January Sweeps - Day 370

It started to snow a little over an hour ago: huge, slowly-drifting flakes of white, surrounded by a million more like themselves.  I thought I'd grab my coat, run over to the storage unit, and get a song recorded (it just seems visually appealing to do a song in a snowstorm), but I had work to finish--should I abandon it, or should I take advantage of the snowfall?  I decided to let fate decide: I'd put on the song I'd intended to sing, and if I could remember all of the words, I'd run over and record.

Well, about halfway through the song, my mind went blank, and this wasn't even with the added pressure of the camera recording in front of me.  I tried it again, just singing it to myself as I put shoes on and headed for the car . . . and when I reached the end of the song, I realized I had skipped two verses.

It's disappointing, because I can't describe how lovely the snow looked in words, and when I got up to record a bit for this blog, the huge flakes had been described by tiny, dime-sized snow that looks more like salt or dandruff than anything romantic or awesome.  Here, take a look:

As I recorded, a jogger ran by--you can see him at the bottom of the screen--and I envied him.  I don't know why, but like John Doe, my Sin is Envy.  

Oh, and Sloth too.  We shouldn't forget Sloth.

And Lust, let's not kid ourselves.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In February: 459

Eventually, I abandoned my work anyway, and drove over to the library, about fifteen minutes earlier than I usually get here.  I decided to, instead of writing or blogging, I would reward myself with fifteen minutes of reading "The Golem and the Jinni" at a desk here.  Normally, I read twice a week for an hour or more, but tomorrow I won't be able to, so why not?

I got three pages read of text so sublime I know I should never write again, like someone with a horrible genetic disorder choosing not to procreate . . . but I have an idea for a story, and it might be fun to see if I could get it done before the 14th.*

While I was reading, the guy in the booth across from me started to snore.  Then he did that thing where the sound of you snoring wakes you up and you make a couple of bark-like snorts.  I kept reading, but then his snores came back in earnest.  I looked around, and mostly people were ignoring him.  But a moment later, the librarian--a hefty middle-aged lady--came up to the booth and said, "Sir?  Sir, are you alright?"  

And he just kept snoring.  Louder, the woman said, "Sir?  Sir, are you alright?" and she knocked on the desk in front of him.  His snores did not abate.  The woman kicked his chair.  He kept snoring.  "Sir!" she said, pretty loudly, and shook his arm.  He kept snoring.  At this point, everyone within my sight was looking over at this exchange, probably thinking what I was thinking, "What would it be like to make out with one of these college students with both of our masks on?"

Oh, wait, no, they weren't thinking that (and neither was I.  What do you think I am, some kind of weirdo?), they were thinking, "How can anybody sleep through this?"  She shook him like you'd shake someone who voted for Trump despite moving here from Mexico in 1959.  Only then did he open his eyes and look at her like, "But I'm paid up for the full hour, Monica."

She told him he was on the Quiet Floor and that he had to stay awake, and he grunted (maybe it was an apology), and she walked away.

By then, it was time for me to start writing, and I chose to blog instead.  Ain't I a stinker?

Fudge, I'm going to finish that chapter anyway, and let my laptop charge for five minutes (it's down to 13%).

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In February: 577

The guy has been sleeping--and snoring lightly--for a half an hour now.  I guess the librarian decided he wasn't bothering anybody, or maybe she realized that if it was that difficult to rouse him that he must be very, very tired.  I'm reminded of trying to add two to every blog post last week, and how I simply couldn't do it, so I feel a bit of empathy toward the guy.

I spent a couple minutes (okay, it was more than an hour), looking through my master file of "Bundling Made Easy," which is the fourth Lara and the Witch story, trying to identify the names of Lara's teachers, in case I wanted to go through with this Valentine's Day story.  "Bundling," it appears, is about 21,000 words long, and as I looked through it (haphazardly replacing ____s as I found them), I discovered one section to be missing.

I did a search for it, pretty sure that it would be in one of the blog files I wrote while I was staying at the cabin (I learned to always save it--except for when I forgot to--so that no progress would be lost in case of a crash or a reboot), where I'd often include the day's writing so I'd have an accurate word count.

But the scene was still gone . . . and I remembered there being a day in the fall when the laptop made a sustained beep (if you count an error sound that went on and on for half an hour as sustained) and I was forced to hard reboot my system, losing all I had written that day up till then.  THAT must have been where that scene went, which takes place at the University Mall between Lara and her boyfriend Scott.**  I guess I should rewrite it.  But that sort of thing makes me so tired.

Oh, and speaking of tired . . . the dude across from me started up again just now, not a particularly loud snore, but one that's rhythmic and persistent.  We'll see if he gets shaken again.

Words Today: 622
Words In February: 3916

*Not for the Day's sake--f**k the Day--but because it has a romantic aspect to it.

**Shoot, the end of the story takes place at the mall too, with those same two characters.  Dammit.