7 am and watching the weather

The worst bit about having been on holiday is that you get yourself into a nice lazy rhythm of late nights and even later mornings, which is always so hard to break when suddenly your holiday is over and it’s Monday morning. So I thought I’d be sensible and try and ease myself back into my normal waking-up time for a couple of days while it doesn’t matter too much if I’m in zombie mode all day.

And so far it’s kind of working (the zombie part is, anyway! :-)) I set the alarm last night for an hour after I’d normally get up for work (like I said, easing myself into it), but amazingly I actually woke up at my normal time – an hour *before* the alarm was due to go off. It’s weird; I’ve got dreadful time-sense normally (I never know what time of day it is), but if I go to bed thinking “I have to get up at x am”, that’s when I’ll wake up, usually to within about 15 minutes. And it’s not just a habit thing, because I’ve done it many times when I’ve had to catch an early flight somewhere – I’ll set the alarm for 5 am, and wake up at 10 to 5.

So this morning I woke up just before 6.30. Ok, so I didn’t exactly leap out of bed bright eyed and bushy tailed, but my eyes were open. If I can do the same tomorrow, then by Monday it’ll be a doddle(ish). That’s the theory, anyone. Some would say that I’ve just doomed myself to wasting the last couple of days of my holiday feeling tired and grumpy 🙂

Instead of a last-weekend-of-the-month meetup in December (which would have fallen in the Christmas weekend, so not been ideal for most people), we decided to postpone for a week and have a picnic meetup this weekend instead. Of course, it’s still not ideal for people who get more than the statutories and are off on holiday (and I’ve had a few RSVPs declining for exactly that reason), but if we left it any longer it would be getting a bit tricky to call it a December meetup 🙂

Plus, of course, despite having brilliantly hot weather all week, last night was pretty stormy. So far this morning the sky is looking reasonably blue (though with the odd ominous grey bit), but the forecast is still a bit iffy. We’ve got a wet-weather plan (basically go to a café instead), but what the weather’s like will affect my plans for the rest of the morning: if it’s fine, then I’ll leave here 9.30-10ish, and walk over to the supermarket in Fendalton (probably stopping to release a few books along the way) to buy some picnic-y type food, then catch a bus from there into town. But if we’re going to a café I don’t need to buy food, so I might as well just catch a bus straight to town from here, in which case I don’t need to leave until after 11. So I’m sitting here with one eye out the window trying to guess what the weather will do.

And of course the forecast will probably put people off the picnic idea anyway. So I can see this picnic turning into just me and lytteltonwitch sitting in a café… (not that that won’t be enjoyable, of course).

I realised last night that I’ve been very remiss about reporting catches. When I get a notification email telling me a book has been caught in the wild, I flag it so I can come back later and report it here. And checking my flagged emails, they go back to November… oops. I was going to write them up last night, but of course Bookcrossing‘s servers chose that moment to play up again, so I couldn’t get in to remind myself what the catches were. It seems to be working ok again now (touch the superstition-related object of your choice), so here goes:

• The Innocent by Posie Graeme-Evans – three months between release and catch, and according to the finder it had been sitting in the release location all that time
• Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer – a catch from our Auckland trip (Victoria Park Market seems to be an excellent place for getting catches)
• The Manipulators by Jeffrey Robinson – another Auckland catch, this time from one of the books mecka-antics released for me
• Other People’s Children by Joanna Trollope – a catch from my Wellington trip this time
• Age of the Pussyfoot by Frederik Pohl – this one’s really cool: it’s been through three people’s hands since it left mine. I’d love to know how it got from Timaru to Melbourne, though!
• Air and Angels by Susan Hill – not quite so well travelled, but it went from Temuka to Invercargill
• The Gazebo by Emily Grayson – another Auckland catch – mecka-antics is good at picking release locations, obviously!
• The New Cat by Joy Cowley – caught the same day it was released
• Jennys Geheimnis by Barbara Delinsky – one of the books I labelled in the Wellington YHA book exchange, caught by a German tourist who took it home with them
• Apple of My Eye by Helene Hanff – caught a week after it was released, but I assume it hadn’t sat undetected among the apples for all that time!
• The Insatiable Moon by Michael Riddell – a second-generation catch. Or is that third-generation? According to my journal entry, I gave it to someone at a meetup (and can’t remember who now – weird that I would have given away a NZ book when we’ve been saving them up for the convention), but it was caught in the wild, so whoever it was must have wild-released it without journalling. It’s in San Francisco now, anyway.
• Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay – another Auckland catch that, like the mecka-antics ones, isn’t strictly mine (it was released for me by libbybook), but still cool, because it’s now in Utah!
• The Worst Soccer Team Ever by William Taylor – so far the only one of my BCNZ release challenge books to be caught
• The World Upside Down by Felix Donnelly – a second-generation catch on a book that’s travelled from Amberley to Vienna
• Raissa by Regis Castro – two catches in quick succession. The first catcher didn’t think much of the book, but at least they passed it on.
• Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold – a catch from our Halloween release walk
• Teddy’s Christmas Present by Maureen Spurgeon – I think this is the only time I’ve ever had a catch from one of our Christmas trees (they’re still fun to do, though, and I still like to think the books are out there being enjoyed by someone)
• Colonies in Space by T. A. Heppenheimer – a catch from our expedition last weekend, complete with apology for the pie shop not being open! (we definitely have to go back there now :-))
• The Predator by Katherine Applegate – another catch from last weekend
• Spirit in the Rainforest by Eric Wilson – and another one (hey, it turns out if you release lots of books, you get lots of catches! Who would have thought it?)
• Traumfänger. Die Reise einer Frau in die Welt der Aborigines by Marlo Morgan – another book I labelled in the Wellington YHA, and which by the look of it has travelled to Christchurch
• Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin by P.G. Wodehouse – took nearly a year and a half to get caught, but it’s travelling again now
• Predators by Steve Parker – and finally, a catch from an earlier LFR expedition

Wow, you don’t realise just how many catches you’re getting until you see them all listed like that, do you?

Currently reading: Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult and The Island of the Colour-Blind by Oliver Sacks (yes, I’m doing the “can’t make up my mind which book I’m reading” thing again)
Currently listening to: Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan

(and now my title is a complete lie, because it’s taken me over an hour to write this, so it’s nearly 8.30)