Wow, sleep (redux)

As regular readers will recall, a few weeks ago I ended up taking an extended nap, followed by a serious night of sleep, totalling about 16 hours of slumber.

Last night, I did it again.

Just about all the way home yesterday--the drive from Fargo being about 2.5 hours to the border, and just over another hour from the border home--I was thinking about how tired I was. Not that I didn't sleep while I was on the road. I just had to get up earlier than is usually comfortable to fully enjoy my complimentary breakfast (see previous posts) before hitting the road.

I had planned to hang about in ND for a while, to have a serious late lunch or early supper at a Mexican restaurant in Grand Forks. But by the time I got to Grand Forks, I decided I just wanted to go home. So in the end, I was home by about 3:15. I picked up a little (okay, a lot of) food on the way home, ate, and was ready for a nap by 4pm. When I woke up, it was about 8pm, and my choices were to get up and risk being up all night, or staying in bed. Guess what I decided to do.

I did spend a couple of hours reading. I had finished Jim Butcher's White Night on the road, so I started the next (most recent) book, Small Favor. I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of these books. I'll have to go back to Janet Evanovich or something. Anyway, around 10pm, I decided it was time to go back to sleep. So I did.

Clock radio woke me up about 7:55, as usual, but I decided to snooze and doze for a while longer. But I got up in time to watch Celebrity Poker at 10am. So I've had some sleep. Enough that now, approaching 4pm, I don't feel like I need a nap. So I guess this is &deity;'s way of telling me to do something about the fruitflies which have taken over my apartment in my absence.

On that, I've broken out a fruitfly trap from Lee Valley, hoping that will do the job. Since my make-shift one (I pounded some holes into the plastic lid of a glass spice jar and threw in some warm water, oatmeal, and a little yeast and sugar to start the fermentation. This seems to draw the fruitflies pretty well, but not fast enough to keep up with their production. So we'll put them both out and maybe do a fruitfly count to see if one is better than the other.

Or maybe not.

Goal for this week: Clean the area around the TV enough to make it worth unpacking the Wii. Remind me to tell you the Wii story sometime.

Did I mention my vacuum cleaner is still in the trunk of the car?

It's Tuesday. I woke up sort of late, meaning on time, but late in the sense that I had meant to get an early start.

I started my day at StB hospital, to have some blood drawn for some tests. I'm supposed to do it a week ahead of an appointment, but the appointment is on Thursday and I forgot about it until Saturday and didn't have a chance to go in yesterday.

I then had a 'baby' apple pancake at the Original Pancake House. Yum. And sat and had a coffee at the coffee place at the Forks, working on some notes regarding my latest Acting-Head crisis. Which we're going to have to suck up and pay for, and in the scheme of things it's not that much, but really, I'd rather not go begging for money from the Dean considering I've already done stuff to to make his life miserable. So I noodled out some questions for some others that might lead to some solutions I didn't/couldn't/wouldn't think of on my own.

Then I went to Diamond Sports & Medical supply, where I hoped to find a thick yoga mat, and better blocks. And maybe a knee pad for those lunge positions. Didn't find squat. Spent a long time playing with the stretchy bands and tubes and things they use in Pilates and stuff, and considered the purchase of a distance-gripper thingy and a bedpan as a gift for a friend of mine (long story, to be shared some other time).

Then I went to the mystery bookstore and bought some books, now that I'm back to reading at night.

Which was originally going to be the topic of this post. I've just discovered Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series, featuring one Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, the only openly practicing Wizard known, who works as a sorcery consultant, sort of a PI of the supernatural, out of an office in Chicago. Good voice, well drawn characters. Lead with a shady past. Funny and atmospheric, lots of great supporting characters (my favo(u)rite being Bob, the lascivious air spirit who lives in a skull in Harry's basement). Good supporting characters with inner and outer conflicts. Not 100% sure about the world, the way magic works in this universe. But lots of hints of more to explore (The White Council, a Vampiress owner of a pricey escort agency, the mysterious Nevernever, a Warden with a sword and an axe to grind. And a mortal crime boss to get in the way--I particularly loved the line "I've never had a Godfather, but I do have a godmother, and she is, as it happens, a faery." Or something like that.) So I went looking for book #2 at the mystery place, which of course they didn't have. The did have #9, the new one, which apparently just came in, but I have to read things in order or it just doesn't work for me. Ended up buying some other stuff, but I'll have to go elsewhere to hunt up the rest of the Butcher novels.

So after all that, I did some shopping, bought groceries, and now I'm contemplating doing a whole lot of cooking so I can save some time as I go on this week. Really need to do laundry at some point. And get my new vacuum cleaner out of the trunk of the car.