Monday, July 6, 4:59 AM EDT
I'd stayed up too late the night before playing City of Heroes so I wasn't really inclined to wake up yet. However, an insistent poking was driving me closer and closer to full consciousness. "Dammit, Peg, whaddayawant?" I mumbled without opening my eyes.
My only answer was another poke that prodded me a little closer to wakefulness, this level high enough that I realized that a) Peggy was still snoring and b) she was on the other side of me from the one that was getting poked.
"...the hell?" I mumbled as I felt the warm, fuzzy sensation of sleep behind my eyes drain away. Growling, I squeezed them tight, swiped at them with the arm that wasn't wedged under my pillow, and then opened them. The bedroom and its contents were faintly limned by pale grey light of the predawn sky leaking through the translucent venetian blinds that covered the windows -- enough to make out familiar shapes, but not even enough to lend color to the scene.
Whatever it was poked me again and I growled in annoyance. Rolling to my right I reached out and fumbled the three-way lamp on my nightstand to its first "on" setting, casting a soft fluorescent light over the nightstand, the bed, and the penguin that was staring at me, eye to beady eye.
Wait.
What?
Penguin?
"Do forgive me for the rude awakening," the penguin said in an exquisitely upper-class British accent, "but I urgently need to speak with you."
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
I'd stayed up too late the night before playing City of Heroes so I wasn't really inclined to wake up yet. However, an insistent poking was driving me closer and closer to full consciousness. "Dammit, Peg, whaddayawant?" I mumbled without opening my eyes.
My only answer was another poke that prodded me a little closer to wakefulness, this level high enough that I realized that a) Peggy was still snoring and b) she was on the other side of me from the one that was getting poked.
"...the hell?" I mumbled as I felt the warm, fuzzy sensation of sleep behind my eyes drain away. Growling, I squeezed them tight, swiped at them with the arm that wasn't wedged under my pillow, and then opened them. The bedroom and its contents were faintly limned by pale grey light of the predawn sky leaking through the translucent venetian blinds that covered the windows -- enough to make out familiar shapes, but not even enough to lend color to the scene.
Whatever it was poked me again and I growled in annoyance. Rolling to my right I reached out and fumbled the three-way lamp on my nightstand to its first "on" setting, casting a soft fluorescent light over the nightstand, the bed, and the penguin that was staring at me, eye to beady eye.
Wait.
What?
Penguin?
"Do forgive me for the rude awakening," the penguin said in an exquisitely upper-class British accent, "but I urgently need to speak with you."
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.