Ready or not, test time is coming.

I should be asleep, as I need to report to the testing center no later than 7:30 a.m. tomorrow, but sleep is elusive tonight. I'm at a hotel  because even if one has friends or family residing relatively near a testing center when taking a test of such magnitude, one would be unwise to sleep anywhere that is much more than a five-minute walk from the testing site if one had any choice whatsoever in the matter. The hotel is 1.5 blocks from the testing center, and I don't even have to cross a major street to get to the center from my hotel.


I have company. My friend Megan is occupying the extra bed in my hotel room. Her fiance, Jared (the guy who has my name tattooed on his arm) is in a king-sized bed (he's 6'7")  in an adjoining room. If I were not present for this little menage-a-trois of sorts (minus the sex, of course; the night before the most important test of my life is no time to do something so stupid), God only knows what the sleeping arrangements might be. Both Megan and Jared participate at least marginally in religions that frown upon pre-marital sex. Then again, a whole lot of babies (including Jesus, if we choose to be really technical here) have been conceived before marriage by people whose religions denounced pre-marital sex. It's none of my business what they do, and I'm certainly not about to judge them. At them same time, I'd prefer not to wake up at 3:30 a.m. to find that Megan is missing from the bed in my room and that sounds of consummation of carnal impulses of every sort imaginable can be heard through the walls or the closed door of the adjoining room. Do whatever you want, Megan and Jared, but just not when you're with me, or at least not tonight of all nights.

I brought a travel alarm clock. My cell phone has an alarm clock. Megan's and Jared's do as well. We're setting the travel alarm clock and all cell phone alarms for 6:10. My aunt from Santa Barbara is also calling at 6:10. As a back-up, I've pre-set the hotel wake-up call service for 6:15. (The posthumous voice of Mr. Rogers can heard requesting of the children, "Can you say OCD, boys and girls?"

In an interval of less than sixteen hours, this phase of my life will be history. Let us hope it is good history, like the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, and not bad history, more like the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

P.S. San Diego is lovely this time of year. It was such  stroke of genius to have scheduled the test for the San Diego center.