether school is in session, because I have to get up earlier and leave earlier if I have to drop Ellie off at school before getting to work.


The times pictured here are for summer, they are all 30 minutes earlier when school's happening.

I have different ring-tones set for each of these too… the first one is a very soothing, subtle, water trickling kind of noise, that if I'm sleeping really hard I don't even hear.   
The second one is a little less subtle, and the third is, well…  kind of like the alarm sound you think of if you're being warned of a bomb about to off in your general area.

This third alarm (the one that means business) prompts me to actually pick my phone up off of my night-stand, turn the ringer off, and reset all three alarms for the next day…  


So now with phone in hand, and alarms silenced, I can proceed to the checking of email and twitter before I ever toss the covers aside.

At this point I now have approximately 50 minutes before I need to be out the door… 


I grab my towel and head for the bathroom in the other end of the house where I go to the bathroom, and get in the shower.  


Now, unlike Wes, I don't subscribe to any particular shower routine…  I can typically wash my body, face, and hair in a about 10 minutes and that happens in whichever order I happen to grab the soap, shampoo, and face-wash out of the little cubby thing…  I typically take about 5 minutes also to just stand and let the water run on me because I just like those few minutes for waking up.

Following the shower I dry off, wrap the towel around me and head back to the bathroom attached to our bedroom (which has two sinks and is where we get ready, but no shower).I get out my clothes as a pass through the bedroom and put them on the bed, then finish drying off, brush teeth, apply  deodorant, etc and then back into the bedroom to get dressed.

at this point, mostly because it factored highly into Wes's blog (especially the comments) I feel like I need to have an interlude to discuss shaving…

I don't do it much. My beard (go ahead, laugh) doesn't grow very fast, and grows in mostly blonde…  I usually shave once a week on Saturday evening so that I don't look scruffy for church on Sunday, and I always shave my face when I shave my head (which is about every two weeks).   When I do shave I use a Gillette Mach 3 Power and shave cream in a tube from C.O. Bigelow for both my head and face.

Anyway… back to the morning thing… 

Once dressed I head out to the living room and my recliner which is the central location for the deposition of "stuff" when I come home in the evenings…


My wallet, pocket knife, rings, and fountain pen all get picked up from my coffee table and put back in/on the appropriate pockets and fingers.  My laptop, iPad, any cables, drives, etc I had out the night before go in my backpack, glasses go on my face and Silas usually brings me my shoes from by the door.  (Which sometimes lead to funny comments).

Shoes on feet, backpack over shoulder, I grab the keys from the hutch by the door and head out.

My morning commute is 35-40 minutes on non-school days.   I always stop at Tim Horton's in Waverly for an XL coffee with 2 cream, and an everything bagel double-toasted with butter.

I always listen to WOUB (our local NPR station) while I drive to work.

This puts me at my desk around 8:15-8:30 in the mornings where I unpack, finish my coffee, and begin tackling the day at hand…

So, what is your morning like?  Leave comments here, or on Wes's blog, or if you blog about it yourself let us know!