It’s a cool evening – some might even call it cold. Close the windows almost all the way but leave them open a little so you can still get some fresh air. But don’t have enough blankets on the bed so you’re still chilly. Huddle up with the cat under the covers and eventually drop off to sleep.

Wake up in the middle of the night and hear a rustling noise. Figure that it must be windy outside and it’s just the sound of the leaves in the trees.

A few minutes later, hear a thud-THUD sound. Figure that it must be the cat jumping off the table or the counter (and make a note to scold him about it later), but realize the cat is still next to you so that can’t be it. Ponder this development for a few moments.

Before you’ve come to any firm conclusion (or at least one firm enough to help you get back to sleep), hear the sound of footsteps and realize that someone is in the house. Freak out a little, but quietly. Try to figure out where the phone is and if you can reach it from your current position. Remember that if you pick up the extension upstairs, the light on the phone upstairs goes on so whoever is down there will know that someone is awake upstairs and it could end very badly. Hope that they leave soon (and spare a rather random regret that you haven’t backed up your laptop lately because surely they’re going to take that, but silently smirk because the laptop is almost 5 years old and making bad noises, so they’re getting a lemon.)

Suddenly, the hall light comes on, and you hear footsteps on the stairs. Start panicking in earnest, and start tossing and turning. Maybe whoever it is doesn’t realize there’s anyone home, so make enough noise to make it sound like there really is someone home but they’re not awake yet.

Realize it’s not working because the intruder is at the top of the stairs and is now coming down the hall. And now they are outside your room.

Consider your options. First on the list: is this a dream? If so, can you wake yourself up? Try that.

Wake up, laying in the same position you were when you fell asleep, which is the same position you were laying in the dream. Have an attack of the willies and realize you’re not getting back to sleep tonight.

Moving forward! A wrap-up, if you will:

1. I have had to give up on the running for now. Around the end of August, I started getting awful pain in my left calf and knee which would leave me in pain for days and make the whole prospect of being active unattractive. My workouts would get shorter and fewer and farther between, which defeats the purpose. It didn’t help that the new treadmills at the gym didn’t have the same “give” that the old ones had [3]. Finally I made the switch to just using the elliptical machine and started using the arc trainer and haven’t had any pain problems since then. Better still, I’ve been able to increase my endurance on both machines. Yay for exercise!

2. You may have noticed that I haven’t done many “what I’ve been reading” -type updates lately [4]. Back in October, I thought about sitting down and doing just that, but couldn’t find the notebook I usually use to keep track of my reading. This did not bode well. Not only have I not made any notes in it since February, I hardly remember what I’ve read between then and now.

Since then I’ve finished two books, The Dragon’s Eye by Stephen King which was tense and slightly creepy and really good, and The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. It was okay, but it cheesed me off slightly – why does it seem like almost all books that are considered critical successes contain copious amounts of personal tragedy? Just once, I’d like to read a book about something happy that does really, really well and isn’t considered chicklit. Grrr… it’s a rant for another day, though.

3. Around August, someone asked if I was considering doing NaNoWriMo again this year. For a while, I really wanted to but wasn’t committed to the idea of starting something I wasn’t sure I would be able to put a good effort into. My blogging has dropped right off the last few months, which makes me sad because I enjoyed having this as a creative outlet. Plus, the more often you write the easier it is to do, and because I wasn’t blogging that often I wasn’t sure I would be able to do the 1770 words EVERY DAY for the month of November. I decided that instead commit to writting a 50,000 word novel, I would start smaller and do a short post every day – way more manageable, right?

Oh no. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had left the story from my 2006 attempt unfinished, and that there was a whole middle part I’d skipped over, and it bugged me that I didn’t really know what happened to get the cast from point A to point 3.14159 [5]. And the more I thought about it, the more I kept thinking up a story. Fast forward two more months and, yep, I reactivated my NaNo account. Today’s word count: 1954. That’s all of today’s words and almost 200 words for tomorrow. Woo!

That’s it for now. I will put an effort into posting more often, even if it’s something silly and trivial, like “today I saw a dead squirrel in the road, and I hope it was the one that ate the ONE TOMATO I got on my tomato plant this summer.”

[1] Bloglines, you have messed up my feeds for the last time! Good riddance!
[2] And since I hadn’t actually opened WP, I didn’t realize I had comments waiting for approval – sorry Sarah and Julie!
[3] Plus, they vibrate when you run and that just exacerbated the whole problem.
[4] Well, I haven’t done much updating period.
[5] This has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the post (but isn’t that the beauty of footnotes?) – my favourite cheer goes something like this:

Cosine, secant
Tangent, sine
3.14159
Gooooooo nerds!