oh heathcliff

it only took a week of unemployment for my sleeping pattern to get screwed up. i've shifted three hours ahead so that i wake at noon and sleep around three in the morning. afternoon coffee is probably not helping.

i'm on to chapter five of orlando and she has just emerged into the nineteenth century some three hundred years from when she was a he and said "hey man, take a walk on the wild side". i like how the century is introduced as being pervasively damp. a poke at dickens or emily bronte maybe? it's been years since i read either of them but this cloudy damp gloomy image of england certainly reminds me of them. and now i'm laughing a little when i think of monty python's semaphore version of wuthering heights.

today was certainly not damp or gloomy. instead it was cold but sunny. while i was waiting for my laundry, i walked over to the deli next door and tried as gracefully as possible to eat a cheeseburger and read my book at the same time. to further complicate things, i went to sit at a counter next to some guy on this laptop and nearly fell out of the chair as i was moving it. the combination of counter and stools at the deli is terrible. sitting on the stool, the counter has about two inches of clearance above your lap so that your food is barely above your navel. trying to rest my elbows on the counter while eating or holding up my book proved terribly awkward and setting the book on the counter put it too far away to read comfortably. so, the counter did nothing but hold the plate. i had to hold my book in the air as well as my cheeseburger.