Omens, Signs, Indications
January is typically a slow month by many means of measurement and analysis. Retail sales drop after the holiday rush. Media ad content takes a dip after the holiday crush. Traffic in malls and places of consumer spending experience a downward cycle.
In some ways it is the first quarter blues. An annual reaction, response, result, and recuperation from the madness and hysteria of the holiday season. Layoffs of holiday staffers have occurred. Part timers brought on for special end-of-year projects have seen these jobs wind down, or come to their natural termination.
Weight loss programs and centers and gyms do okay, after the first week or two of inactivity in the new year.
This weekend is the third one of the year. A big news weekend, what with the installation of the Supremes' choice for President. I was struck by how thin the Sunday papers were....so little ad space, thus so much less room for news or other such content.
Usually it takes me until mid-week to get through the papers. I make the instant throw-away pile, the read right away pile, the wait till later pile, and the "library" pile. Sometimes there is a skirmish for certain sections, but over time we've managed to negotiate a sort of tacit understanding over who reads what first.
We still have the occasional problem of the stacks getting messed up, and the whole paper falling off either the table or the bed or wherever we happen to be reading, storing, piling or otherwise dealing with it.
This week, seemingly in part due to the thin-ness of the papers, we finished them before Sunday night was over. This includes my reading the Real Estate Section of the local paper, to drool over some locations, and suffer the weekly sticker shock over prices around here. The checking out all the computer and electronics stores' ads and flyers, to see what's come down in price and what might just tempt me into one of those stores. This week I checked into the cost of HP Ink Cartridges, although there's an on-line location [1] I found with consistently the best pricing. Even so, I still read through the ads, each and every week.
It also includes the minimal reading of whatever little baseball news might be found. The big baseball story in the local paper was the retirement of local hero Walt Weiss. Sadly, much as I know who he is, where he played, etc., I fear that to most of the world, he may just be, "Walt who?"
The best part of reading today's Sunday New York Times was a cartoon in The Week In Review section. This one is from Nick Anderson [2], political cartoonist for the Louisville Courier-Journal.
