Poll: morning rituals

Sitting here in Jeff's office at 6:45 am, watching the city wake up. In Metro Hall, offices are lighting up, one at a time, as early birds arrive. Undoubtedly some of them are peering across the street at me, sitting here in my bathrobe and bed-messy hair, wondering.

I love this time of the morning; I love mornings in general. I am SO not a night person. My head gets fuzzy late at the night; I move more slowly, don't want to think, prefer curling up on a couch with a cup of tea and a good book.

Jeff's the opposite. Early in our relationship, we barely saw each other for a while when I started working as a programmer/analyst at TD and he was still in school. I'd wake up and go to work before he was up, would start getting sleepy at night just as he was moving into his most productive time.

Somehow we both managed to find a compromise, but we still have our favourite times of the day. I try very hard not to talk to him too much the first two hours after he's woken up; his sister used to call him "Mr. Grumpypants" in the morning when we shared a house with her. In return, Jeff tries to remember that my brain pretty much shuts off after 10 pm. My friend Michelle also discovered this when we co-wrote our first short story; Michelle is VERY much a night person. :-)

POLL: What's your morning ritual?

My typical morning ritual:

- Wake up at 6:30 or 7 a.m.

- Make myself a cup of tea.

- Go to the computer and check e-mail, work on my daily Market Watch column (please note that non-subscribers will only be able to see two listings). If the column goes well, I sometimes do Blatherings as well, else I leave Blatherings for later in the day.

- If Jeff's up, I take a shower and get dressed. One of the problems with our apartment is that you can only access the master bathroom through the bedroom, so I usually wait so I don't wake Jeff up with shower noise. Though working at home has the advantage that I need less time in the bathroom: my morning grooming ritual consists of washing my hair and letting it air-dry, putting on some moisturizer. No make-up, no hairdryer, and I usually wear track pants and a t-shirt during my workday.

- Have breakfast while watching Breakfast Television, a CityTV show which covers news, weather, and interesting things happening in Toronto that day. Jeff and I were on the show about twelve years ago when I won a Valentines' Day contest. It also involved having to be in the studio at 6:30 am; you can imagine how excited Jeff was about this.

- My typical breakfast: low-fat yogurt and a piece of fruit, sometimes cereal with soy milk, sometimes eggs (over easy) with toast. I often have two mini-breakfasts (just like a hobbit), one early in the morning, one late morning.

- Back to the computer to write. Sometimes I'll take my laptop and work offline in a coffeeshop or library.

So what about the rest of you? Morning person or night person? If you have a partner, are they the same or opposite? What's your morning ritual?

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