It's Me, Hi, I'm The Problem, It's Me

The Washington Post recently announced the discontinuation of the weekly Washington Post Magazine. I was a Washington Post subscriber for years, so I would receive the Sunday paper with the coupons/circulars and the Post Magazine each week. The magazine was perfect to read during my commute because you had the long-form stories but also a humor column, brief interviews with a wide variety of people, restaurant reviews, and more. Date Lab, where Post staff match singles, was part of this more. I read Date Lab to The Moose during potty training and some of the stories made for fun blog posts. The kids also enjoyed Second Glance where you try to find differences between two seemingly identical photographs. The magazine's content was always interesting, and it was easy to carry and transport to and from work. 
 

After having The Moose and Pedro Tulo and especially after Luigi arrived, I found that I didn’t have time to read the paper on Sundays. In an ideal world, I would love to just sit on the couch on a Sunday morning and read the paper but three kids made this impossible. There were always activities or errands to run or simply playing and spending time with the kids that prevented me from sitting down with the paper. They would just pile up until I recycled the papers at the end of the week. Still, I managed to find time to read the magazine most weeks on my commute. And then I didn’t. Maybe it was reading more books during the commute or doing activities on the phone (including writing blog posts), but the magazines started to pile up too. While I intended to read them, it didn’t happen.
 
With me not reading the print version of the paper or magazine, I unsubscribed from the print version of The Washington Post. I maintained my online subscription, though I admit that I rarely read The Magazine online. And I should. While Gene Weingarten no longer writes for the magazine, Damon Young (a fellow Pittsburgher!) is an excellent writer with a very different perspective from his predecessor and definitely worth your time (including in his recent column about Kyrie Irving). The Magazine's quality continues to be excellent and relevant. However, I never read the print version anymore and don't often think about checking it out online. There are probably thousands of others like me out there. Maybe that's why The Post is cutting the magazine. Even though 5 of the top 40 most-clicked stories on the website over the past year were produced by the magazine, I'm sure there is some metric out there showing that there aren't enough clicks. For a paper as large and as important as The Post and with an owner in Jeff Bezos with deep pockets, this is unfortunate and disappointing. I feel bad for the people losing their jobs and for the public in missing out on reading outstanding stories.

Tuesday Night

Happy New Year! Today, you're going to get three rants for the price of one (assuming that you're paying for this blog...which you're not, so you're just getting three rants).

I don't have a Fitbit, but my phone counts my steps, and I try to get 10,000 steps per day. Since I returned from my hockey road trip on the first Sunday of December, I've only reached 10,000 steps three times due to me being sick, one of my kids being sick, and/or cold weather making it easy for me to stay inside. We have a gym in our complex, so I decided to walk on the treadmill for about 30 minutes. Not hard core exercise but a way to actually move instead of sitting on the couch after the kids went to sleep.

While one of the two televisions had the Capitals-Maple Leafs game, the other had the CBS show Bull. I pledged never to watch this show because a guy who can select a new jury every week sounded like a terrible show. Plus, I have no interest in Michael Weatherly. It's great that he got his NCIS money and wants to prove he can be out of Mark Harmon's shadow but that doesn't mean that I'm going to watch his show. Yet, I was stuck sort of watching it on Tuesday night. While I knew that Dr. Phil was somehow involved with the show, I was shocked to see Steven Spielberg listed in the opening credits as an Executive Producer. My question is why? It's not like he needs the money. Did he want to get some kind of deal with CBS and being a producer on this show was part of the agreement? I just don't get it. Bull seems like nothing that should have his name attached to it. Oh, I watched about 10 minutes of Bull without sound and probably won't ever see it again.

After the gym, I went to the local Safeway to pick up cat litter. Safeway has $5 Friday deals each week and every few months have Tidy Cats litter for, you guessed it $5. Gene Weingarten, humor columnist for The Washington Post, recently wrote a very funny article titled "Here’s what happened before God let cats loose upon the world." This is the ending

God: Indeed. That leads us to a central issue, Cat. You shall poop in a box.

Cat: WHAT?

God: A little box. From the time you are a small suckling you will know that you must do this and you will never, ever, ever make a mistake about this.

Cat: No!

God: Your life depends on it. Trusteth me on this.

Cat: I cannot ...

God: You can and you will. You scratch bellies. You bite feet. You live as a saboteur. You are an unconscionable jerk. In return for this license you will poop in a little box.

Cat: I am a very good boy.

God: You are not.

Cat: The sand that I shall poop in? Is it expensive?

God: Yes, it is very expensive, indeed.

Cat: Fine.

Basically, $5 for a 20-pound container of cat litter is a fantastic deal. It seems like many other people had the same idea as me last Friday as the litter was completely sold out. I got a rain check.

Back to Tuesday, I went to Safeway to cash my rain check and although I arrived at the store around 9:30 and not midnight, all of the registers were closed with only self-checkout machines available. Of course, two of six machines were out of service leaving one overworked employee to assist a line about 15-deep. After finally getting to a machine, I informed the employee that I had a rain check. He told me that they can only be redeemed at a register. Lovely. He called someone to open a register, and after about five minutes, I finally got to check out. Sort of. The cashier had no idea how to redeem rain checks, so she had to call a manager. Add another few minutes. Finally, we got everything resolved. Sort of. My rain check was for 6 containers of cat litter, but Safeway only had 4. The manager basically told me that I was out of luck and had to use the rain check on the 4. He did not issue me an additional rain check, and I was in no mood to argue as I had already been at the grocery store for nearly 30 minutes. I'm so spoiled by Wegmans with actual people working and employees available to answer questions and, you know, provide customer service. I would vow to never return to Safeway, but I can't pass up the $5 deals of cat litter.

Finally, I came home and opened the mail. One letter was from the homeowner's association with the semi-annual assessment. Here's the problem. The assessment was due on January 1st, so being a responsible resident, I paid it on time. However, the letter included this statement:

Please note that the remittance address on your payment coupons has changed. If you pay by personal check, you do not need to do anything further. Simply use the coupons and remittance envelopes provided to mail your payment. If you use your financial institution's bill payment feature, you must change the payment information.

I do all of my bill payments online, so now I need to call and figure out where my payment went and how it can get to the right place. None of this would have been an issue if I knew about the new address BEFORE THE DUE DATE.

Now that I got this off of my chest, I'm going to try to do something positive. I'm not necessarily going to call it a resolution, but I heard this on the radio and thought it was a good idea. At the end of the day, you're supposed to write down three good things that happened to you. It could be something minor like the Metro didn't break down or cat litter was on sale or something much bigger. Supposedly, after only a few days of doing this, you'll feel better (or something). I'll probably post "my three positive things today" on Twitter. And again, Happy New Year!