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Oh boy.

Y'see, when I was still living at home (although this is home now, I guess. With my parents, at any rate.), I read a lot. I'd check out huge massive stacks of books from the local public library and be back in a week or two for more. I didn't watch a lot of TV (although once we got cable I watched more), I didn't "go out" a lot during the week, and I was bright enough that I finished my homework rather quickly, when I remembered to do it (forgetting to do homework was my biggest academic problem in high school, and especially college. If I had just gotten my shit together and been organized, I probably wouldn't have had avoided the grand majority of my academic misfortunes and had a rather pleasing college experience. Oh, well.). So I read a lot.

Contributing to this was the fact that I basically had a floor of my family's house to myself. When my brother got old enough that parents realized that we each really needed our own rooms and our own space, they converted parts of our basement, which had been a somewhat dark and moist massive storage area, into a bedroom (for yours truly), and a rather large "den" area, with a futon, TV, and stuff. When no one was downstairs watching TV, it was my floor, basically. And I could lie on my bed and read in absolute peace.

But then I went to college, and I developed a social life for the first time, and I suddenly had a lot of homework to do (even if I did forget to do a harrowing amount of it), I really didn't know where the local library was, and the college library was complete crap when I wanted to find something to read for fun. So I really stopped reading for pleasure. I convinced myself that when I got out of college, I'd be able to go back to my old ways.

Hah. Between leaving for work at 7:15, water aerobics, getting our house, cooking meals, and everything else, I still don't read a lot.

About a week ago I tried to get rolling on my complete Sherlock Holmes book again. I read one of the longer ones (Valley of Fear), and I just haven't picked it up since then. I still really like reading, but I never seem to make the time for it anymore.

Anyway, Liz and I stopped at the Books-A-Million after work today so she could get the second book in a series she just started reading. Liz still reads. A lot. She does this thing when she reads that an atom bomb could go off NEXT DOOR and Liz wouldn't notice. At all. Unless the superheated air from the blast burned the book. That's about what it would take. So, we're at Books-A-Million, and Liz found her book in about 30 seconds flat. We decided to stick around a while, though, because the sun was at just the wrong place, and it was constantly getting in Liz's eyes while she was driving. So we had some time to browse.

I still really like books. Letting me loose in a bookstore is like letting Keith Richards loose in a crackhouse. I can find whole rows of books that belong in my house. The only thing that keeps me from going berserk is chanting the mantra, "This is all cheaper at Amazon.com" I chant that, and I feel at peace. I'm a skinflint, and I don't care who knows.

But we're moving in August. Hopefully. Now that we've signed some preliminary paperwork, it really seems like the realtor and company aren't so much bending over backwards to make us happy as trying in some coyly subtle ways to get us to bend over and like it. But all that needs to be said is that we REALLY HOPE to be moving into the house in the end of August. And I just put a new book of checks in my checkbook. I looked at the date on the first check from the old book, and it was from November. And this was February. Three months to use one book of checks? Well, yeah, it made sense. I buy most of my stuff on my credit card, and pay it all off when the bill comes (leaving a balance on a credit card is one of the dumbest habits I had in my younger days, and I'm as glad as a German with a sausage that I've outgrown it), and all the monthly bills get paid out of the joint account.

So it takes me three months to get through a book of checks. And this new book was the first one out of a fresh box of checks. A box of checks with this address on it, that won't be good in five months.

This realization pushed me to a rather silly decision.

I must write lots of checks, even if only for a nickel, so I waste as little of this box of checks as possible.

So I bought some books. I got Penn and Teller's How To Play in Traffic, and James Carville's We're Right and They're Wrong. Liz and I came home, and after eating my tasty Chinese food, I plopped down in the chair, and started reading the Penn & Teller book. And while I laughed and grinned, I also was quiet for long stretches of time. This obviously worried Liz (this speaks volumes on my usual behavior, I guess), and she asked me if everything was okay.

The first time I just said, "Yes, I'm fine." And I went back to reading my book. She went into the computer room and started playing around on the computer and scanner with the blueprints to the house that we got.

Then the cat started being a pest. When Diamond wants out, he scratches on the wall next to the door. It's a rather high-pitched noise that makes my skin prickle and my shoulders hunch. I stopped reading, and let him out. I was sort of annoyed, since I was really enjoying just being a slob, sitting around and reading my book. I got back in the chair, found my place, and started reading again.

About 13 seconds later, Diamond wanted to come back inside. He signals this buy scratching at the glass of the window. As annoying as the scratching wall sound is, this is almost worse. But if I let him in, he'll just go have some food, do a lap of the room, and want out again.

Being a rather hard-hearted meanie at this point, I went to the bedroom and closed the door most of the way, so I could read in peace. It was good, and I got about twenty whole minutes of reading in, when Liz came in.

"Hey, whatcha doin'?" she asked.

I'll admit, I snapped a bit in my response. I thought it was fairly obvious what I was doing. "I'm lying on the bed reading because if I'm in here I don't get bothered by him constantly wanting to go in and out and in and out and he's out right now so he can't come in here and bother me!"

"Oh," she said. "Is everything okay? You just seem really irritable tonight."

Is there a good way to tell someone who's interrupting you from reading that what's bothering you is that you keep getting interrupted while you try to read?

Didn't think so.

In the end, of course, we each understood where the other was coming from (like I said, Liz doesn't notice fire engines passing by when she's reading because she's learned it as a defensive mechanism so she won't get interrupted while she's reading), but still. Kind of an odd night at the Brooks household...