Yesterday was a crazy long and busy day. I know! I say that fairly often, but this was actually a pretty busy, wild day. I managed to read 60 pages of Ringworld and 60 pages of Time To Go House, but I fell asleep twice after hitting page 120 on Time To Go House, so I didn’t stay up to write this post or to try to read The God Particle.

Today then, I have 60 pages of The God Particle to read, 30 of Ringworld, and I’ll finish Time To Go House (it’s only 137 pages), so I’ll have 13 pages or so to read of another book. I think I’ll switch over to Red Mars, because I feel like my comprehension has climbed high enough that I’m able to speed-read it.

I’ve hit a weird spot in the speed reading; I stopped doing 2 fixtures per line and started just looking at the entire line; I feel like I miss words around the edges more often, but not doing a crazy zig-zag pattern with my eyes is far less tiring, can be done much faster, and through its stability allows me to “take in” 2-3 lines at once. I think I’ll continue this way — the bad side is that I’ve slowed down, because I’m no longer looking to a specific anchor like “1/3rd through a line”, so my eyes won’t pick up data unless I try really hard to focus as I scan past. So that’s progress, but I need to do better not to fall asleep!

To make sure I wouldn’t fall asleep yesterday, I stayed in the subway stations for a bit to read – I got through my entire ringworld reading sitting on a bench at College, and then I stopped at Bathurst just to read a bunch of the Time To Go House. By the time I got home I was quite tired (and it was quite late), but I already had most of my work finished. It was a really effective way to stagger my reading a bit, and to keep myself from getting into that sleepy thought-pattern before I had enough of my work done.

The God Particle

didn’t read any today!

Ringworld

They flew, they crashed, they argued, Teela got hurt a little bit, they started flying their flycycles (which are pretty cool — remind me a little of this), and Teela went plateau crazy, so they swooped down and lo, people who look human were there! That’s about where I stopped.

Time To Go House

Smalleata and Raffles got engaged more or less, and they waited for the snow to fall to lock the weasels out of the house. They met the mother Raccoon, and then the farmer opened the house up to get an oil re-supply. That meant that the weasels could get in, so the mice used wine corks to plug their holes, and the rats (sadly) were killed by the weasels!

Then there was a huge snowstorm and it closed the gaps the weasels could get into, so the mice are all safe. They met some flying squirrels, and Smalleata and Raffles’ big engagement-wedding party dealie started happening. All of the mice are in the television room, and Mr. Gogie, the dwarf-gnome thing, is about to arrive to tell them what the human President is saying in the “State of the Human Union Address”.