Victory!

I subscribe to the Sunday New York Times. It's huge, and it contains two items that interest me especially--the Magazine (on a good weekend about half the articles interest me) and the Book Review, which I'd read from one end to the other every single week if I only had the discipline.

Sometimes I don't have the discipline to finish either one of them off. I have a good novel going, or I have (gasp--say it's not so!) a social life. Sometimes I have that kind of Saturday date that inspires swoony flashbacks over my Sunday morning cup of tea. Sometimes I am seduced by the siren call of the television (especially now that Captain Jack is seducing my DVR regularly on Saturday nights--those blue eyes, those sure hands, and the ever-more-elusive glow of an actual script...). Let's just say that sometimes the Book Reviews pile up.

I know there's trouble when my Tivo stops responding to my commands. It has nothing to do with the Tivo--the Tivo would be happy to obey me if only it knew my mind--but it doesn't know its orders, because they can't be transmitted from my remote to its little command center through the dense pile of newsprint on my coffee table. This happened a few weeks ago, but somehow I wasn't inspired to make a dent in the pile of reading material. It continued to accrue until this weekend I had to raise the remote above my shoulder to make the Tivo do anything. It was time for drastic action.

I have read all weekend long. A new paper arrived this morning, and I read that, too. I have a paper grocery bag full of newsprint, and now I am taking it outside. As an added bonus, I am going to dust the coffee table. And I'm going to watch my Amazon Unbox movie, because now the Tivo will know that that's what I want to do. And so I'm safe from procrastination for...oh, a whole day, at least!