Times Again. By now I am sure most of you are pretty tired of hearing about my various attempts to read and stay current with the New York Times. I have been working on a goal of no longer sticking the paper in my locker and thus creating a pile of papers to be read later.

Over the last three weeks or so I have read each paper when it arrived and have also done the crossword puzzle. In the past I have ignored the puzzle knowing that I was going to clip it out and save it for later. All that did was give me a year's worth of un-done puzzles.

After I finish with it, I then pass the paper around to a few other inmates for their reading enjoyment and have designated Sunday as "clip it and toss them" day. This has been going well and I have managed not to put any papers on the already too big "to be read" pile in my locker.

How big was the pile in the locker you ask? This past Sunday I decided it was time to get rid of all the papers that were sitting around waiting to be read. I started off around 11:00 AM and by 7:00 PM had managed to go through over 30 papers! Many of those were Sunday editions dating back to April! (Yes they were all 2006, no 2005's.)

I still went through each paper page by page, read a few articles, and tore out a bunch to be used for future blog posts or to be sent out to Mom and Dad and a few other people that might find a particular article of some interest. I think I have an article or two for a few of my pen pals so they should watch their snail mail box for that.

The bottom lime is that as of this morning (it is still Tuesday here) I only have two New York Times in my cube. Last Friday's and Saturday's. Both have been read.

I did skip the Crossword in Friday's paper. At this point while doing the puzzles on a daily basis, I am able to work through Thursday's most weeks. The puzzles get harder as the week progresses. Even using the puzzle dictionary and other books, Friday and Saturday are still a challenge.

(Just had to go down to the ID room. I am due for two medical trips and they wanted to make sure that I still looked like the pictures they had on file.)

It will be interesting to see how long I can keep to this latest attempt to manage the reading of the daily paper. Stay tuned for further developments.  ¶ 5:39 AM