Tuesday Tangents: Pictures from a Food Fight!

Are you ever afraid your kids will never want to leave home and be on their own? Are you afraid they won’t be able to leave home and be on their own…or that they’ll leave and have to come back?

Back in the late summer of 2007, just a few months after my son had graduated university and obtained his first professional job and his own apartment (3000 miles away), I read a blog post that suggested that moving back in with parents after college might be the “responsible” thing for a twenty-something to do. That provoked me, and I responded to it from “a parental perspective.”

My response became the essay that was published in The Contemporary Reader and re-posted here yesterday – but how would you respond to it? My post includes a link to the original item that inspired it, since you may want to consider both sides before you answer. I realize that current economic conditions do make it a lot more challenging for young adults to start out on their own footing, but that doesn’t mean they can’t – it just takes time, and some delayed gratification.

And if you ARE one of those twenty-somethings, please keep in mind that I responded to the question as a parent! (Granted, I got an early start, but if you’re at least 25, I actually am old enough to be your mom!) In any case, I’d really like to get a discussion going on that post, so if you missed it, please check it out and weigh in!


I’ve been cutting down my Twitter time a lot, but popped in over there a bit last Friday, where I walked into a conversation about keeping up with blog-reading. Drop subscriptions? Drop blogs where you don’t comment?  Set a threshold where you just “mark all as read” and start fresh? Drop the feed reader entirely and revert to blog-hopping? It seems like many of us are looking for blog-management strategies.

After watching that discussion, I was afraid I’d see a sizable drop in my blog subscribers during the next few days – and that I wouldn’t be able to blame it on Feedburner this time. So far, though, the numbers seem to be steady (fingers crossed!).

I have no desire to go back to the days of bookmarking and visiting sites, no matter how much I love them. I have embraced the ease of letting them come to me via feed reader, and I’m not going back! On the other hand, readers make it so easy that they can get out of hand before you know it.

I don’t tend to drop blogs from Google Reader unless they haven’t been active for a while (several months), or I’m reading so few of their posts that they just don’t seem like a good fit for me any more. I read many blogs where I rarely comment, and I read far too many blogs to actively comment on all of them. That actually doesn’t bother me, though – I’m interested in a lot of blogs and bloggers, but realistically, I don’t expect to have relationships with all, or even half, of them. Some are too big for me, frankly. Other blogs are there because I enjoy what they have to say; I don’t necessarily have anything to add or ask.

I use folders to organize my Reader subscriptions. Three of those folders are “favorites” – book blogs, author blogs, and a “blogroll” folder that contains various blogs I love from various other interests and niches (personal blogs, entertainment, news, etc.). I try to focus my reading on those folders. I also have other single-topic folders which I can skim and clear quickly; if I don’t have a lot of time to spend and want to feel like I’m getting something done, I’ll go to those folders first. But once my “unread post” number climbs much above 600, I’ll probably give it the “mark all as read” treatment – and when it hits the dreaded “1000+,” chances are I won’t even try to wade through it all. Unread posts begone!

Do you have any favorite tricks or tips for peaceful coexistence with your blog reading?


I mostly stayed away from my feed reader this weekend, and it didn’t explode too badly.

Tall Paul proposed to me on Super Bowl Sunday 2006. After a couple of days of rain, this Sunday’s weather was beautiful, and we decided to drive up to Santa Barbara to revisit where it happened (although we were a couple of days late for the actual anniversary of the proposal, which was February 5th). Santa Barbara is one of our favorite places, and it’s only about an hour’s drive northwest.

The day was so clear that the Channel Islands were actually visible off the coast as we drove up the 101 Freeway:

When we arrived in Santa Barbara, our first stop was at Stearns Wharf, which was where Tall Paul popped the question. We browsed the weekend arts & crafts market, where I bought a very nice pair of earrings, and walked out on the pier, where one of the places we stopped was “our bench” (which you can’t see in this photo).

We enjoy walking up and down State Street and browsing in the stores, which weren’t too crowded on the day of the Super Bowl. We stopped in a little plaza called La Arcada to visit the turtles who live in the fountain there.

After a stop at the bookstore, we went to dinner. Since we weren’t in a sports bar, the restaurant wasn’t very crowded, and the service was very attentive.

After dinner, we returned to the Wharf, where Tall Paul wanted to shoot some sunset pictures. “Shooting sunset pictures” was the ruse he used to bring me to the pier on that Super Bowl Sunday four years ago (although, to be fair, he did take some that evening). He took some this time too, but the real action was happening on the pier itself – a food fight!

Pelicans are not the most attractive birds, but they put on quite a show dueling over that fish!

We headed home as darkness approached – not quite like this:

Well, someone had to post pictures from this weekend that didn’t have snow in them! How did you spend yours?

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16 comments

  1. Thanks for the photos! It's nice to see some sun (we are expecting another foot of snow tonight … UGH).

    My Google Reader strategy is similar to yours — I have a lot of folders so I can decide what to read, when. But I'm also pretty anal about unread posts and start to twitch when the pile up. So I frequently skim the titles in a folder and "mark all as read". I don't do this as much with my book blog folders as I do with others. I like to savor my book blog reading!

  2. Laura – I do the exact same thing with some of my feed folders that aren't designated as "favorites." Just knocking that "unread" number down a little bit helps me relax :-).

    Kathy (Bermudaonion) – We joke that if I'd given the "wrong" answer to the question, someone would have gone over the side :-). My sister and brother-in-law have the same joke, but about a different place: he proposed to her on the Golden Gate Bridge.

    We hadn't been back up there for a while before this weekend, but it's always a nice day trip.

  3. I'm sure you've noticed I don't comment as much as I used to, and I too love my Reader for managing all my favorite bloggers. But if I have nothing to say in response, then I just move on to the next one.

  4. Love your pics. Perfect proposal spot 🙂
    I've rearranged my Google Reader by using the comments left on my blog. You leave a lot of comments you are in my everyday folder. Quite a few comments, MWF, just a couple T-R, and my weekends are for blogs I love to read but who haven't left a comment in awhile. I still read them all but it does help me keep track of those who I know are regular visitors. So, far it is working well.

  5. I love the pictures of Santa Barbara…reminds me that I am overdue for a return visit! What a lovely place for a proposal and a celebration of the anniversary of that proposal!

  6. Florinda…when I said I had gone back to the old fashioned way I literally meant I type in the addresses to my favorite blogs when I have a second. that means I'm not missing my faves when I open a daunting reader.

    However pinning my faves folder to the top has really helped! 🙂

  7. That's a nice way to spend Super Sunday. I've never been to Santa Barbra, it looks like a nice place to visit. As long as the pelicans don't try to steal my food. I'll kill them dead. 🙂 (I'm kidding of course.)

  8. April – That's pretty much my approach to commenting too. Sometimes I'll link to the post in the Week-end Review or share it in GReader if I really like it but don't have anything more than "Great post!" to say about it.

    Stacybuckeye – That's an interesting approach. I think I do something along those lines informally – I'm less likely to skip over the posts of regular commenters – but you're very organized about it. (Guess I'd better comment more on your blog, then :-D!)

    Kathleen – I love going up there. It's a relatively short drive, and a very nice getaway. But it actually turned out to be the proposal spot by accident. He was planning to ask me at the Ventura Pier on the way home, but it was getting too late in the day and Stearns Wharf had to fill in :-).

    Amy – I rearranged my folders that way too, after Jen's tip. But I have to say that actually typing in URLs for direct visits shows a lot of dedication!

    Mike – It's really nice if you're not into football :-).

    And next time you get to the west coast, you should see Santa Barbara. I'm sure they have some nice golf courses. But I don't think the pelicans will bother you unless you're eating a raw fish :-D.

  9. I've yet to work my reader into folders but I do need to do that. Maybe next Bloggiesta. If I've fallen behind, I mark as read all of the giveaway blogs right off the bat. Then I try to hit the ones that have the most unread post. I'll scan through those, pick a couple to read and leave at comment or two. Then I make sure to hit up the blogs of the people that I've become friendly with and make sure to visit them. If I've reached the end of the time I have, then I'll mark all as read.

  10. I like how you've organized your blogs into categories. I just have them all dumped right into Bloglines. Don't know how I "manage" them. When I fall behind, my mind says, "Click this one as read, this one, this one." In the end, there are maybe 25 that I feel I MUST read. Unless I got REALLY behind.

  11. Kathleen – Thanks for the award! I'll post about it tomorrow.

    Patois – You don't want to know how many blogs I subscribe to :-). I HAVE to have a system, or else I'd just drop the whole thing, and I really don't want to do that!

  12. I should probably qualify how I'm using my reader, so you don't think you HAVE to comment for me to read your blog. Just knowing that the blogs I read on the weekend don't commment on my blog takes the pressure off me to feel like I need to leave one myself. I read them all, but only comment one the ones that really say something to me. And I got all of it organized during the bloggiesta and it really has helped 🙂

  13. Stacy – Thanks for clarifying that. I was starting to worry :-). But it sounds like a good system for managing both blog reading AND commenting.