Halloween

A well and truly appropriate story for today:
I had to get up before dawn on Wednesday for work so I took my little el-cheapo digital alarm clock and set it for 5:05 am. Worked just fine, got up, turned the noisy fucker off, took it with me to the living room and set it down and consumed my coffee prior to departing for work. No big deal, the clock did its job and I was satisfied.
Now, move the time frame to Friday, 31 October. I didn't have to be to work until 11:00 am or so and had no reason whatsoever to set or even use that clock but, at 5:05 am, the damn thing started its beeping and woke me from a sound sleep, had to stagger out of bed, stumble into the living room, find the source of the noise in the dark, turn it off and collapse back into bed.
The kicker to this whole thing finally got through to me while I was drinking my coffee around 7:30 am..... it was the one year anniversary of the death of my friend Richard Eugene Mahanes, Jr. I am rather smirky and have been sort of cussing him for being so....... Rick. After a long battle, cancer got him at about 5:05 am, 31 October 2007 and I was there with him for the last week of his life. Leave it to whatever ghost of Rick to reach out from the great beyond to move a little switch on my candy-ass alarm clock just to fuck with my head because he can.
Miss Ya, Bro!