Catching Up

There it was my April 2007 copy of Flying Magazine.  It was as clean and smooth as the day it came in the mail.  The new model airplanes were no longer new and many of the aircraft had not yet moved to all glass displays.  It was like reading about flip phones here in 2013.  But I read it to cover to cover, as it took me the most of six years to get to it.   I had, at last, reached the bottom of the pile.

That pile, magazines and soft cover non-fiction books, sat within a wicker basket perched on the corner of my large comfortable bath tub, and represented to me the cost of doing a morning radio news program.  I took to baths over showers because of that wonderful but all consuming job.  It allowed me to relax while I read just about every magazine every week on current events; Time, News Week, Business Week,  The Week, Rolling Stone Vanity Fair, Atlantic, Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy, National Geographic, The Economist, Science Digest and More. Also in the stack were books I promised authors I would read before their interviews.

If it sounds like I am complaining, I am not.  I loved every word and prided myself on being well informed.  Plus, I knocked off my nightly health routine at the same time.  But my hobbies and relationships had to go on the back burner.  When you wake up at 3:30 AM, and go to bed at 8:30 PM, and you read everything that could possibly keep you current, what little time is left is spent watching the cable news shows, eating, exercising and, er, tending to other human needs.

In the six months that I have been off the air, editing my book, and getting my life in order, I have begun to find out what has been going on in the rest of my life without me.

My garage was a mess.  There were things there I did not know I owned.  My backyard had new and exotic species of weeds and mosquitoes.  For the first time in seven seasons, I watched the Stanley Cup playoffs, and learned who the great players of the new millennium were.  And TV?  I had not seen Leno in seven years, nor Letterman. Stewart and Colbert were on too late, I literally had never seen them. I also discovered that there were many great and bad TV shows.  I feel in love with Family Guy and the Big Bang Theory, and got to watch Charlie Rose live again instead of listening to him on Bloomberg Radio three days later.  There were also shows I am grateful for never having seen.  Two Broke Girls?  Seriously?.  That show will be the first entity appearing in two places on Websters:  Vapid and Insipid.  I mean Really? Oh, and also found out what Tiger Blood was. 

Now for the best of the best:  As the end my morning gig approached I was all over the geographic map. After I left my apartment on Woodland, I lived variously with friends, the Y and the Raddison Hotel.  The one thing I had wherever I went was my laptop.  So I took out a trial subscription to Netflix.  Lord have mercy, it is the greatest thing since thigh highs, well maybe.  The original series there will give HBO a run for its money.  Plus I watched them on my I pad, laptop and cell phone.  I carried this into my little semi-retirement.  

First The House of Cards with Kevin Spacey is even better than The West Wing was.  It won a bunch of Emmys.   But this new one, Orange is the New Black, about life in a women’s prison is off the charts good.  There are as many good and different characters in this show as there ever have been in the history of TV. Do yourself a favor, even if you just take the free month.  Try it.  It is the best eight dollars a month I ever spent.

I am also catching up on books I have been waiting to read. 

Such is my new life.  I will be back at the news, because I love it too much.  Besides, I reached the bottom of the pile.