This morning I discovered that in fact, I am addicted. I have no doubt that I’ve got er, shall we say dependency issues, but not what you’re thinking. I don’t know that I could get through the week without coffee; I justify my coffee drinking in part by saying I need caffeine to dispel migraine headaches. And it’s true, a small amount of caffeine really can help me. If I feel a migraine lurking, it’s ust possible that between taking feverfew and having a cup of coffee (well around here a “cup” ain’t a cup, It’s a mug) will keep the headache from blossoming into a full-fledged migraine.

BUT this morning as Seattle was trying to come back after a nasty mean vicious windstorm (ok, I don’t think it was nasty mean or vicious, but I heard a news comment last night that made it sound like the wind had it in for us personally so what the heck, maybe it did) and there are huge problems all over. We’re very fortunate – apparently half of the households served by our utility are without power. Our power never failed (I can tell because the bedroom clock isn’t going blinky-blinky, and we even have connections to the internet. Stu, who got up to go to work this morning got alllllll the way over there to discover, um, no power and just returned home, having spent far too many hours in the car. There are stories of chi-chi shops that sandbagged in some of the lower areas of the city (what do they think this is New Orleans? But apparently heh-heh it wasn’t a dumb idea after all) and there are stories of massive trees falling. The radio report this morning had one report out of Oregon that the state patrol put a snow plow to use clearing trees, branches and debris off one highway. Wind gusts well over 50 and 60 mph were clocked all over this region. There’s a forecast of “a chance of thunderstorms” posted on one newspaper website.

And there it is. My addiction. This morning, for the first time in a very very very long time, I had no newspaper with which to start my day and I was SO disoriented by this, it just stopped me in my tracks.

I wasn’t always this way; when I was working, I never looked at a paper in the morning. I’m SO not a morning person that the time spent reading the paper just would be trumped by the extra sleep time it afforded. Of course, back when I was working we had ONE morning and ONE afternoon paper. When that changed and the Times went to a morning delivery, in 2000, I was distraught. I was used to reading the news “of the day” as it were. But then I realized that a morning paper really suited my schedule. And for six plus years, it has. It’s an ABSOLUTE of my morning routine; up, glasses, Vicodin, paper, coffee. In that order. And while coffee is happening and Vicodin is working, I read the paper. It doesn’t take long. The Seattle Times sucks as a newspaper and I hate the management. I have tried the other Seattle paper, the Post-Intelligencer. It has some things it does better. But neither paper is a decent read. I haven’t read a lot of other newspapers over the past decade, but I grew up with The Hartford Courant (which seems pretty mediocre now as well – I read it at my mother’s) and the Hartford Times (long gone) and for years lived in a place where my city was sneered at by the local papers (when you live in Berkeley, god help you. The papers are the San Francisco Chronicle, which as I recall never really covered the east bay) and oh joy, the Oakland Trib.

The Seattle Times has Doonesbury and a few decent columnists though most are gone. No one at the Times would respond when Stu wrote to ask what happened ot their very fine television commentator and columnist. When there was a strike years ago, the management of the proudly “independently owned blah blah blah” newspaper was vicious and repulsive when he learned another newspaper owner In town had let strikes use his presses for their strike newspaper, faxing him “Fuck to you to death”. So thanks but it sucks BUT it’s got what I want to read. Though the P-I sports section is hugely better, and I hav gotten it when there’s a deal available. But even then, it’s so not worth it. Every so often they try to get you to get the paper for cheap, throwing in a gift card. Every time I have done so (3 times) I have had to spend far too much time on the phone with someone in circulation of one of thes papers because they cannot manage to ADD a paper to my account (the 2 papers share a number of things; distribution, printing, I think; they put out a joint Sunday paper.) And I would get billed, or I’d get two of one and one of the other. I really did say, the last time, god help me, “this isn’t rocket science” because I was sick to tedious death of the fact that I could not manage to get ONE of these and ONE of those without wasting a half hour while they found duplicate account. After subscribing to the Times for decades, I STILL get calls and come-ons to subscribe to the newspaper – even though my name and address are in their records as getting the paper seven days a week.

But today? No paper. I had to warm up my day by reading a book, which is HARD. It requires THINKING and normally I don’t do that for the first 45 minutes of the day (how long it takes for the Vicodin to get into my system.) Reading the paper M through Thursday and Saturday takes about 20 minutes. Friday is a bit longer because of the “arts section” which has movie reviews, restaurant reviews and stuff about books. Sunday? 45 minutes not counting the crosswords. But see why it so neatly fits? And NO paper today.

The Times managed apparently to print 13,000 – about 1/10th of their usual circulation before power failed. The P-I did not get to run a single paper (apparently normally they go first, but they were pushed out of the way by the Times. I am guessing they wanted to be the Big Paper with the Bit Story about the Big Storm.)

I’m SO disoriented. No PAPER? But my whole DAY rests upon this routine. And no, reading it on line (I did get my Frazz and Doonesbury fixes, thanks) (wheeze, wheeze) is NOT the same. I had to get UP and go to the COMPUTER to do this. Don’t you see?

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. It’s not so much that I’m addicted. It’s a cheap habit, after all. But at least I could be addicted to the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, huh? Instead, I’m addicted to this yucky drecky “crime leads” “we don’t need no stinking reporters, we can get by with wire service copy” piece of junk. Poor me.