Ugh. First major bout of insomnia since moving in.

I'm not sure if there's an actual trigger or not. It's not full-on insomnia because I did sleep for a few hours, albeit very shallowly... I was having dreams that were just one step below waking hallucinations/sleep paralysis, insofar as they all involved me laying down in my blankets and seemed to incorporate actual noises from the environment. But now I'm wide awake. Still tired, but wide awake.

Tuesday, November 5th

The Daily Report

Last night, I had a bout of moderate insomnia... a period of extreme wakefulness (while still tired) coming in between fits of very shallow sleep. All in all, it felt a lot like when I've had caffeine too recently before trying to sleep, although I hadn't.

I also learned a few things about radiator-based home heating, mainly: it doesn't mess around. When I made the decision to get out from under the blankets in the middle of the night, it was freezing, so I turned the thermostat up a bit. I didn't aim for a particular temperature... with forced air heating, when you need to warm the room up quickly you just put it on blast and then turn it down.

Well, radiators don't blast. They don't rumble or roar into life. They do heat the room to the temperature specified and do a really good job of keeping it there, but they do it quietly, which means you need to pay attention to what you set the thermostat to. To be honest, I haven't been 100% sure that it was doing anything at all until last night... I will never doubt again.

Yesterday I hit a major milestone in perk fulfillment: everybody who got one of the one to five short story perks and who answered the email inquiry asking what story/format they want has now received their selections (or should have). Check your spam folder if you haven't. If you signed up for one of those perks and you don't remember seeing an email from me about it (or you do but it's long since been buried in your inbox), you don't need to find the email to claim the perk. Just pick one (or more, if you got one of the higher perks) of the things listed for 99 cents on this page and send me an email (contactme at alexandraerin dot com). If you're one of those who haven't claimed your perk yet, please don't feel like you waited too long to get back to me... there's no expiration date on this stuff.

Today in theory I'm starting on the next level of perks, the novel length ones. I'm saying "in theory" because I have a pretty bad headache from lack of sleep. I'm not throwing in the towel on the day yet, I'm just proceeding with caution.

The State of the Me

See above.

Plans For Today

See above.

Oh, joy.

At least two out of three of our little happy family has been afflicted with stomach cramps and related intestinal complaints today (bagged salad seems the most likely culprit, although it was washed). It's making it hard to either work or catch up on sleep.