Blackout shades will be my downfall

My new blackout shades are wonderful....and a bad idea. I used to wake up early and go jogging and then walking. I also slept lightly and usually had trouble getting back to sleep. Now my room is as dark as a cave. I sleep hard, and if I wake up I go back to sleep. Hard. I haven't been waking up earlier than my alarm so I can't go jogging unless my walking partner isn't walking. Fortunately she's been out of town and then sick lately so I've been able to jog. But Thursday morning, I was going to get up early and jog but I was too sound asleep to wake up early. Do I have to start setting my alarm for 5:30? Looks like it.

A couple of weeks ago, our next door neighbor told R that they had discovered someone trying to break into our houses, sometime around midnight. Our houses are probably 10 feet apart, and there are several ground floor windows in the narrow space between. He heard someone trying to get in through the windows, looked out, and saw two men. He called the police who arrived within a couple of minutes but the burglars were gone. The police helicopter was called in to assist with the search, it's bright searchlight combing the area and the neighborhood. No luck.

R and I slept through it all. Our blackout shades didn't let us notice the police car's lights or the lights from the helicopter. Heck, the burglars could have probably entered the house and as long as they didn't turn on a light in our room, we wouldn't know it.

We do lock our windows and have locking storm windows on all of them. We also lock the storms on all of our doors in addition to locking all of the doors. I should probably feel worried but I actually feel pretty safe since they couldn't find an easy way to get in. R and our neighbor talked about the possibility of putting a motion light between the houses, but if we've got our blackout shades pulled, I'm not sure that will tip us off. However it looks like our neighbor's on task, so we'll let him take care of things for now.

The invites went out for the open house for my b-day. The cover is the Andy-Warhol-inspired design now on this blog. My daughter made it up from an old grade school photo of me where I took one of my dorkiest photos ever....so dorky it's cute. I think she did a beautiful job.