I’m the kind of person who forces myself to finish a book even if it’s boring, so I now find myself stuck in the middle of two snorefests. I’m reading Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli on my iPaq, and I’m listening to The Name of the Rose by Umbert Eco on my iPod. Neither has been holding my attention, and I’ve been stuck for more than 10 days already.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that the best way to get through these reading lulls is to make sure I have a couple of books queued up that I’m really, really looking forward to. In this case, my next book is John Adams by David McCullough, and my next audiobook is The Appeal by John Grisham. I can’t wait to read those, but it means getting through Sybil and Rose first.

I can do it… even if I read just 10 pages per day or listen for just 10 minutes per day, I’ll eventually finish, right?

The calendar says it’s spring. Opening Day for Major League Baseball is tomorrow, stores currently have patio furniture, gas grills, and gardening items prominently displayed, and college students are now returning from Cancun, Daytona Beach, and other top spring break destinations.

Yet it certainly doesn’t feel like spring. The weather’s terrible, there’s snow in the five-day forecast, and I just don’t feel like heading outdoors at all.

This winter has been so harsh that I wish the weather would break already. I’ve got cabin fever like you wouldn’t believe and need to go out and do something fun soon!

Are you participating in a bracket pool at your office? If so, how are you doing in it? I have to admit that this is one of the things I miss most about working with other people: gambling pools for major sporting events!

Anyway, in case you’re interested, the Elite Eight for this year’s NCAA March Madness tournament are as follows (with their tourney seed in parentheses):

West
UCLA (1)
Xavier (3)

South
Memphis (1)
Texas (2)

Midwest
Kansas (1)
Davidson (10)

East
North Carolina (1)
Louisville (3)

As you can see, the only real surprise left is No.10 Davidson. All the other schools in the Elite Eight were ranked either 1, 2, or 3 before the tourney started.

I love sports ‘dogs, so of course I’m going to be rooting for Davidson now (even though I picked the Bruins to win) it all.

We just bought a tiny ATV for our son to practice riding on. He’s too short to touch the ground on our CRF50, and he probably wouldn’t be able to balance anyway, so we decided to go with an ATV for him instead. That way, he can start to learn throttle control and braking, and get used to riding on dirt for a year or so before we put him on the motorcycle.

We went with a really cheap knockoff from China here because we didn’t think it would be worth it to spend $1,000 or more on a Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, or Kawasaki ATV that the boy will outgrow in no time. But we’ve agreed that we won’t let him ride it on a real track with other riders; it’s just going to be a practice rig for dirt terrain. That way, safety shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

So now that we have all these off-road vehicles to haul around, we’re probably going to need one of those big travel trailers to get our stuff to and from the track. Our van, as big as it is, simply isn’t going to cut it in this case.

Today we’re going to go buy a helmet and some boots, then we’ll maybe give the ATV a whirl in the backyard.

I’m not really a big fan of the NCAA tourney, but I do get caught up in March Madness a bit. This year, the biggest news of the tournament (besides Davidson advancing to the Sweet Sixteen) is the fact that Stanford sophomore Robin Lopez is dating golf sensation Michelle Wie.

I’d never heard of this guy before the Michelle Wie pairing, but after checking his stats, it seems like he’s actually good and has a decent shot at making it to the NBA. He’s seven feet tall, which I’m sure NBA teams will be interested in, and is a leader on the Stanford team. Oh, and he has a twin brother named Brook who also plays for the Cardinal.

Here are a couple of Robin Lopez pics that I found online (none with Michelle Wie, however). He’s No. 42 for Stanford:

There’s no sugarcoating it now: the economy is definitely in the toilet. Prices are rising on almost everything out there, income levels are flattening out (at least in my neck of the woods), and foreclosures continue to skyrocket in major cities across the country.

At a time like this, what’s a good investment to make? I don’t really want to put my money in the stock market now because I know I wouldn’t be able to stomach the roller coaster ride as the Dow Jones falls 400 points, gains a couple hundred, falls again, etc. I would get ulcers for sure!

Maybe this is the right time to invest in gold bars or bullion — both of which are probably going to be more stable than the stock market, at least in the near future.

I’m going to have to talk to hard asset professionals about this before making any moves, but gold seems to be the way to go in this weak economy.

Here’s this week’s Booking Through Thursday question:

While acknowledging that we can’t judge books by their covers, how much does the design of a book affect your reading enjoyment? Hardcover vs. softcover? Trade paperback vs. mass market paperback? Font? Illustrations? Etc.?

I’m used to reading electronic texts these days, which I love because of the amount of control I’m given over almost all of these things. But whenever I do grab a “real” book to read, the only thing that really affects my reading enjoyment is the font size.

I absolutely hate it when the publisher opts for tiny, tiny print that squeezes an ungodly amount of words on a page. This is particularly a problem when there’s little to no dialog on the page, making the amount of text downright daunting.

I remember having this problem with the cheap-o paperback version of Walden that I tried to read. Ugh, I couldn’t even get through the first chapter of HDT’s ramblings without setting off a massive headache!