Today has turned out to be a slowish day at work. That is, I have some work, but doesn't have to be done today, so I am choosing not to do it, and to drowsily surf the web instead.

Monday I got up kinda early to get caught up on work after Thursday's furlough and Friday's holiday. Tuesday morning, I was awoken by intense abdominal pains--exact cause still undetermined, though I have a few suspects--at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep, so I lay awake for an hour or so and then got up with NT and went in a bit early to work. Last night I tried to make it an early night and was in bed by 11:20--not bad. However, sometime after midnight I woke to AS's frightened shriek and a loud noise. I said a gust of wind must have slammed into the screen and blinds, but she said she thought she'd heard wings flapping in the room.

I reassured her otherwise, but in a few seconds there was indeed some loud flapping--not in the room, but right outside the screen. AS didn't have her glasses on so she couldn't really see it, but I saw a largish winged creature of some kind sort of flapping and grabbing at the window and tiny ledge, as if trying to find a place to land. The wings were just a dark silhouette because of the city lights outside. NT half-woke and said he thought it was a bat. It flew away after about 10 seconds of moving around outside the window. Its wings sounded so loud! AS put her glasses on and lay there for a second, but then said she had to go watch TV to calm down. I too gave up on sleep and went out to watch TV with her. When I got there she said the critter had been a pigeon--that it had moved to the livingroom window and clung to the screen for a few seconds, flapping its wings. It moved off toward the balcony and she ran to close the glass door in case it wanted to grab onto the screen door there, but we didn't see it again. How freaky is that? I've never heard/seen any kind of bird outside our 18th-floor window at night--once there was a large bug flying against the screen and that was scary enough, but this was seriously unnerving.

We watched TV until about 12:45, when we started to drift off and decided to go back in the bedroom. About a half-hour to an hour later, there was another loud noise, this one definitely in the room. I sat up and looked around (already rather freaked out by the first occurrence), but AS said a small framed print had fallen off the wall and dropped behind the dresser. Took me probably another half hour to get back to sleep.

In the morning I could have gone to work early again to get more caught-up, but I'm not too good when I'm sleep-deprived these days, so I told AS to wake me up at 8:30, and I didn't get to work until about 9:15. Even with the small lie-in, I've still been really tired today, so once I got my must-dos out of the way, I've been unmotivated to do any more. I feel a little guilty, but I know I'll get it done another day, so it's OK. Here's hoping I get uninterrupted sleep tonight!