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12:00. 12:00. 12:00. Photo by Janet Miller

The island of Kaua`i is called The Garden Isle.  It is also called “Hawai`i’s Island of Discovery.”  I have discovered something about Kaua`i — when it comes to our electric service, Kaua`i  somewhat resembles a third world country. Granted, we’re not as bad off as Zambia, but, significant is the number of power outages per year.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my island. In fact I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else on earth. And, in the broad scope of things, this occasional inconvenience is manini — I mean, the power usually comes back on within minutes, even seconds.

The problem at hand for me is my alarm/clock/radio.  We’ve all seen that mocking way a digital clock brazenly flashes that 12:00, 12:00, 12:00, when it has been deprived of even one second of precious power.

My full time employer requires that I punch in to their online time clock as I work at home on my computer.  My company is in Chicago, which is five hours ahead of Hawai`i.

In order to work on “real time” with the Chicago office, I must punch in before 5:30 a.m. Hawai`i time. It’s still dark out here at that hour.

Yesterday we had one of those momentary power failures, which sent my clock into its midnight madness.  I was Johnny-on-the-spot, resetting the time, but neglected to reset the alarm time back to 5 a.m.

When you rise at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m., you need to have gone to bed by 10 p.m. the night before, in order to put two or more rational thoughts together  the next day.

So when the radio alarm sounded in the dark this morning, I diligently got out of bed, pushed the “on” button on my computer and headed to the lua, as I do every morning before punching in for work.

Much more bleary eyed than usual, I couldn’t imagine why I felt so un-rested. I sat, staring at the time clock on my monitor, unable to make sense of why it was telling me that I was attempting to punch in to work at a few minutes past midnight.

A glance at the clock confirmed that it was indeed only two hours prior that I had entered dreamland.

With eyes unfocused and blinking, I desperately tried to make sense of the moment, finally realizing that my alarm was still programmed to pull me out of my nightly coma at 12:00. 12:00. 12:00.

Sigh.

Shut down the computer. Turn off the light. Silence the radio alarm. Reset the wake up time. Climb back between the sheets. Grab five more hours of shut-eye.

The first clue, had I been clear headed, should have been my non-productivity in the lua after only two hours since my last visit.

Mahalo, KIUC, for the dress rehearsal start of my day.