Not Reading

Currently I am sitting in my room, drinking a glass of rioja (fine-- a bottle), reading about the British war effort in 1940.

I'm going to miss this someday.

My routine for the last three months has been surprisingly consistent. At the moment, I'm sick of it, but I imagine that I will look fondly upon it at a later time.

Considering that I have class on Thursdays and Fridays, I spend every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday preparing for class, sitting in my room at my desk reading articles and books listed in the course reading list. During the day, I procrastinate and maybe bang out an article or two. But the action, the action dear reader, happens at night. Come 9pm, I throw a sweater or collared shirt on (it gets unbearably cold in my room at night-- a very Poe-esque detail), sit at my desk, open my laptop, turn my notebook to a blank page, uncap my fountain pen (yes, I use a fountain pen), breathe, and start reading.

Naturally, I find any opportunity to pause in my studies. A trip to the grocery store, a sudden urge for a cup of tea (my masters degree is a tribute to the humble peppermint leaf), a quick check of the news, a random blog post...

Recently, the main light went out in my room, and being a Romantic era-inspired guy, I refuse to change it. Instead, I use a small lamp precariously perched on the upper right hand corner of my desk. It provides the perfect amount of inspiring Victorian light as it's the closest thing I have to a overflowing wax-magma candle in a pewter holder. If I could wear a smoking jacket and waistcoat, I would. The tricky part is pinching the monocle between my eyebrow fat and my cheekbone.

So here I sit, getting progressively more drunk with each academic argument. I like to think this is something Churchill would have done. As a matter of honesty, I've been reading quite a bit about Churchill recently. I don't necessarily like the guy (too "Help the brown man; strengthen the British Empire" for my taste), but ya gotta admire his charm. It reminds me of a great story that is probably fake:

After delivering his famously slurred "We will fight them on the beaches" speech, a lady MP approached Churchill and exclaimed something like "Mr. Churchill, you are drunk!" To which Churchill replied, "Yes madam I am drunk, but in the morning I shall be sober-- and you will still be ugly." It's even funnier if you imagine Eliza Doolittle as the lady MP.

Well, I must get back to the books. Studies await. Knowledge eagerly anticipates absorption. History begs for discovery! Tomes of the ancients stir from their bibliographic slumber! Pages need writing! Ink shall be spilled!
To pens, Gentlemen! To pens!