Week one without a newspaper

As I said in Experiment in printless news, I put my newspaper on vacation hold for two weeks to see if I could live without what is, for me, a tradition and habit combined.

So how did it go?

Day One - doesn't really count because my vacation hold didn't.  Hold, that is.  My paper was delivered as always.  While I walked the dogs I remembered how thorough and engrossing the coverage had been of the Tuscon tragedy.  Would I have wanted to miss that?   And in the paper I read an interesting article on the Big Horn Sheep overpasses on the highway by the Hoover Dam.  This article was listed on my iGoogle, but I don't know that I would have been as interested by the headline without the photo. 

Day Two - this time the vacation hold held.  I had no paper intentionally for the first time in at least 20 years.  AHHH!.  Moment of panic.  With my breakfast I read a fascinating article in the Smithsonian on the various wavelength telescopes that are perusing our universe. The article included some of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen. 

At work, I skimmed my iGoogle headlines, but nothing caught my interest.

Day Three - ate my bagel breakfast while catching up on Twitter on my phone.  I tried to read comic strips on my phone but the print was way, way too small, even with readers on. 

Again, the iGoogle headlines interested me not.

Day Four - in Smithsonian magazine I read an interesting article on Samuel Eliot Morrison, a World War II historian that wrote a fifteen volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II.   

News?  What news.


Day Five  - for some reason, in my driveway there is a copy of the East Valley Tribune.  I flip through it with breakfast, thinking it will curb my news hunger.  I am not impressed.  And it carries hardly any comic strips.  I abandon it to pore through a Leanin' Tree greeting card catalog.

At work, I overhear a conversation about Charlie Sheen's spectacular, incoherent rant and check it out on-line.  Maybe news by water cooler can keep me current?

Day Six - I am starting to feel uninformed and disconnected.  I miss the columnists I read daily and weekly.  I soothe myself with the new issue of SyFy magazine. 

Day Seven - Sunday.  I am lost without my paper.  The Sunday issue is full of fluff and folderol that I don't read, but it has my Sunday comics, the Brand column (which I can't find on-line), and the pet of the week.  I read part of Mental Floss magazine with breakfast. 

Afterward, I decide to order the net book I have been contemplating.  Perhaps I can use it to read the news with my breakfast.

Printless does not have to mean news less.