too cold for responsible journalism

I had a brilliant plan for tonight.  Jess is gone to be in a wedding in Searcy this weekend, so I had decided to put off kitchen cleaning and de-Christmasing the apartment until tomorrow or Saturday in favor of starting either of the two books I need to crack open, being online and ready to take Pioneer Woman's 90s movie quiz when it went live, doing today's project 4:4 reading, and maybe watching Ugly Betty and Scrubs episodes from earlier in the week.  I had a fast dinner mapped out in my head, so that I wouldn't lose the whole night to being in the kitchen, and nothing was going to keep me at work past six.  And if all those things went as planned, I'd have some time at the end of the evening to blog about my reading project progress.

Things started to head south at work.  I did a Wii game day this afternoon and instead of packing it in at 5 when the kiddos left, I tried out a couple of the sports on our brand-new copy of Wii Sports Resort.  That wasn't frivolous or selfish.  I have to help kids with games all the time, and I needed to know how some of them worked.  Plus there's an unlocking element to some of the game features.  I was playing for the kids.  I also managed to have a mostly intelligent, big decision-making conversation while I was learning to throw a frisbee.  And it's not like I played for hours, maybe 20 minutes.  But then a couple of our teen volunteers came in, and I let them play for a while because I'm a sucker for courteous teenage boys.  Then after I finally kicked them out and with the competent help of Cory the page (whose pagely awesomeness deserves a blog post all its own--in a totally professional way), I decided on a new Wii storage schematic that will eventually simplify my life, but just took up time today.  And there was a fair amount of gathering of personal belongings once I made it back to the workroom, since I was deciding what to leave and what to take of the decorate-your-own-cupcake supplies from Lisa's birthday celebration today (a complete success, in case you were wondering).  So I guess it's actually borderline amazing that I got all of that accomplished by 6:45.  Those 45 minutes shouldn't have broken down the plan anyway.  Leaving work late is not my problem.

I realized when I got home that I hadn't factored in some time spent figuring out if I could fix the non-working dryer that Jess reported before she left.  The answer, curious reader, is of course not.  I did follow over-the-phone instructions from the Popster enough to know that it's not a breaker problem, and I'm quite certain it's plugged in.  The rest is beyond me.  Good thing doing laundry tonight was just a good idea rather than a desperate need.  And at this point in my evening I'm too tired, grumpy, and cold to feel guilty about not cleaning my kitchen, so the rest of my evening was salvageable.  A broken dryer, while frustrating, is not my problem.

Then the cold set in.  Perhaps, unless you've been living in a cave, you've heard that it's a bit chilly here (and lots of other places too).  And though the no-heat challenge has ended in our house, we've been keeping the thermostat set right around 60 and layering.  It is officially too cold for that.

Here are some other things for which it is too cold:
1.  reading--holding a book and turning pages means uncovered hands
2.  fast-forwarding through dvr-ed commercials--again with the uncovered hands
3.  computer usage--I never thought I'd live to see the day that physical discomfort could overcome my internet addiction, but that's the world we live in now.
4.  remembering stuff--I might have convinced myself to stay on the computer longer if the mind-numbing cold hadn't made me completely forget about that 90s movie quiz.
5.  staying awake--I finally lost the bone-deep chill that set in during my walk from the library to the far-away parking garage, and once I was cozy, sleep was too powerful to fight.  I would eventually wake up around eleven feeling too alert to switch from warm and snuggly on the couch to warm and snuggly in bed, which is why you're reaping the benefits of this rambling rant tonight.  You're welcome.

But that brief stint in alertness is fading fast, and my uncovered fingers aren't nearly so toasty as they were when I woke up, so (count your blessings, dear reader) the self-pity and incoherent mutterings end here for tonight.