Day Nine - Project 3

  I should say something negative about Roughing It.  I should say it is long-winded or some such.  I should say he runs off on tangents, flights of fancy.  I should say something that doesn't sound like the ninth day in a row where I sing the praises of an author who doesn't need me to do it.  To demonstrate my keen critical analysis skills, my ability to spot the tiny flaws that no one else has seen.

  Nope.  So far, so awesome.

  I love the stuff about Slade, I love the stuff about Salt Lake City, I love the sleeping on mail bags.  This is my favourite travelogue.  Hands down.

  One thing I have assessed is my basic overland reading speed.  Given the size of the pages of my hefty tome of Mark Twain (containing all the ones I've read so far, and some short stories), I'm hitting an average of 25 pages an hour.  Even if the pages were normal paperback size, it wouldn't show me in some speedy-read-y light.  I estimate at this point I would need about 8 hours tomorrow to finish the last 200 pages.  If I called in sick from work, and I am actually still sick, runny eyes, sore neck, nausea, I think it's smallpox or the plague or witches or something suitably Twain-esque, I'd have to call in sick from being a dad too, and nuts to both.  It's one a.m. now, and I might try to get in a whopping ten more pages, yeah, do the easy math there, but yes, there is no last minute miracle, lazy guy suddenly develops the ability to speed read, Ode to Joy plays in my montage as pages fly in a Once Upon a Time in China leaf-whirlwind around me.  I'm gonna start project four the day after tomorrow, but I know I'm going to keep on reading Twain.  Oh, and I've still been stretching so I can still touch my toes.  And there's this thing, the Bjournal.  I might have to face the fact that there's a lot of these things that I will really enjoy, and may try to continue post-project.  This actually worries me now, because at present I only sleep about six hours a night when I'm lucky.

  If I'm successful, my easily addictable nature and my hatred of breaking a habit could mean that my projects are going to sort of kill me.  Who would have guessed that I missed taking things into account before I did this?

  Twain would've.

-Mike