The cat alarm went off somewhat earlier than the clock-radio alarm this morning. It's hard to enjoy the benefits of a snooze button when your arms are being pricked by sharp little claws.

I'm not sure why she has this compulsion to wake me. She's fed in the evening, with kibble available all the time. She risks being shoved off the bed, which I did instinctively this morning. Maybe she sees it as a challenge: get the human vertical. But now that I am, she's curled peaceably in her bed, her work apparently done. Go figure.

Yesterday was beautiful. Only a few of us showed up for public speaking. The downside was that I hit my speech out of the ballpark and had only an audience of three. The upside is that we were out of there by 2:00.

I used the rest of the afternoon to wander in the winter garden in the Prudential Center and browse for books at Barnes & Noble. I have a specific loathing for Barnes & Noble, though. Aside from the fact that they've helped kill off small, independent bookstores, I once worked at a B & N for exactly half a day before being fired for no apparent reason. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life. I started work at 8:00am and was fired at 1:00pm without explanation. That puts a bit of a black mark on B & N, as if they needed any more.

But the B & N at Prudential Center is big and comfortable, so I wandered. I spent some time perusing the magazines, looking for International Gymnast. There were two magazines on figure skating, several on yachting, and at least six on gun collecting, which I found disturbing. But no IG. Weird.

After that, I hit the market and staggered home. I was so tired last night that I was asleep before 11:00pm. I could cheerfully go right back to bed now, but I have work to do. Sigh.

I got a little reminder tonight that I'm not the average college student.

I had non-western history tonight. As usual, we played a few rounds of history Jeopardy. I was on a particularly kick-ass team. We won the first round by a landslide. In the second round, the categories were as follows: 1991 Gulf War, Turkey, Israel, and potpourri (random but topical). The team ahead of us chose Gulf War, and their question was, "During the Gulf War, Iraq used missiles called Scud missiles. The United States used missiles called (blank)."

Duh.

The team sat in whispered conference for a few minutes, eventually giving an incorrect answer which I've already forgotten. The question passed to us, and one of my teammates whispered, "Do you know?"

Hell yes. "Patriot." Cheers from my team.

After we finished the next question, we huddled again. "I don't remember anything from the Gulf War," said one of my teammates. "I was eight." Nods and murmurs of agreement from the other two; dumbfounded silence from me.

"Oh God," I said finally. "I was twenty-one. You were eight and I was twenty-one." How did I get so old? When did this happen? What am I doing playing Jeopardy with people who were born when Reagan was president?

My little existential crisis went on, but I nailed a few more questions. Amman is in this country: Jordan. The name of the 1973 war in Israel: Yom Kippur War. The head military guy in the Gulf War: Norman Schwarzkopf. All the time, I kept thinking, "Eight?!"

Damn, I'm old.