The alarm went off and, cruelest of all jokes, I had to answer it. So I was up early and out the door on the way to work. Like a normal person. On a Saturday. Only this was 6 a.m.

On the other hand I had the freeway almost entirely to myself.

On still another hand that's probably good because I was tired.

This is day six of the 10-day-work week. I'll have two more of these this summer. On the whole they aren't bad. The day goes quickly. It is quiet in the office. Today there was just one other person there and we worked quietly through a slow summer Saturday.

I did have to wake someone up at 6:30 on their day off because of a problem, making that the only thing worse than having to wake him up at similar times during the week. These are the responsibilities one accepts when one wears the Pager of Doom. I do not wear a pager; please don't call me that early.

So let us have the seemingly daily cable complaint. I called them yesterday because, as I anticipated, no supervisor returned my message. Some poor unfortunate guy on the other end of the line had to deal with me yesterday and understood the situation was important enough to have someone come out today, rather than a week from now, which is the standard procedure. After having been stood up by three previous technicians I wasn't holding my breath.

The technician did not show up between the promised hours today so I once again called, explaining with diminishing patience my four dropped appointments, my almost-six-week problem and demanded to speak with the supervisor, calling him by name. This flustered the otherwise useless professional phone answerer on the other end of the line. The supervisor, though, was gone for the day. Call him at home. A bit later he came back and said he tried him twice, but there was no answer. I have no reason to believe anything they say at this point and laughed while he scheduled me a visit missed appointment for next Friday.

So I called the company's president. They don't make it easy to find this contact information. They don't make it especially easy to find out her name. My Googlefu is strong. She has a very nice voice mail waiting for her on Monday. I apologized for bothering her with this problem, acknowledging that this is not her job, but hinted at the many problems I've been having and explained that I would appreciate a call from her, or someone in her office, on Monday and movement toward, you know, a resolution.

There's really nowhere to go after that, except naming names and calling the competition.

There was somewhere to go this evening, though as The Yankee and I spent the afternoon at the pool with The McAlisters. Oh the fun we all had. Brian's parents are in town for the weekend and they're lovely people. If you could pick grandparents on the basis of coolness (What other criteria would you use?) they'd be hard to beat. Taylor's a lucky granddaughter.

She's actually very lucky, having the chance to swim in two pools this evening. First in the neighborhood pool and then in the pool at her grandparents' hotel. At the first pool she decided to jump off the side backwards like the big kids (us). She made the big show of it like divers do as they focus in on a big dive. I do this too, because it is funny to go through all that and then do a toothpick or act as if something went horribly, horribly wrong in my actual attempt.

Taylor's almost did. Facing away from the pool she jumped and then flattened her body, missing the wall with her forehead by four or five inches. I felt terrible for even remotely being an influence. The best thing I could think to say was "That would have hurt bad. And you'd have to get stitches. And if you had stitches you couldn't be in the pool for a long time."

She accepted that. Missing out on the pool was too big of a risk to try it again.

Oh, the awkward ways I'll let myself land on the water for the amusement of others. We were trying this modified dive that used physics and gravity to propel a rubberized ball high into the sky. I realized quickly that I'm not coordinated enough to pull that off. On each successive try I gave into the court jester syndrome, doing pratfalls (pratdives?) on my back, butt and head. I did surround all of this with a few decent attempts at normal dives and a flip, implying that there were a few things I was capable of doing, but leaving it all with a sense of anti-funny.

I'm going to feel some of those tomorrow though.

Speaking of anti-funny, I finished reading Steve Martin's autobiography, Born Standing Up today. If you liked the guy's humor you'll love the book. I missed his stand up by a few years, but the most redeeming quality about his work was that he just seemed a normal guy who gave us the funny. That is the compelling part of the Steve Martin persona, each time you see his work you're expecting to catch him sneak a glance at the camera as if to say "Can you believe this?"

Even in the parts of the book where he displayed the uniqueness of his life or circumstance that took him to the top there's this definitive next door quality about him. Maybe that's the best performance of them all, but his truth is there. And if you liked the man before the book, you'll like him at the end.

None of it feels overwrought. There's no glossing over missteps or setbacks or inevitability of his success as a comedian. If anything he looks back on that part of his career, he says for the first time, and comes off a bit humbled and surprised by some of his success even now.

Also, most of his punchlines are great in print. And the book reads fast too, so check it out.

Tomorrow, another day of work. But, sadly, no pool.