Buzzzz went the alarm clock and a hand swiftly darted from under the covers like a trap door spider with its aim to disable, maim and suck the life out of the 70’s retro style flip number alarm clock. 

Samuel could have changed the settings to music instead of the annoying buzzer, but he quickly learned that with music you are tempted to wake up slightly, sway with the music and fall back to sleep without notice.  No, for Sam it had to be the buzzer setting, he had things to do, places to be, people to meet.  Wasn’t he supposed to meet with President Obama this morning, Air Force 2 would need to land on his helipad located on the west wing roof of his mansion.  The Vice President was to give him a metal briefcase filled with $100 bills and then off on a two hour trip in the CH-53 Sikorsky Helicopter with the current cover model from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and two of the top Victoria’s secret models.  As Samuel enters the Helicopter, the Vice President waves the Helicopter off and the doors close, music begins to play and the scantily clad women begin to dance moving toward and against Samuel as BUZZZZZ

Sam rose from his bed shaking his head as he placed his feet on the floor and reached over carefully this time to move the switch on the alarm from Buzzer  to off.  Standing he stretched pulling his barely white T-shirt over the top of his blue plaid boxer shorts and exposing a portion of his trim and fit for a 42 year old stomach.  When he was in his early twenties, he would sleep mostly nude if not nude depending on who was in bed with him until his apartment building needed to be evacuated due to a fire in one of the units.  He stood outside with the other residents completely bare with the exception of a kitchen towel he managed to grab in his panicked rush out the door.  Today he slept in his underwear and kept a pair of sweat pants, pull over hoodie, socks and shoes in a fashion to be donned in one swift move.  Surely Sam could have been a fireman with his preparation skills, but no, he was Corporate flunkie with no Golden Parachutes, no West Wing to his modest one bedroom apartment and a checking account reminiscent of a college student, not a 20 year business veteran.

Sparkles jumped from the other side of his queen sized bed to the floor mewing for food.  She didn’t care much for affection or attention, with her it was all about food and drink.  In a past life this cat must have been man.  Sparkles moved her rather ample bottom slowly out the door and toward the kitchen where she’d sit next to her food dish and incessantly mew until Samuel provided her the sustenance she needed.   In return, she would promise not to poo outside the litter box… maybe.  Afterall, she had an ample backside and it wasn’t always easy to gauge where the backside was in relation to the overall dimensions of the litter box.

Sam, with his eyes barely focused dragged feet into the kitchen and as if by wrote opened a can of Meow Mess, today’s special: Liver and Giblets… Yumm, and poured the contents into Sparkles bowl.  He then robotically rinsed the can and filled her water dish in one motion and placed one in the recycle bin and the other next to the food dish.  Depending on the waking dream he may not have shaken that morning, it was questionable which item would be placed where.  Sam had made a conscious decision to purchase a coffee pot with a timer that would render a hot drink without concern for proper mixing of water to grinds, that chore was done the night before when Sam was still in a fully conscious mindset.

Chirp Chirp resounded from across the living room startling the cat as it did every morning, who in turn pulled her ears back and straightened her tail, yet never pulled away from the food dish.  Sam had purposely programmed his computer to emit bird calls at specific times of the day to entertain (or torture) his lard ass Maine Coon.  The sound reminded him that he had an Auction on EBay ending soon and he was certain overnight that his 7 day listing with no bidders would finally pay off.  Perhaps someone from Europe decided they could not live without a vintage Commodore VIC-20 system, Works, No Power Supply with some games.

Samuel sat forward in his tattered faux leather desk chair.  Sprinkles had decided years ago that scratching posts were for domestic cats and she was a wild animal and would scratch whatever she wanted too.  In this case, his desk chair provided the right amount of resistance to stretch and flex her claws.  Sam pulled himself toward his particle board computer desk allowing the wheels on the chair to roll easily across the equally faux hard wood floor.  Shifting his wireless mouse, his Dell Dimension tower glowed to life which then triggered his screen to flash on.  The background image of Captain America in tattered clothing standing in the middle of a WWII battle ground was quickly populated with icons for Trash, My Network, My Computer, varying file folders and shortcuts to include one icon in the form of a $ symbol.  Underneath the icon was the word EBAY.  This was Sam’s link to his EBay seller site.

With a click of the mouse the monitors light flashed against Sam’s blue green eyes as his Mozilla Firefox browser window popped up taking him to the main EBay site.  Clicking on the My Summary icon Sam was taken to a login page where he could see his user name, CapNAmeriCrunch, and his password ******** already filled in.  He clicked login which took him immediately to his buying and selling summary page:

You have 0 items won

You are bidding on 8 items

You have 1 item for sale

You have 0 bids on items for sale

Sam’s dreams of becoming independently wealthy by selling his old junk, like an episode of Tales from the Darkside once convinced him he could be, were quickly diminishing.  That being said he closed his browser window, stood and walked away from his desk.  Sparkles recognizing that a recently sat in pleather seat offered warmth, clambered her fat cat body up onto the seat and laid down in a ball closing her eyes and immediately began snoring.

Sam directed himself to his undecorated bathroom with a clear shower curtain, white countertop and equally white toilet stripped down and began his morning work ritual.  Sh!^, shower and shave…get dressed in a pair of khaki or black pleated front Dockers and a no-pattern button down non-descript shirt.  Sam worked for a progressive company, and while they didn’t buy into the casual jean wearing Friday they did accept that a good working environment allowed employees to avoid choking themselves with tasteless ties or boring A line skirts.  Sam did keep an emergency tie at work in the event a visiting dignitary were to show up unannounced, but he doubted that his bosses would approve of the Yosemite Sam caricature that predominated the bottom ¾ of the tie.  Donning a pair of brown Payless knock off loafers over his 80’s style argyle socks, Sam picked up his laptop bag and headed out the door.  He would need to make it to the park and ride in 15 minutes if he hoped  to catch the commuter bus into the city, if he missed it, he’d be stuck in traffic for an hour and would pay a hefty penalty in parking fees.  Considering the Park and Ride was 15 minutes from his house, Sam left without turning off the coffee pot or eating any breakfast whatsoever.  Fortunately for Sam his automatic coffee pot had an auto shutoff feature.

Still in the office chair, Sparkles unfolded her hind legs and embedded her claws deep into the pleather letting out a slow and steady mew.