So my family rented a house up by the Russian River for the weekend, so we could throw our cousins a big birthday bash.

The house was one of those "I've only seen this in pictures of the front yard and back yard" deals, and it ended up being pretty creepy in person. At the end of the driveway was a plaster deer statue, which I wouldn't have remembered if it weren't for the fact that it had two heads, and one was screaming.

But this isn't a story about the house--even though the first floor was a horror story waiting to happen, with the crumbling brick fireplace, the single stake nailed to the ceiling of the bedroom, and the locks on the outside of the rooms.

No, this is about how I went to the bookshelf, which had a decent mix of literary classics to children's books.

And I saw George Orwell's 1984 there, and thought "hey, I can finally sit down and read this! It's kind of funny, given I know so much about the book, but I never sat down and read the thing, since it was never required for any classes."

Then I said "ooh, Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case!" and dropped 1984 like it was hot.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I read the story of a 10-year-old detective instead of one of the classics of dystopian science fiction. And it's not like I've never read any Encyclopedia Brown before--I mean, I learned how to read on the stuff. So every book featuring Leroy Brown is etched into my memory after reading it about ten times.

If you want to bash me over the head with your copy of 1984 until I finally read it, get in line--apparently, I'm going to be ambushed some time over the next couple weeks by friends. With bats.