I like to break a mental sweat, too...

On Saturday night, I read the dictionary.

Well, not the book in its entirety, but I tackled a rather sizeable portion.

And no, I am not shitting you.

What's more, I actually skipped out on a friend's party so I could do it. It's not as though I had some elaborate plan to stay home and read the dictionary per se, it just kinda...happened.

[Isn't that just the greatest of excuses, by the way? "I didn't MEAN to have three glasses of wine and let that gorgeous man seduce me, IT JUST HAPPENED."]

Anywho, normally one uses the dictionary for a very specific purpose (most of which should go without saying) and I found myself in that situation when it all began. I had spent much of the afternoon at one of my favorite book/record stores, I read several album reviews and came across two words that I had never before seen. Being the complete neurotic that I am, I scribbled them onto a receipt that I'd found in my purse, with the intention of looking them up that evening.

In addition, I've been keeping a list of random words - good, hearty words - that I like or have some relevance to me, and I have planned to incorporate them into a project I'm working on. When I got home I saw the list lying there on my kitchen counter; it was looking a little sparse, so I determined that a little multi-tasking was in order. I could look up the definitions of my two newly discovered words as well as look for a few new ones to add to the list. Hoorah!

What should have taken ten minutes turned into three hours. I came across words that reminded me of other words whose definitions somewhat eluded me, so one thing led to another, and....uh...yeah. I actually became - dare I use this word to descibe READING THE FUCKING DICTIONARY - engrossed. Instead of jumping around from word to word, I reached a point that I was just reading the pages.

Next thing I knew, it was 11 p.m. and upon realizing that I had spent a good part of my Saturday night in hot pursuit of intriguing strings of letters, a cloud of despair descended upon me. I felt strangely like Cinderella. She, who spent an unexpectedly blissful evening at the ball among society's finest, only to return home in a shitty old pumpkin, dressed not in a glamorous gown, but rags. I, in turn, spent my evening dancing merrily among many of the English language's finest, oblivious to the world around me. But, alas! At the stroke of 11:00, I was transplanted to my former reality, feeling quite pathetic, left only to ponder the nuances of my behavior.

Something is very, very wrong with me for two reasons. First, I just likened RTFD (Reading The Fucking Dictionary) to dancing gaily with Prince Charming whilst dressed in the finest Vera Wang. Even I cannot believe myself sometimes. Second, now that I think about it, I rather like this feeling of uniqueness. Granted, it's not considered any kind of literary feat but, I mean, how many people can actually say they've "read the dictionary?"