Friday Favorites: Magazines

I love magazines! I've gotten more selective in recent years, and for budget and time constraints have cut way back on my personal subscriptions, but I love it when I have a "fun" (in my mind) magazine and a leisurely afternoon to read through it.

Here are some "fun facts" about my love for magazines:

• My mom shares my love for magazines, and probably is my main influence in developing that love. I can remember her having a subscription to Good Housekeeping when I was growing up and I'd love to read through it on lazy afternoons. She gave me my own subscription once I was out on my own.
• My mom, sister and I have a magazine sharing system that works pretty well for us. We try not to subscribe to the same magazines and then once we finish reading the ones that we buy, we make a checkmark on the front with our initials, letting the others know that we're finished with it. For the record, I'm "NRR" and my mom is "NBR" since we both have the same first and last initials. My sister gets her very own letters: "JRM".
• I used to save every issue of certain magazines, mostly the scrapbooking ones, and just recently got rid of a huge stack of cooking magazines (can you say, "scanner," for the recipes I wanted to keep?). My sister had to have a mini-intervention and stood beside me at the recycling bin when I got rid of all the scrapbooking mags.
• I don't usually do it this way anymore, but my favorite way to read a magazine (there is more than one way, you say?) was to start at the beginning and turn through every page, just to see what was in that issue. Then I'd go back and thoroughly read every article, using those pesky subscription cards as bookmarks.
• And speaking of subscription cards, those are one of my pet peeves (both the ones that fall out and the ones that are stuck into the spine of the magazine). Why do we need so many cards to get a subscription to something that already comes in our mailbox? Now, I have been to a printing plant and saw how magazines were printed, so I know that they are put in there for both the mags sold in stores and sent out to subscribers, but they still annoy me to no end!
• When I was working in the publishing industry, I actually worked on some specialized magazines (including Sunday School materials). I like the longer deadlines of working on a monthly or quarterly publication, even though you have to keep your head in multiple years at the same time.

So, there you have it. It's not just a passing fling with magazines . . . I've had a long relationship and plan to continue it. Hey Mom, Sis:  got any mags you need to pass on this weekend? :-)