Well, it was a busy week, you see. Attend me -- here's a partial list of what all went on:

1. Sick as a dog for most of this week.
2. Saw the movie Dogma.
3. Saw Senator "Action" John McCain live.
4. Went to the doctor's as was teased in the last entry.
5. Wrote a ton on the Alaemon writeup. (I have perhaps a solid day or three's work left on it, if a "day's work" is a couple of hours in the evening.
6. Spent the entire of yesterday (while ill) from 4:00 pm to 1:30 am screaming at the Academy's ISP.
7. Went to Portsmouth twice, including one trip to an authentic SF store.
8. Read The Robert Heinlein Interview. Also finished reading To Sail Beyond the Sunset, as I'm in a Heinlein mood.

Starting with the last one first -- it was evening duties that got me back into reading. I was bringing the Powerbook to work each night, when it hit me that I stare at computers way too much in my life to begin with, and I really ought to do something else with that two hours worth of time. So, I began bringing books.

I used to read. I would read before bed. I would read in the bathroom. I would read in between classes. (All too often I would read during classes.) I would soak up words like Bounty (the Quicker Picker-Upper) soaked up unfortunate spills of water in Rosie's diner.

So what happened? When did books become occasional, or things I did 'when I had time?'

Sad to say, but it parallels the Internet entering my life in a big way.

Television's only sort of there for me. I can take or leave it. But I need to do something with my time, and for years that something was reading. But the Internet is like reading, only without all that juicy content, context or aesthetic appeal. (Of course, online journals are excepted -- right? Right? Oh damn....)

The closest analogy (if you ignore chatservers or the like) would be as if I gave up my love of reading fiction in exchange for reading news and entertainment magazines. Dozens of them. On any banal subject imaginable. For example, every week I read the Sci-File -- a weekly review of science fiction news. The problem is, I was reading about science fiction (including reviews) but I wasn't reading science fiction. This is the tiniest bit like reading the liner notes for the CD but not listening to the music.

Once I started reading again, it started to flood me. I managed to reread Friday at work, reserving it for work. The Number of the Beast got away from me, though. It slurped up a dinnertime. It held me at work the next day so I didn't get to eat before I went to work. When I got within 100 pages of finishing after work, I went home and read them.

To Sail Beyond the Sunset shot past me like a rocket. Tonight I'll reread Job. Then The Can Who Walks Through Walls, which I hate because it's very very bad, but the first third of the book is fantastic and worth suffering the rest of the book all by itself. Then, having ramped back up with good old comfortable Heinlein, I'll start tackling new fiction.

So, if you have a book I've "always had to read," this is an excellent time to mention it. Don't mention Heinlein novels. I've read them, I promise you, and I'll be ready to put him aside for a while.

By the way, can anyone tell me the order of the Discworld books? Everyone tells me I need to read more Pratchett, but no one can tell me the order to read the eight hundred and ninety books he's written in.

I'll keep the list going tomorrow, but here's an update on today. I've been more or less covering for Mason today, who is out sick with what I had. Therefore, I've been working at the front desk all day, helping receive things and generally sitting up front and being pleasant.

It was quite fun, though busy. And the odd thing is, people think they can walk right in and talk to you for an hour or two, as if you had nothing to do.

Which I'm just as guilty of on the other side, so I now must remember to watch that. Nothing like honest work to beat the points off your managerial hair.