When I complain about this, Forest says "Yes, dear. Every night at midnight you turn into a pumpkin. I'm used to it."
What's annoying is that he's right, and for all the sleepiness-induced proper bedtimes, I still end up oversleeping Thursday morning. This is two weeks in a row I've been seriously late on Thursday. Not good. No one in my office cares, but I still don't like it. I would prefer to feel in control of my sleep schedule.
We finished reading (err... listening to) Timeline by Michael Crichton this morning in the car. What a wonderful, exciting, suspenseful, interesting book! I recommend it so highly I'd almost buy you a copy to make you read it. Almost. I'm really looking forward to the movie version of this one. There are many great opportunities for some really exciting scenery, costumes, and effects. It looked pretty cool in my inagination, anyway.
I'm also now completely addicted to books on tape. I hadn't realized before just how many hours in a week I spend in the car. Timeline was 5 CDs long, 72 minutes per disc. My daily commute to and from work alone allows me to hear 1 CD per day, not counting lunchtime driving, trips to LCC for Tae Kwon Do, and recreational driving. This is time I had written off, before. I had relegated myself to the drudgery of driving, and either constantly making myself new "car tapes" (mixes of the music I own) or trying desperately to find something decent on the radio. The times of day that I travel are generally bad radio times. They pack more ads into the commute hour, and play the same three top 40 hits every single day, predictably. I know that if I want to hear the BackStreet Boys, all I need to do is turn to that station at 5 PM, wait until the commercials are over, and there they will be.
I almost never want to hear the Backstreet Boys.
So now I'm going to rent books on tape. Maybe I'll get another fiction one next. I was proud of my ability to translate parts of Antonio Banderas's Spanish diatribe in Play it to the Bone last week, maybe it would be fun to rent a foreign language tutorial. They also have a lot of the Shakespeare plays, and classics. My only regret is that their selection of Sci Fi/Fantasy is rather sparse. They have all of the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series, and a bunch of Anne McCaffery stuff, but that's it. They have one copy of Stranger in a Strange Land, which is possibly my favorite book, but no other Heinlein at all.
Maybe I'll branch out my tastes a bit. I have loved Crichton since Andromeda Strain, and while I've read all his books, it was years ago. There's a lot of Tom Clancy on tape. My dad loves those, and Forest's whole family reads him, too. Honestly, though, when I walk into a bookstore, I usually make a pretty severe beeline to the Fantasy section. It will be a challenge to diversify my tastes.
This weekend are auditions for the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, and as usual, I'm paying for my lack of orginazation as an actress. I have to toss together another vitae, because I lost my previous one, and run around like a madwoman because I never got my headshots taken when I should have. The good news is that I've had enough monologue experience that I can pull those out of my hat without it being a big problem. The competition that I was in last year really helped with that, as did Midsummer Night's Dream. Speaking of which, the Shakespeare Fest is doing that one this year. Barring schedule conflicts, I would sure love to do that show again!
Their rehearsals start in mid-June, and performances are three weekends in late July-early August. It would fit perfectly into my summer, when Kirstin isn't in school.
Tick, tick, tick
For some reason the stupid biological clock is going insane this week. It makes no sense. I already have a munchkin, but my instincts are all screaming at me to procreate. Which I am not about to do. Basically, I have two pregnant people in my office, one of whom I work next door to, so I listen to this stuff day in and day out. Also, one of my coworkers just returned from maternity leave, and keeps bringing her newborn in with her. Somehow my brain chemistry goes ballistic when I see the little toesy-woesys and I go insane, instantly.
I didn't go GaGa for babies when Kirstin was small. I think maybe I was too young to be this much of a drooling idiot.
Diapers. Puke. Formula stench. Bottle scrubbing. Drool. Teething. Midnight wailing. Complete lack of adult freedoms for at least the first 2 years. Some loss of freedom for the next 2, and babysitting costs for the 8 after that. $200,000 over 18 years, not counting college.
See how rational I can be when I try?
