The Pile, and other melodrama

Christmas was fun... and almost a week ago, I know, but I'm still in shock at being back at work again, so forgive me.

Not unexpectedly, my reading pile has grown taller in the last week - both to-be-read, due to as yet unread presents, and currently-reading, since I've been dying to read Night Watch for months and couldn't resist starting as soon as I got it. In paperback, that is. Truth be told, I do own it in hardback as well but firstly, I don't enjoy reading hardbacks - they're far too big and awkward, let alone them not fitting in my bag so I can't take them on the train - and secondly, I've just had too much other reading material in the last year, so it's been hard to fit it in.

Ever since I acquired such a large to-be-read pile (which, incidentally, takes up a whole shelf stretching a wall's width in my room) I've unaccountably felt guilty about reading books which I've read before because that means I'm not making any progress on The Pile. Since Christmas, The Pile now consists of more than fifty books again. Will I ever get rid of them? Will they forever cling to my heels, dog my steps, and generally be a nuisance, glaring at me from their shelf above my head, sneering down and mocking me and my inabilty to reduce The Pile to nothingness?

Is is possible I dwell too much on these things?

This Christmas was the first in five years that I wasn't stuck sleeping on a mattress in the corner of my parents' room, so for that I'm grateful. I'm also grateful that I managed to keep a straight face at dinner during the sentence which began, in all seriousness, "I'm not necessarily saying we didn't land on the moon, but..."

I was ill on Sunday, which involved the worst dizzy spell I can remember having (as in, I felt dizzy, blinked a bit waiting for it to pass, then had to sit down quickly else I would have fallen over, and was fairly unsteady for the next few minutes). Now generally, this kind of thing Doesn't Happen to me, so I'm not quite sure what provoked it. The rest of the day mostly involved me trying not to fall asleep (along with general coughing, sore throat, etc.), but I went to work yesterday anyway on the double premise that a) I'd just had a week off, and there'd surely be lots of work for me to catch up with, and b) how likely was it that people would believe I was genuinely ill and not merely skiving between Christmas and New Year?

The office was deserted, predictably, which meant a few things: a) working on my own in a big, open, silent office (and I really regretted not having brought my iPod to work yesterday), b) the heating was off, which led to me sitting at my desk with three layers of clothes plus my coat on, and still being cold, and c) I learned that I have no idea how to work a combination safe (one of the old-fashioned ones with a dial on the front). Knowledge of the operation of such is fairly crucial in our office if you're the first person in, since all the laptops are stored there, so I had to go and ask someone to come and show me. And I still can't do it properly.