ok, convinced about the self-conciousness sentence now.

"eat dinners" just sounds weird. would you say: we always eat dinners at 6pm.?

btw, skim/skim through. I asked my lg, he said no big difference there. it seems if it's something long, or a book, you will use "skim through". But if it's a short article, "through" is not so necessary. So in your case, without "through" is ok.

typo in your correction above: you left out "are" in "those days are gone". yup, that's how picky I am.