19 August 2024
I was awake at 4:30 am and got out of bed at 5, more because I was hungry and not because I wanted to go back to sleep. Lately I’m a Shredded Wheat guy with strawberries and blueberries accompanying. I keep forgetting to make my overnight oatmeal and I need to finish up the Shredded Wheat. I like the large biscuits, not the small ones. You really have to hunt to find them in the grocery stores.
I spent breakfast (and the morning) looking at local and national newspapers. I miss having a real paper in my hand but I quit when the deliveries got so hit or miss. Both the Miami Herald and the Sun-Sentinel had trouble keeping delivery personnel. If someone missed their paper and called it in to the circulation desk, the delivery person was charged for the paper. Gone are the days when my Dad said you could set your watch by the Commercial Appeal delivery person.
I first fell in love with papers when Dad and I would get down on the floor and we would read the Sunday comics together. I think that’s how I learned to read. Later, at Ole Miss, I worked in the periodicals department and got introduced to newspapers from all across the United States and the world. I confess to at least reading the headlines from all of them as I put them on their sticks and putting them out to the public. The newspapers were, of course, kept and stored in the basement of the library and every so often, a grad student looking for original source material would require me to go down and dig out the paper from the musty, dusty collections. It was dirty work considering none of the papers had the new print that didn’t rub off on you.
I try to read a wide group of papers. I subscribe online to the New York Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle (mostly for opera news) the Miami Herald and the Sun-Sentinel. There are several political websites I read: Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, Electoral-vote.com, Politico, and The Huffington Post. I also subscribe online to The New Yorker and The New Republic. Most of these are liberal publications, but then I am a liberal.
I also check several online comics but my favorites are Non Sequitur and Gary Larson’s The Far Side. Of course, Larson’s are all old stuff but they stimulate my sick sense as a biologist.
Of course, all during the day I get bombarded by news breaks, news updates, and advertisements. Sometimes I yearn for the days where you got one paper delivery during the morning and the 6:30 (Central time) news on one of three channels. We have too much information overload for my aging mind to keep up with. I’m my own worst enemy.
Whole Foods delivered my groceries around 8 am and it took me forever to unpack and store them. They err on the side of overpacking everything. In any case, I’m supplied for the week.
This past week and the start of this one has been with very tolerable temperatures. Our highs are in the low 90’s and our lows are in the low 80’s. What makes it tolerable is the humidity is a little lower. I might even get up enough energy to start my morning walks again.
Stay tuned!
