I think it's time to eat lunch. Is it time to eat lunch? I think I'll have some lunch.

It's only 1:00, but that's certainly late enough for lunch, isn't it?

I did very little this past weekend.

I ate lunch once.

I watched no episodes of Spike BtVS, so nothing new to report on that front. I meant to watch at least some of the 8-10 hours worth of tapes I have backed up, but I spent a good chunk of Sunday (my usual Spike BtVS-watching day) in a different room than the one the television lives in.

Making space for a new bookcase, if you must know. And rearranging the books, of course. I am now the proud possessor of four empty shelves! Let the shopping commence!

Truthfully, until I get through at least some of the ten or fifteen books sitting in my "to be read" pile, I won't be buying any more books for a while. The only drawback to my current nonfiction obsession is that nonfiction, unlike fiction, has to be read very carefully. No joyously skimming through the pages, gulping down new ideas as you go, no, you have go read slowly and consider what the author is saying at each point. It's kind of a lot of work.

Especially if you annotate as you go and cover the pages with post-it flags pointing to "things to think about" or "things to research." (I have friends who consider writing in books to be a deadly sin, second only to that of throwing a book away but I disagree. I've thrown away books that were such crap I didn't want to be responsible for infecting anyone else in the world with their ideas. And I'm a compulsive highlighter in nonfiction.)

It took me two weeks to get through the last book and now I have to decide if I want to invest the two months it's going to take in researching everything associated with the 20 post-it flags currently protruding from the pages.

(The book probably wouldn't have taken two weeks if I hadn't kept stopping to read P. G. Wodehouse instead, but I don't care. When my but-I-already-ordered-them! new (used) books arrive, I'm going to read them, too. I'm not being paid to figure out what the heck went wrong with this country and while I don't mind pitching in, it's also a fact that there are days when Jeeves and Wooster are just a lot more important to me, okay?)

Actually, there are few things in my life that don't take a back seat to P. G. Wodehouse. Or E. F. Benson. I love E. F. Benson's stuff. If I were at home right now, I'd log off and go read Benson. But I'm not. I'm at work. (Not working, of course, but I'm taking my daily 20-minute pause for food that breaks up the 9-1/2 hour monotony of my day. If I didn't blog so much on company time, I probably wouldn't feel compelled to work a minimum of 9 hours a day, but I never claimed to be sensible.)

While I'm considering the point, I'm moving on to something else. (Book-wise, I mean, not blog-wise.)

(Well, blog-wise, too.)

(I'm excessively parenthetical today, aren't I?)

When I'm Ruler Of The World, I'm going to enact a few new laws.

#1 - Brainless idiots out walking their children in strollers who are wearing sunglasses but who have provided no protection for their children's eyes will be fined heavily and made to sit in a stroller, staring into the sun for an hour. They will be made to wear signs.

#2 - Clueless morons who suddenly discover that they're in the right-hand turn lane when they need to be in the left-hand turn lane will be required to turn right anyhow, go on down the street, and find a safe place to turn around. C.M.,s diving across four lanes of traffic in an attempt to get into the left-hand turn lane in front of the fifty cars zooming down the road behind them will have their cars impounded and be required to bicycle to work for 90 days. They will also be given signs.

#3 - Lazy jerks who stop at a drive-up ATM and sit there for fifteen minutes, doing a month's worth of banking business will have their ATM cards withdrawn. Also. A sign.

#4 - Dipshits who assume that cars pulling over to let an ambulance or police car go past are inviting said dipshits to hit the accelerator and pass all stationary cars will be killed. No sign required.

#5 - Also. People who look at you, see that you're reading a book, and decide to talk to you because you're "not doing anything"? So very dead.

I think that's a good start.