Ol' Bleary Eyes.

Bloodshot? No, no; not at all. These are my festive holiday eyes, decked out to look like peppermint candies.

One might think that, after having read books for mumblety-mumble years, I'd have learned not to read thrillers just before going to sleep. One would be wrong, however. I've been reading Frederick Forsyth's Avenger lately, and was about halfway through it. (It's pretty good, by the way, and is set in the present day - well, the pre-September 11 present day - instead of having the usual WW II or '60's Cold War settings that a lot of spy-ish thrillers have. With secret agents, murder-for-hire of the unexpecting innocent, and vile criminals getting their just rewards from vigilantes, not from the justice system: good stuff, and exciting.) So I went to bed and picked up the book, intending to read a chapter or two before nodding off. Unfortunately for me, it was sufficiently enticing that I kept saying to myself "Oh, look! The next chapter's really short, so I'll read just that one more and then put the book down." And just one more, and just one more, and eventually it was 3:30 a.m. and I'd finished the book.

Great! Time to turn the light out, and drift peacefully to sleep, listening to the familiar and comforting sounds of an otherwise empty 50-year-old house: the pops and creaks and clangs of the furnace going on and off and the heating pipes expanding and contracting; the BOP-Bop-bop-bopbopbop-roll-l-l-l of an acorn on the roof; the rustle of leaves outside my window, due to the wind or a (hopefully) small animal; the tap-tap-tap of, I guess, a branch against a window; the motion-detector-light over my driveway repeatedly coming on and illuminating my bedroom blinds; the creaking of floorboards settling, or possibly the basement door opening; the just-at-the-threshhold-of-hearing footfalls on the steps and the bated breathing of the cat in the hallway, unless it's an intruder with a gun with a silencer. And sure enough, sometime around 6:30, I finally got to sleep.

Good thing there's nothing interesting on TV right about now. I think I'll go take a nap.