I've been reading. That's my excuse for not writing something new (except for my late night Beatle review) for a while. It's the best excuse I've had for anything in a while. It started with a trip to the library and a promise to myself that I'd read everything I checked out before the due date. Ten books in three weeks isn't easy for me. I don't skim (a.k.a. Speed reading) or jump forward during those moments when your eyes want to know whodunit despite the author's careful planning. So I spent three weeks filling every spare moment with words.I didn't make it, managing to read a measly eight books and feeling disappointed at my lack of dedication before the three weeks were up. Then I did something worse. I dropped off the books I had read, renewed the two I hadn't, and picked up six more. So I began the rush again. Not that it mattered. I'm reading like it was something stolen from me that I've found again by chance. I fucking love it.It's an insidious process. You pick up a book, it mentions another, you pick that one up, it mentions another... The original hyperlink. It's worse when they gang up on you. I had three consecutive books mention Paradise Lost. So I'm off to get a copy. It's a thick sucker, but it must be good. I'm gonna get to it as soon as these other twelve have been nicely filed somewhere in the watery mass above my shoulders.My father once tried to ban me from reading. I was in my mystery phase, sucking up Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. My absolute favorite series was The Three Investigators. I anxiously waited for each volume, like the geek I was/am. I was also goofy and absent-minded. My dad took this as a bad sign, perhaps predicting the social ineptness in my future, and blamed it on the thing he least understood. No more brainwashing adventures with the gang for me.So I read Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Shakespeare instead. The teacher gladly handed me the beat-up paperbacks during lunchtime, where my father wouldn't know. Thank god for ignorance and oppression. He could have banned me from gang violence.I've been reading between more reading, tests, and earning a few bucks for the weekend. That has left me with a minuscule amount of time for writing. A story that started as a short has turned into a series. I'm proud of it, and hope that I have the courage to let others read it soon enough.See you soon.Ja.