Sleep, lifeboat, buzzwords. Limping through the last days of my (horrors!) cold, I felt overwhelmed by fatigue at 7:30 pm last night. Knowing I'd never be able to sleep through the night, I went to bed anyway. I was listening to the final disc of "The Life of Pi," and fell asleep, only to wake, predictably, at 10 pm. I listened to the disc again, the fabulous ending to the story. I can't think of a novel I've enjoyed more, even though I know I've missed slices of it, by sleeping through the middle and ends of each of the nine discs, then haphazardly trying to skip ahead to the missed parts. I was captivated enough by the story to keep moving to the next disc, even though I knew I'd hadn't heard every word of its predecessor. What I need now is a nice car trip, so I can listen to all nine discs straight through. Anyway, that is surely a book to reread (to relisten to).

What could I do at 11 pm but get up and watch TV? I went downstairs, and one of my sons was in the middle of watching the big Democratic candidates debate, so I started watching, but not with my mind in the usual place where it would be if I had been awake all day, planning to watch the debate, and watching it from the beginning. Jumping in in the middle and fresh from sleeping and picturing tigers and lifeboats, I couldn't engage with the debate normally. I just noticed the buzzwords like "jobs" and "outsourcing" floating in a sea of verbiage. I couldn't help thinking, they don't really have any plans or solutions. Most of these words are just there to make a place to put the key words that are said not because the candidates really have anything they can do but because they think that these are the words that, implanted in the minds of voters, tend to make them feel like voting for a Democrat.