apropos of anything

I sped through In Cold Blood pretty quickly, usually reading a little during my lunch or after work while I waited for traffic to die down or for files to deploy. I had a hard and fast rule, though: No reading In Cold Blood after 8 p.m., as Capote writes so well I easily became involved with the story, and the characters and events all feel very real. In fact, I usually read something light, like The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants right before bed so I wouldn’t, as my project manager predicted, wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the Clutter family.

Saturday night, though, I had only thirty-some pages left to go, and I thought since all that was left was the execution, I’d be okay. I finished the book, worked on the tagline post, lost my Internet connection before I could post it (that has been happening far too often for my liking, and I’m torn between blaming BellSouth or pinning it on my decrepit old router and modem), and went to sleep.

I woke up suddenly at 5:30 a.m. because I was sure I’d heard somebody knocking on the front door. Then I started to wonder if maybe what I’d heard wasn’t knocking but opening of the front door. And then, because I wasn’t about to just sit in my bedroom wondering if there was in fact somebody downstairs, I went on down to check, turning on every light in my path.

The front door was locked. The back door was locked. There was nobody there. I know. I checked every nook and cranny, including the hall closet, the downstairs bathroom, and the pantry. Oh, and Mansoor’s room and bathroom. If you’re going to be obsessive, you might as well do a thing right.

As I finished up fajr, I realized what I’d heard was most likely somebody knocking on my neighbor’s door, as the trio that just moved in next door is still a little young and in the “party all night” phase of their lives. I realized this because I heard them running up and down the stairs leading to their front door, driving away, and then coming back.

Dan says I’m not allowed to read any more creepy books, which I think is highly unfair. You have ONE “episode,” and suddenly people start creating banned books lists for you…

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