The Sunday Smorgasbord

1. Bloglines is the way to go! Thanks to all who recommended it. I had to set it up again since it had been so long since I went there, they had forgotten me. It took 2-3 hours to get everyone in (would have been shorter if I had remembered my sub with bloglines button....lol), but now I am with the program and it is SA-WEET! (An addition: I forgot to say that I have 115 feeds in Bloglines, and that doesn't cover all of the blogs I read. Apparently some of them don't allow RSS feeds). Now you know why it took me sooooooo long to read everything!

2. You've heard me rant about magazines before. I used to subscribe to about 15 of them, and I seldom had time or interest in reading more than the captions on the photos. All that has changed. I let all my subscriptions expire, and spent several magazine-free months going through withdrawal. (How could I ever get through the week without looking at the photos in the latest Veranda or Traditional Home?) Know what? I discovered that I can do without them easily, and if I get a hankering, I can either go to the library and look at their copies - or browse a bookstore's magazine racks.

Then I received an offer to convert airline miles to free magazine subscriptions. That sounded like a fair exchange to me, even if the list of available magazines was not completely to my liking. So I filled in the little boxes, mailed off the requests and soon began receiving Smithsonian, Gourmet, and Atlantic Monthly. I thought (rather vacuously) they'd look good on the coffee table, even if I never read anything in them. But guess what? I love Smithsonian and I've discovered that Atlantic Monthly, far from being too intellectual (as I had thought), is chock full of interesting articles. I place it in the bathroom and read snippets all during the day as the opportunity arises. I was surprised to discover that I had read the whole magazine, cover to cover. That has probably never happened before, except when I was a teenager reading Seventeen.

For instance, in the September 2006 issue, I read all about global warming, the inequality of salaries, Rudy Giulani's hope to be president, the foibles of Homeland Security, past-presidential doodles, Wikipedia: it's beginnings and future, and the burgeoning billionaire service industry, which is a revelation to me and most interesting. As someone once said, "The rich: they are not like you and me" (or something like that). It seems that once you are filthy rich, you need people to take care of all your acquisitions; homes, autos, antiques, jewelry, stocks/bonds/accounts, etc., as never before. So you hire someone (Super-Jeeves, they call him) who has been specially trained to be at your beck and call, and always do it with the utmost grace, gentility and subservience. And you pay them through the nose. I'm in the wrong business, maybe. But then, I have never been good at brown-nosing or gentility, or subserviance either, for that matter.

Gourmet magazine is probably a waste of time for me, but I do pass it on to a friend who is aspiring to be an even better gourmet cook. I read and drool over the recipes, but that is about as far as it gets. So far, I have not been moved to make anything from the magazine. Maybe I can get her to cook something for me...LOL...as payment. Say, that's the ticket!

3. I learned something yesterday: don't go to the county dump on Saturday unless you want to idle in a long line. Having cleaned out the garage and a storage closet, I had a great load of cardboard boxes and their plastic and styrofoam inserts to get rid of. I packed it all in the van and drove to the dump, which is only about 5 miles from my home (at least until 2008, when they say it will be filled).

Rounding the corner into the street approaching the dump, I was instantly sorry I had made the trip, as I saw a long line of cars waiting their turns at the recycle bins. I veered into the right lane so I could drop off the boxes first; they go to another section. When I got out of the car, I was met by a man who asked me "Do you know where the boxes go, young lady?" I said "Yes, they go into that contraption, there", pointing to a large metal bin which collapses the boxes and mashes them into a much smaller pile of cardboard. He smiled as though he was pleased at my reply and hauled the boxes away for me. I got back in the car and drove away, thinking to myself that once men start calling you "Young Lady" you must be looking very old! Perhaps my decision to let my hair grow out to it's natural color was premature?