Desperate Reader finds Time Capsule

Sunset last night at Stock Island Marina

Today has been a cleaning and prepping day for our third round of guests.  My sister Katherine and her husband Eddie are arriving tomorrow at noon.  We did laundry and vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom.  George also cleaned our paneling with Murphy's Oil Soap.  We changed up the recipe for yellow tail snapper that we will prepare.  We will blacken the fish and serve it on spinach instead of topping it with red pepper salsa. Two wild and crazy guys! (Martha Stewart has 22 snapper recipes online.  So easy and creative!)

We just got home from Publix.  On the ride back we met a couple from Erie, Pennsylvania, who didn't know about the blizzard up north.  George said checking on the weather at home adds to his pleasure on the boat.  Yes, he can be mean spirited.

Yesterday I was bored:  no company, trying to be lazy, calling friends and family and not getting attention.  So, I went for a walk with a new friend, Vicki from Blue Willow, and her dog, Daisy.  However, there are no sidewalks around here, and we had to tromp through the grass in order to avoid trucks.  It was not easy, but I did enjoy hearing about her childhood in Michigan.  I also looked for a book on the laundromat lending shelf.  Pretty sad pickings.  (I will go to a book store tomorrow when we go downtown with Katherine and Eddie.  There's a used book wagon that we've spotted.)  Here is what I found and read:

Note the date:  August 1997

This magazine is from a time when I had two children in high school; a time before 9/11; a time before blogs and Facebook and emails became a regular part of our days.  This is like looking back at a time capsule.  And yet the stories are the same as magazine stories today:  "The Global War against Christians,"  "Twelve Simple Ways to Burn Fast Faster," and "Rescue of the Dying Manatees."  I wonder if there's a grab bag of stories that magazine editors return to for ideas.  I remember being a kid and having this on the table in our den.  The familiar humor sections, like "Life in these United States," were unchanged.  The tone now seems so white and conservative.  When I was a child, that was our world, and I was unaware of other ways of being.  I'm glad to live in a more diverse time now.