12 Days of Reading Down

Twelve days of reading Harry Potter and I'm 19% of the way through the entire series, which is 780 pages and probably the most pages I've ever read in nearly two weeks. I'm using these posts to help keep track of my reading progress along the way, so I'll also say that I'm 30% of the way through Azkaban right now. Although the HP books are relatively low word counts per page, that's still something I'm pretty proud of - then again Becky or many of my friends could read all seven books in the course of two weeks, but I've found over the last few years that I retain a LOT more of what I read than Becky does.

I am hoping that one result of this goal is that I'll not only get back into reading regularly, but also that I'll be a faster reader by the end of it. I'd love to go back and re-read some of my favorite books - they're also some of the first books I read for recreational because I wanted to start with the classics: Dracula, Frankenstein, and then there's Dune which I'm dying to read again sometime soon. The problem is that there are so many other books that I want to read that I haven't even read yet, like the rest of Wheel of Time, the Game of Thrones, Dark Tower, and I'm sure there are tons more that I can't even think of right now.

I've been experiencing some really bad feelings when I'm working here at home and am not immediately busy, my mind wanders back to unemployment and I get extremely worried. It's going to take quite a bit of time, probably at least equal to the 7 months that I was unemployed, for me to get completely comfortable again. There are some very dark places that my mind wanders to, and that's something I'm not accustomed to at all.

In my moonlighting as a game designer, which really just means that I randomly think of game ideas and mechanics throughout the day (most of which are terrible), I've been brainstorming some rules mods or changes for 4E. I'm not sure if anything will come of them, but I am hoping to get my Githyanki racial rules completed soon and also post a bunch of helpful things for 4E that I've been working on for quite a while (years really) that I am soon going to reopen and complete. They will almost certainly end up on Critical Hits, but I may talk about some of the process and other thoughts here once they go up!