Too Damn Many

• It's close to home. My commute is now about 7 minutes long.

• I'm within walking distance of two decent lunch places. Well, two decent, and one halfway decent place. One of the places is a grocery store deli that makes sandwiches loaded with meat, cheese, and enough bell peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and those little green peppers to at least make me thing that I'm fulfilling my daily vegetable requirement. And, yes, if you parse that sentence a certain way it does mean that my daily vegetable requirement includes meat and cheese. Let's just say "my daily omnivorous nutritional requirement", shall we?

• I'm within easy driving distance of a few other decent eating places, which are cleverly hidden away from the main thoroughfare, meaning that you'll only find them if you're driving aimlessly or have heard about them from other locals. The places that are easy to find are all, without exception, crap.

• Um. I don't know, I'm not used to writing about the positives. Let's get on with the complaints.

Right, here are the bad things:

• Although my commute is short, I've discovered that a short commute does not necessarily mean a stress-free commute. Instead, it's as if the stress of a 45-minute commute has just been compressed. Just a few blocks from my house, the construction starts. I'm not sure why they're tearing up the road, a bridge, more road, the sides of the road, and then even more road, but they're certainly making it look like a big project. Oh, and there's intermittent construction even closer to my house, so sometimes the construction starts one block away. And road construction, of course, means random stops, randomly placed lane markers, and those lovely people who believe that merging is for the weak, people with less expensive cars, and/or people not carrying on important conversations on their phones. Those people need, in a cosmic karmic sort of "need", to be afflicted by some sort of intensely painful, butt-oriented fungus.

• I'm also within walking distance of a used bookstore. Sure, I'm within a quick drive of a Barnes&Noble and a Borders, but it's far easier for me to generate the willpower to resist the impulse to purchase full-priced books. But inexpensive used books? Oh, that's a problem. Last month I went in "just to look around," and found a stack of those Chaosium short story collections, all half off. So, yeah, I bought a few. And another book by an author I've just started reading, and a history book. See, they have, in a quiet back corner, a History section, and a Military section. When you're in a confined, quiet space in a bookstore, surrounded by books that are all potentially interesting, it's far, far too forget about minor things like, say, getting back to work. Last week I wandered over there questing after a specific book, didn't find it, but still emerged with six books. Admittedly, two were for my wife, but that's just a way to assuage my guilt. (The other four were all history books. For some reason, I can usually resist buying novels, but the "Ooh, I wanted to read about that…"/"Hey, another book about that time period! Must have!" impulse hits me hard with history books.)

  So what's the problem with buying books? Ah, I have too many already, you see. At last count, including the new books, I have 52 books to read, and that's not counting a bunch that I won't ever read through at once, but that I have for reference (e.g., Who's Who in Medieval England, Modern Military Weapons, a few books on camouflage, aircraft recognition guides, vehicle recognition guides…).

  So that's one book a week, right? Oh, if only I read that quickly. I was actually surprised that I only had 52 books, as I had 44 the last time I counted, which was about a year ago. Only increasing the Unread total by 8 books…oh, wait. I forgot about the Skunkworks book and the four RPG books I have on my desk. Dammit, 57 books. See? I just don't need that sort of temptation.

  I'm just happy there's not a gaming/miniature store in the immediate area.

Columns by Harlock