I remember why I don’t read as much as I used to – it’s because I CAN’T STOP. It’s like some kind of compulsion to read and read and read and read and read while forsaking all else – food, sleep, Tiny Tower, the internet. I’ve read 2.5 books in the Song of Ice and Metaphor series in the last three days – 2200 pages, give or take a paragraph or two – and my head is killing me. I’m tired, and hungry. I may have bedsores. I am not, however, enraged like the LAST time I went on a reading spree – that time I read 9 Anita Blake novels in one sitting and wanted to punch things when I was done. These books are immeasurably better, but I’m still word-weary. No more reading, for now. I will give it a rest – catch up on sleep, my Tiny Tower inventory, food – and maybe even join the real world for a spell. No more wolves and walls and misleading epilogues. I will save books 4 and 5 to blaze through at an inhuman speed later, when I’ve had my fill of people and this false summer we’re having. I’ve missed you, internet. Let’s hang out and be friends.

I don’t know how much longer I can blame my missing mail on the postal strike – some things seem to have gotten through intact, yet other packages are nowhere to be seen. I’m missing four items dating back to the end of May, and I’m pretty grumpy about it. It’s far too late to file any non-delivery claims, and the sellers just say “oh gee that’s weird” which really doesn’t do me any good at all. The mail I DO get is pretty useless as well – just today there was a delivery notice in our mailbox for a package I picked up last week (strike or not, our postie is still playing the “leave the notice three days late” game), and a postcard good for a free birthday drink from Starbucks .. if it hadn’t expired on July 2nd. And so I wait, frustrated and annoyed. I want my things, you jerks. Don’t make me order more stuff from the internet in retribution.

I think I’ll go bake some muffins.

baking muffins in the cold november rain