It's finally been cold enough at night that we got to try out our fireplace. Actually - we have now tried out both fireplaces, but the one we wanted to try out the most was the one in the bedroom because I think we had this idea that it was just going to really heat up the room.

I suppose if we left it on for hours and hours it might do that, but I'm a bit leery of leaving a gas fire burning while we sleep in the same room, so it hasn't had the chance to do more than create an inviting circle of warmth in which the cats occasionally would enter to investigate what this weird flickering light was in the usually boring and ordinary bedroom corner.

The upstairs fireplace was easy to try out because it is gas and all it requires is that you flip a switch on the wall. The downstairs fireplace requires a little more work than that. For one, it required us to purchase a lovely set of fireplace tools. Well, okay, so maybe 'require' isn't the right word, but we liked them and since we didn't find the sisal rope we were looking for at the hardware we bought fireplace tools and one of those Duraflame logs instead. I figure it was a fair trade. The cats might not agree, since the sisal rope was to rewrap one of their scratching trees, but this ended up as one of those rare events when the cats lost out.

So a few nights ago, while we were sitting in front of our computers and I was whining because I really didn't want to write this stupid mutter mutter novel and I was hungry, my marvelous husband suggested that he run off to rent a movie and we give that lovely Duraflame log a try while we ate dinner in front of the fireplace in the living room. While assembling the set of fireplace tools last night he'd also thought to locate the lever to open and shut the flue, so we were all set.

He rented A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum because we just saw the play. I'd been looking forward to the play ever since I saw it would be on this season's list, because I'd seen the movie ages ago (so long ago that, as I recall, we had to rent the laser disk player and the movie came on this huge thick disk that lived in what looked like an over-sized record sleeve. Sheesh, now I feel old), and even though I didn't remember much about it, I did at least remember that it was funny.

If you happen to live in the area of Davis, CA and you have a free Friday or Saturday night between now and the 25th of November, get yourself to the 2nd street theater and see this play. It's probably the best production we've seen there so far. Bear in mind that this opinion is based on us only having seen slightly over one season's worth of plays, and the quality tends to waver from painfully bad to surprisingly good, as is typical in amateur theater like this. But take my word for it - it's worth shelling out the cash to go see. And after watching the movie tonight, seated on our futon with big bowls of macaroni and cheese (mmmm. Kraft nuclear cheese), we both agreed we liked the play better.

Despite all my whining and the best intentions of three cats who are tag-teaming my lap while I'm at the computer, I have managed to get some writing done. According to those who decided they must write a certain amount per day, I'm pretty far behind at just slightly over 12,000 words after this evening's stint. But I'm managing to surprise myself by continuing to come up with more pieces to my (admittedly rather sketchy) plot, which means that each time I finish a spurt of typing, I've got at least enough to get me through the next one. And now that I finally woke up and realized that the month is half over and gee, I'm only a quarter of the way there, panic is setting in - just enough to give me the kick in the pants I needed to get the creative juices flowing again. Or at least that's the theory I'm sticking to. Um. Yeah.