Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Restless night

I got very little restful sleep last night. When I first went to bed, the house was still pretty warm, so I tossed and turned for a while before I got comfortable enough to nod off. Then I dreamed a lot. And then, shortly before 3:30 in the morning, I woke up abruptly hearing a momentary burst of noise; it sounded like loud voices over a radio.

Normally I would have brushed this off as the vestiges of a dream, but this time my dog jumped up with me. I don't know if she was just responding to me sitting up so suddenly, or if we both heard the same thing.

But at that point I couldn't just brush it off, and I had been soundly jolted out of sleep, so I grabbed a big flashlight and did a tour of the house, double-checking the screens on the open windows upstairs, the window latches on the closed windows in the rest of the house, and the locks on every door. My dog, after her initial start when I almost fell out of bed, was relaxed. She probably thought I was crazy, wandering around the house in the middle of the night. If anyone else saw the lights going on and off in different rooms, I'm not sure what they thought.

After that I went back to bed, and the dog settled down again on the floor next to my bed, but I lay awake for a long time and just listened to the night until I eventually fell asleep.

--

Labels: ,

Monday, July 09, 2007

'Tis the season

The season for big undertakings, I suppose. In August I will finally take the train trip that I've been planning for at least the last 7 years. This week my dad will depart on a 30-day backcountry hiking expedition across the Colorado mountains. One of my sisters is currently vacationing in Hawaii; the other one is on the way home after competing in the USA Climbing youth national championships.

Why do we travel this time of year? This is when everybody takes the big family vacation, while the kids are out of school. Popular destinations are a zoo during the summer. The rest of us, logically, should therefore prefer to do most of our travelling outside of the peak season... but we don't. We follow the crowd, and then we complain about how crowded it is. People are such silly creatures.

--

Labels: ,