It's Catalog Season

When I was a kid, I got really excited whenever I got mail. Of course, back then it was nothing but birthday cards, Christmas cards and Eastbay catalogs. Oh, and if there was ever an actual package with my name on it? You'd have to tie my hands together to stop me from ripping it open before I made it back to the house. But, as I got older cards got replaced with bills and now going to the mailbox isn't nearly as exciting as it was when I was 8. As a result I've worked on cutting down the amount of junk mail that shows up in my name. I go paperless with all my financial transactions and try to get myself off mailing lists whenever possible. I'm pretty much down to Golf Digest, a Notre Dame catalog and Eastbay (some things never change). Of course, that all changes when it gets closer to the holidays, cause that's when catalog season starts.

Every trip to the mailbox during catalog season is a trip into the unknown. What store's catalog, full of things I have no intention of buying, will show up today? And, more importantly, how the hell did we get on their mailing list? You expect some of the usual suspects (Sears, Toys 'R' Us); stores who double as institutions and just send their catalogs out to everyone. It's the more obscure catalogs that I can't figure out. Just in the last couple of days catalogs for What in the World, The Museum Store, Acorn (the PBS one) and Current have been delivered. It's a very weird phenomenon - they appear around Halloween and then disappear for the year. You never hear about these stores from January - September. How are they in business the rest of the year? In the worlds of Joaquin Phoenix, it vexes me... I'm terribly vexed. [off topic: there is nothing worse than seeing Gladiator, which is one of my favorite movies ever, appear on the station guide... only to discover it's the 1992 one starring Brian Dennehy.]

-Every fall raking the yard becomes a terrible game of chicken. Rake too soon and enough leaves fall so that you have to go back out and do it again. Wait too long and it'll snow, burying the leaves and killing the grass. It can be a delicate mix. Saturday there were three of us working on it and we got the lawn done in an hour and a half. It was immaculate. But, as of today there are enough leaves to warrant a second round of raking. We may have been too early this year.