On days when I need to get to work early I try to get up before 6:00 AM, about 10 or 15 minutes before. Then I can be out of the shower at 6:00 and proceed with the ROUTINE. Start kettle, start oatmeal (steel cut oats that soaked all night), do last night's dishes.  I need to do last night's dishes in the moring because I am so dag-double-dog dirged tired by 7 or 8 PM. If I am on top of things, the amount of time it takes to do the dishes is the same amount of time it takes for the kettle to blow.

Somewhere in there is OJ, frozen fruit, some vitamin powder and a banana is blended. Next the tea is poured and the oatmeal finessed and served.  It is somewhere between  6:15-6:30 by this point.   My wife will bring the groggy but happy baby down at this point and we eat.  Baby enjoys a bagel, or Cheerios raw.  Sometimes I pack the oatmeal to go and just enjoy the juice and tea, if it has cooled enough.  Our morning conversation is often a debate on whether to take the early train, or maybe I can take the slightly later one today. 

Thanks to the wisdom of our local transit monopoly, I need to take a 6:50 train to get to work by 8:00 AM. I would like to be at work  7:45 but end up getting there at 7:20. The next train is 7:32 and get me to work at 8:06, not a usefull time for me.  So it needs to be the early train.

When the weather is better I will resume riding my bike. I will be able to leave at 7:15 and get to work at 7:45. But now it is the train.

i have been looking at the steps that they built into the side of a rocky outcropping most days as i pass by. ugly. why so ugly? they belong on a school or other institutional facility, not a natural  rocky outcropping. today  i discovered why they put steps there, instead of your standard all access-ramp. they want to discourage the handicapped, bikers and roller bladers from using it. the steps lead to a winding 19th century path that drops onto the banks of the river. very steep and dangerous for someone attempting it with a bike or roller blades or even a wheel chair. so they built steps. keep out if you got wheels.