not so fireproof

Today was extremely lackluster; I just need to accept that I probably have one day a week in which I am completely useless so that I give up on it earlier and do other things. I just barely made it down to Palo Alto in time to train with Alyssa, which went well despite my utter lack of desire to be there. Then I ran some errands, had lunch at Chipotle, and came back to the evil city with the intention of going grocery shopping. But, there was unexpectedly annoying traffic on the final approach to the bridge, and by the time I got into the city proper, I was in no mood to go to the store and then fight my way back across town to my apartment.

So, I came home with the intention of writing -- and instead read some profiles of 9/11 victims' families ten years later (happy birthday to me!) in the New York Times, then took a nap. I tried again to write when I woke up, failed again, finally threw in the towel, made dinner (including some undercooked hamburger, which hopefully will not make my stomach worse -- my dream is that the bacteria kills whatever is in my stomach without killing me in the process), and started rereading Susan Cooper's OVER SEA, UNDER STONE, which is the first book in her THE DARK IS RISING series. It's one of the classic works of children's fantasy, and since I'm trying to figure out how to pace the beginning of my non-gargoyle series so that I reveal just enough information to clarify without revealing so much that it either takes away suspense or makes the story drag, this was good research.

Sadly, it kind of sucks that I now view so much of my reading life as research -- I basically took the activity that I enjoy more than any other and made it a duty, which is rather unfortunate. Sometimes it's awesome (i.e. I can spend two hours watching "Highlander" and say I was working!), but on nights when I'm not in a particularly good mood, my old standby of reading a good book doesn't always soothe me. Still, I'm not going to complain about getting to read whatever I want, and I need to spend more time doing it given the extreme piles of unread books sitting around waiting for me. But now, I'm going to go to bed; I'm training again tomorrow, so I should really get some sleep. Goodnight!