Last week, I talked about routines, specifically the routine of writing, and this is part two of routines. Now, no one wants his or her life to become a dull routine, but having certain routines has been shown to help manage stress and improve sleeping habits. Then again, everything these days is about reducing stress and improving sleep.
My routine topic this week is the way I read the Sunday New York Times and, to an extent, the way I don't.
The Sunday Times is a special thing; even though I'm a former newspaper man, I - like so many people these days - read my newspapers online. But the Sunday Times, which costs about $37,000 per issue, is an exception. My wife and I hold onto it: an ancient ritual, perhaps thinking that cancelling it is like wiping out our past because we've been doing it for a half century.
Now, my Sunday Times routine begins with the obituaries, which are at the back of the front section, which forces you to skip all the bad news on page one, which will filter into your consciousness anyway through the viral osmosis that exists today. The Times runs obits of famous people, but for the most part, saves its Sundays for the little-remembered folks who had fascinating lives. This week, their most interesting obit was of a guy named Felix Baumgartner, an extreme adventurer who set a record when he, in the words of the Times, "hurdled to earth from a distance of 24 miles before opening his chute." Baumgartner died at the age of 56 in a (this might not surprise you) paragliding incident.
Next, I look at the recipe in the Sunday Times Magazine, pretty much to ascertain that I will be unable to make it. There's always the one ingredient that stops you. On one occasion I was all the way through the recipe for something or other when they asked for dried hop flowers. This week, it was a melon salad that sounded possible until I got to caper leaves. Anybody have those on hand?
Next, I check the Metropolitan section for the Sunday Routine, in which the Times picks a supposedly ordinary citizen and goes through his or her Sunday routine. That routine invariably involves beginning their day with a beverage from an $1,800 espresso machine. "I know it's expensive," the subject will say, "But I can't do without it." Somehow it comforts me that I can do without it.
Then, it's on to the book review; truthfully, the only section in which I read pretty much every word. Well, okay, I skipped the author Q&A this week because it was with Lisa Murkowski. I'd rather read the book opinions of a real writer than of a self-serving politician. As I read, I get more and more upset that one of my books never qualified for a Times review, though one of my son's books got mentioned in a New and Noteworthy. Jamie's ahead 1-0.
At this point, my routine gets a little scattershot. I start at the back of the Arts and Leisure section and pick and choose. I'll ask my wife if the opinion section is only gonna get me in a bad mood, and I'll skip that. I search for the interesting weddings in the style section — a couple that met, say, skydiving in Tanzania — but I skip the business section. It's up to my wife if we have enough money to make it before we die. Real estate? Yeah, right, not reading that. This week, one of their items was about a nice little two-bedroom, 1,500 square foot number on the Upper East Side for a mere $2.5 million.
I don't always finish my routine. Sometimes, the Sunday Times gets the best of me. I open it with the best of intentions, but there's too much to do and Sunday goes by, and then another day and another day, and on Friday afternoon I look in the living room, and there's the sixteen-pound Sunday Times staring, scolding me for not finishing. But I can always win that battle; part of my routine is recycling.
