Nighttime alarms

Two events disturbed my sleep last night. A small earthquake at 3:30 a.m. woke me up. I felt a sharp jolt, then a little side-to-side shaking. (This is a wood house so it has a lot of room to go side-to-side (though we have it strapped down and shear-walled to the max down in the "basement," which is actually street-level.) But the shaking lasted less than five seconds, so I lay there awhile to see if there would be something else, then went back to sleep. There haven't been any earthquakes in a while, but no damage was done, so it was worth mentioning only because it woke me up.

Ninety minutes later some asshole woke us both up by honking his horn in the street. It was 5:00 a.m. and he was picking somebody up from one of the neighbors -- probably the basement in-law unit. The second time the guy honked -- and it was one of those raucous pickup truck horns -- Cris sprang out of bed and went to the window to see what was the matter. I shouted out the window, "HEY, MOTHERFUCKER, IT'S FIVE IN THE MORNING! WHY DON'T YOU GET OFF YOUR ASS AND RING THE DOORBELL NEXT TIME?!" Then I turned to Cris and said, "Now say it in Spanish!" But she demurred. Because of my protest, he drove around the block after departing and raced down the block blowing his horn again. I did have some uncharitable thoughts after that. But I still went back to sleep.

This whole thing with the honking is a constant battle on this block. Usually, when it's not at an unholy hour like 5 a.m., I go outside and speak to the driver fairly nicely. And I think that's actually cut down on the thoughtless honking. But this morning's incident was pretty extreme, in both the time of day (actually it was still pitch dark) and the amount of noise. Man, I really hate it.