Inexplicably Tired

I hate the times when, for no apparent reason, you just get tired.

You'll have an entire open afternoon ahead of you so you'll sit down with a book and - boom - you're too tired to read, even though you really want to.

Or you'll finally have a quiet evening and decide to sit down and watch TV when - whoomp - like a pillow up-side the head, you're walloped with a case of the yawns.

Christopher and I were out for dinner tonight with some friends. It was a very nice dinner, with good conversation and good food, and on the way home I figured it had to be at least 9 or 9:30. It was just barely 8:30. And I was yawning so hard that I couldn't stop.

I mentioned it to Christopher and he asked whether or not I've been sleeping well. I think I have, but I must admit that I have woken up thinking "Did I sleep wrong last night?" a couple of times, lately.

But that doesn't explain the amount of tired that hit me tonight.

I think I'm going to blame the change in the weather. We've had really oddly warm temps for the past week or so, and when we were leaving dinner tonight it was decidedly not warm. (Warmer than average, yes. As warm as any evening in the past week, no.) I figure the need for sleep is my body's way of saying it's time to get back into hibernation mode.

And who am I to fight nature when giving in means a nice warm bed and the potential for a good night's sleep?

And the Bing Goes On

There are times when you realize that what you want in life is simply destined to be elusive. 

I have gradually come to the realization that the Twin Bing candy bar is one of those things in my life. 

There are "vintage" candy stores in the Twin Cities which carry all sorts of random candy bars, but apparently none of them carry the Twin Bing. 

Yes, I could order them online, but that seems like cheating.

Yes, they carry it at Minnesota's Largest Candy Store, but that's only open during summer and fall. 

So I just keep looking for them when I find new candy stores. And I keep being disappointed - not surprised, mind you, just disappointed. 

And, thus, the search for the elusive Bing goes on. 

Obviously, Dragons are Real

I was flipping through the listings to try to find something to watch this evening, and found a movie with a description including both "scientists" and "dragons."

I was going to just keep scrolling, but then I realized what might be the best thing I've seen in a while: It was listed as "Docudrama, Fantasy."

Wait. What?

Okay. I get the "Fantasy" part of a movie about dragons.

I get the "Drama" part of a movie about dragons OR a movie about scientists.

I even get the "Docu-" part of a movie about scientists.

But isn't a "Docudrama" supposed to be part drama and part, ya know, documentary?

Assuming, obviously, that the descriptions are accurate, that means that somewhere along the line a scientific documentary about dragons should exist.

Cool.

Why I Book Club

Some time in 2013, a friend of mine was getting a bunch of people together to start a book club. Not an overly academic book club, but a book club full of people from different backgrounds, where the books would be democratically chosen and decent food and even the occasional alcoholic beverage would be thrown in. 

At the time, I had not been in my position as a full-time editor for very long, but I was already experiencing one of the main problems I have with my job: I read books all day at work, and so it's really hard to get excited about them when I'm at home. 

When I was asked if I wanted to join the book club, I had two competing thoughts: 

1. Why in the hell would I want to do that?
2. That would be a perfect way to force myself to read more books and - hopefully - it would even remind me why I have always liked to read. 

When the food and beverage idea was added in, I decided that that kind of answered point number 1, and so I went ahead and said yes. 

Since that time, I've read a ton of books I never would have read (or at least a dozen or two - we only meet every 4 to 6 weeks, after all). Some have been really good. Some have not been things I'd recommend. One... well... one I actually skipped about a third of, just so I could get to the end before book club - and, you know, I didn't seem to miss anything. And then there's the one that I really like, but have only made it through a third of, even though it was for book club a few months ago (I really enjoyed the conversation about it, even so). 

But I don't think I've actually missed a meeting. I've found that the meetings - which do start out being about the books, though they often digress into other topics for about half the time - are why I read the books, and not the other way around. I'm not in book club so that I can read the books and talk about them at meetings. I'm in the club so that I can go to meetings and talk about books. 

And, yes, our club has gradually gotten smaller. When we started, there were a consistent 6-10 attendees. Now our average is 4 or 5. But we all still read the books. And we all still talk about them. And we all bring food and sit and talk about our lives. It's kind of like a literary therapy group, with books as a fringe benefit. 

So although I might never get excited about "Love in the Time of Cholera," and while the consensus was that "Gulp" might have felt like it was missing it's through-line, and while I loved "The Night Circus" (which my mother recommended), I've come to realize that the reason I book club is much more about the club, and much less about the books.

And I'm fine with that. 

**Oh, and if you want more info about the book club I'm in, let me know. We're not overly academic, but we have good conversation and - usually - good food.

We Be Jammin'

Nope. Not a reference to reggae music.

Not even a reference to putting up preserves in the summer.

I apparently tried to jam my thumb today while running errands. You see, I picked up a new bag of dog food, and had to set it on the counter. The problem was that although it was actually only about 30 pounds (so, really, not all that heavy), it was vacuum packed, so the bag is kind of hard as a rock.

As I set it on the counter, I realized that the UPC was on the bottom, so I did the good customer thing and flipped it over. And, in so doing, whacked my thumb into it.

I should say that I have kind of weird thumbs to begin with. They're not truly double-joined, but they can bend backward at the knuckle to about 90 degrees. (When I was younger and in the habit of trying to freak people out, I could get them to bend to at least 135 degrees, or enough to look like a V, if not a U...)

So, the weird thumb is kind of prone to flipping back, anyway, and then it meets the resistance of the rather hard bag o' food and... yowch.

At least it happened at the end of the day. I only had one other errand to run, then I came home and took three Ibuprofen. Which, along with a pseudofed for my sinuses, has taken the edge off.

No bruising or swelling, at least, but it might make it hard to hitchhike for the next couple of weeks...

A New Perspective

Christopher and I have been talking about rearranging the living room for a while. There's just something about the way it has been set up that makes it hard to have group conversations, and so we've talked about what it might be like if we flip it around a bit.

But the only way to know whether it's going to work is to actually do it. And undertaking an afternoon of moving furniture and electronics can be a bit daunting. So we've left it as-is.

Or at least we had left it as it was.

Then Christopher went away to New York City last weekend, leaving me at home with the dog and a vague idea of how the room might look if it got changed around. Of course, doing a full move of heavy furniture . . . well, that's not something you really do on your own.

Unless you're kind of bored, and the nice weather has you feeling like you should do something with the day, and you decide that you can just move it all back if it doesn't work.

I spent a couple of hours moving things, yesterday. By the time I was done, the TV was hooked back up to cable, the lamps were plugged back in, and the pooch was trying out a series of new angles of viewing the room.

Christopher was, well, "surprised" is probably a bit of an understatement. But we spent tonight sitting on the newly oriented couch and trying it out. I think it works . . . mostly. The new arrangement definitely needs a few tweaks, but I think we might get used to it.

And, of course, if we don't it can all go back where it was. Although, if I have to put everything back, I'm going to take the Ibuprofen before I start, just to get a jump on the after effects.

January Thaw

In Minneapolis, we are currently experiencing a bliss-inducing January thaw. Yesterday and today it has been above 32 degrees, and it looks like it might continue for the next few days before going back down to the normal highs in the low 20s.

Granted, you don't get freezer burn on your fingers when it's in the 20s above zero. You get them when it's 20 below zero. So what we were dealing with a week or so ago was not normal. Or, rather, it was kind of normal, but not average. or something.

Of course, with the warmer weather system we're getting clouds - not sun. And my sinuses are acting up because of the change in the weather. And you can't help but track sludge every time you go inside anywhere.

But it's a thaw. I got to wear my third-warmest jacket when I ran errands this morning. I've taken the dog out for walks without putting her coat on. Our sidewalks are mostly clear, again.

Yeah... Weather in Minnesota is weird.