Insomnia..

[fajrdrako]

I made a mistake yesterday. When I went to Ikea with maaseru and Donna, I had the $1.00 Ikea breakfast. Not a problem in itself - though maaseru has had the breakfast in Vancouver, Montreal and Washington and says the Ottawa one was the worst. No bacon. My eggs were cold. And the clincher - no decaff coffee.

See, I like decaff coffee. Since I went on the South Beach Diet, decaff coffee is the only kind I can have. I don't consider it a hardship - it's a preference - but Ikea didn't have decaff. They had Sanka, which doesn't even count. It's undrinkable, in my opinion.

So I said 'what the heck' and drank a cup and a half of real coffee that maaseru and Donna said was weak. I enjoyed it.

Then last night, I wasn't tired. I was writing till midnight, playing games till one. Went to bed, still not tired. Tried to sleep - didn't work. Sat up and started reading fanfic. Read lots and lots of fanfic - those piles that have been sitting by my bed for a couple of years, along with the backlog of comics and the 'to be read' pile of books. This is why I have a bookcase in my bedroom, handily beside the bed.

Some of the stories were fragments, without beginnings or endings, because pages were lost. Many were fragments because they were short ficlets, usually making up in style what they lacked in substance - many of these being Pirates of the Caribbean stories. A few were things I'd read before, like the wonderful Smallville slash story where Lex takes Clark to a strip joint - er, gentleman's club - in Metropolis on a Sunday night. So why can't I recall title or author? Because I have a lousy memory for even stories I love and because I read it last night at 3 a.m. when my brain, though wide awake, wasn't sharp; and because my previous reading of it was two years ago. But I would like to remember the good ones.

I discovered a story by seperis that I'd somehow missed, and it was wonderful: Softer Than the Rain. There was a story by an author I haven't read much of and know I should read more of - judging by the quality of this one, anyway. The author is Emerlin (does she have an LJ?) and the story is Before the Songs Were Made. I also found a quirky story by Illuferret, whose odd tales I rather like, this one being Pretty is as pretty does, which has a few good lines, like, "Why can't I be punished like your other lovers?" and "Lex wants to complain that this breaks the 'no sex' rule, but, what the hell? Rules are meant to be broken, anyway."