It was a rainy night in beautiful Kansas City last night—it’s still raining right now, actually. Do rainy nights make you sleep better?

My lovely wife and I met her brother and his wife out last night to watch our Jayhawks become NCAA Basketball 2008 National Champions. (fun fact: KU’s St. Lawrence Center celebrated the Traditional Latin Mass last semester for the first time in decades. Then the Jayhawks win the National Championship. Coincidence? Hmm…)

Last night, I didn’t sleep well. I’m sure it was a combination of late-night pizza, cold beer, an exciting game, thunder and lightning—but it was one of those nights were you wake up every 90 minutes or so and think you’ve overslept. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has occasional nights like this.

Sometime in the 2:00 AM hour, I woke up worried that today was a Holy Day of Obligation and that I was going to miss it altogether. I wouldn’t have time to go before work and I have night school on Tuesdays and that I was going to not oblige my obligation again. So I sat up and studied the clock for a moment, thinking that maybe there’d be an early-morning mass I could try and make, and what time would I need to re-set the clock to ensure I’d make it.

Then I figured out it was not a Holy Day and that I could just go back to sleep.

So I’m a dork. A panicked Catholic dork. And other than priests (maybe), I wonder if I’m the only one to wake up in the middle of the night wondering if it was a Holy Day of Obligation. The list of lay people to whom that has happened must be very short.