How to start your day off right

Step 1: write all over your mirrors with window markers that you have to register for next semester's classes at 7 in the morning. Forget that 7 in the morning at home is actually 8 in the morning here. Do this step around 1 in the morning, the night before.

Step 2: go to bed, enjoy the sheer loveliness of being asleep.

Step 3: nearly have a heart attack as you're awakened by the fire alarm. Stumble in a stupor around the apartment as you put on pants and a sweatshirt, and shoes but no socks.

Step 4: continue to stumble around the apartment, trying to find your keys.

Step 5: stumble some more as you enter the hallway, and become confused when the across-the-hall neighbors ask if your roommate has already gone outside. Realize that she must have come back home after you went to bed, and reenter the apartment to encourage her to leave.

Step 6: emerge from the stairwell and enter the cold, wet, outside world. It greets you with the loving embrace of biting wind.

Step 7: huddle with the across-the-hall neighbor and her friend, watch your roommate walk off to her car to spend the night at her boyfriend's house.

Step 8: trudge toward another building that people seem to be going into. Hooray for our sheeplike quality of following anything that moves!

Step 9: sit around inside the other building and watch as the firefighters enter your own building. Listen to your friend from the 7th floor say that she smelled smoke coming from higher up in the stairwell. Great. It's actually on fire.

Step 10: realize just how many people are still up and drinking at five in the morning. ugh.

Step 11: get confused when the firemen tell you to go back into your building, that someone just pulled the alarm- the alarms are still going, and your friend said she smelled smoke, right?

Step 12: note the strange powder dusted all over the stairwell as you and your 1000 closest friends all try to go up the stairs at the same time. Ash? Weird sprinkler powder? I thought they said there was no fire...

Step 13: wonder briefly if this is the firemen's idea of an April Fools' Day joke. Decide that it's not april 1 anymore, and that would be in terrible taste. On the other hand, you could see the firemen's point- let the drunken idiots burn.

Step 14: try to figure out how you're going to get back to sleep- the alarms are still going off, and your system is pumped to capacity with adrenaline.

Step 15: sigh with relief when the alarms mercifully stop.

Step 16: spend 45 minutes trying to get back to sleep, which is hard. Your arms are hot, and don't want to go under the covers. However, you know from experience that it is impossible to sleep with exposed arms: the boogeyman will come and pull on your fingers and bite your elbows if you do. Much like the way he gets really close to your head and mumbles things if you don't cover your ear as well.

Step 17: after finally falling asleep, wake up a half hour later to your alarm clock calling you to register for classes. Curse the sun, then realize that you actually have an hour until registration actually begins. Continue cursing the sun, but in a more upbeat manner, as you go back to bed for another 45 minutes.