It works out to 4.1667 cents short.

Monday finally ended about 8 a.m. Wednesday morning. You'll recall ("I'd rather be in Philadelphia", 10/20/09) that I didn't realize it was Monday until Tuesday afternoon. Monday finished hitting me about the head yesterday morning, before slipping away quietly.

Speaking of slipping quietly, I was composing a post about the fog as I walked my laps yesterday morning. It snuck in on Tuesday morning in the 34 minutes between getting home from the track and leaving again for work. Yesterday, I noted during my laps that the fog I could see in the valley wasn't getting any closer and that the haze on campus appeared to be clearing up. Then, as I rounded the curve, I saw that the fog had crept up on little cat feet behind me. I felt like the guy in Ghostbusters, who was overtaken by all the ghosts from the subway.

I also noted that there was a man running laps, who ended up following me into the weight room. I noted that the annoying, black Chihuahua (unassumingly named Diablo) up the street was up awfully early yesterday morning, and so were the people in another house, whose lights usually weren't on. All of these things seemed strange because they don't usually occur when I'm exercising.

I thought it odd that someone had moved the clock in the weight room ahead one hour. After all, Daylight Savings Time doesn't end in the middle of the week. Besides, you "fall back" in the autumn, not "spring forward".

It didn't quite disturb me that the lights were already on in the shop when I arrived. George Jefferson has a key, and he might have arrived early. "But what's Cold Miser doing here already?" I wondered. Indeed, why were so many of my crew already in the shop?

Faced with the overwhelming evidence that the timeclock and the clock on the wall of my office (to which no one else but the campus locksmith has a key) agreed with the weight room clock, I realized that, somehow, I was an hour late to work.

But I went to bed on time the night before! But I didn't oversleep -- the alarm clock went off!

When I got home yesterday afternoon, I checked my alarm clock. The time was correct, but the time for which the alarm was set somehow, mysteriously, was an hour later than it was supposed to be. Did someone break in, disable the security system, change my alarm (but leave the contents of my fridge alone), reset the security system, and relock my door? (Again, only the locksmith has a spare key.) Did I subconsciously reset the alarm myself, so subconsciously that, even after the fact, I don't remember it at all? Is it a (hopefully rare) glitch I should expect for buying such an inexpensive alarm clock? Or did Monday just whammy me again?

The day got better, though. As I arrived for our daily managers' meeting, I was handed an actual landscape plan for the new dorm -- on real paper, computer rendered, with an actual scale, even! Then, I found out that I would get a real breakfast, rather than the two overripe bananas and protein bar still waiting in my gym bag, because the assistant head of security's wife had won breakfast for 15 people from Bojangles. Yes, Wednesday (or was it really Tuesday, also trying on its Halloween disguise?) is a much nicer day than Monday.

Still, I ought to have a chat with the locksmith.