Bookish.

I spent the better part of 1998-1999 with my face buried in books. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I could ramble on and on as to why this happened to be the case, but the bottom line is, I currently have loads of very full bookshelves.

During the early 2000s (now, how exactly are we saying that? The early aughts? Early 20 hundreds? Early double zeros? It all sounds weird.) the reading tapered off just a bit, and then when The Hurricane hit our house...well, I almost gave up the books completely, went online, and got sucked into the blogtastic vortex of blogginess. But then my computer exploded. And then this weekend, I read a 638 page book in less than 46 hours.

It all started innocently enough on Friday night. I pulled out this one book by Susan Howatch that I'd been meaning to read for, I don't know, forever, and I started reading...

And I just finished the last page.

Because for some odd reason, I just couldn't put the blasted thing down. I read while I cooked lunch. I read while I walked. While I played soccer and "watched" Elmo with The Hurricane. While I did lunges in the kitchen while making dinner (yeah, you read that right). In fact, besides going in the back yard and for a walk, I didn't leave the house all weekend (oh, yeah, except for the playoff game...go Dynamo!). Just puttered around. And read like it was 1999.

It was incredible. Not so much the book, but just the block of time to lose myself in the reading. I can't even believe it happened. And I'm not sure when it will again. Of course, I have way too many things going on to even begin to think about doing nothing. But reading. And of course, it was incredibly irresponsible of me to be so selfishly book-absorbed for two days straight. But wow, was it fun. I'm thinking of planning to do that again before 2015. Like maybe again next weekend.

Or not. Because I just realized that next weekend I'll be getting ready for Christmas. See, while the big X-Mas may be only 43 days away for you people, it's only 13 days away for us. Don't even ask. So it seems that I'm already in full-fledged Holiday mode (as you will be on Dec. 12), and so I've decided we're celebrating with lots of Holiday inspirations of Cool Stuff from now until your Christmas. Plus, a giveaway today. Happy Monday.