Friday 5

From friday5.org, here's today's Friday 5.

1. What’s your routine when you sit down to read a newspaper?
2. When you fire up your web-browser on a typical day, what’s your browsing routine?
3. It’s time to tidy up your living space! In what order do you normally tackle things?
4. Holy cow! It’s time to start thinking about Christmas shopping! How do approach this annual, sometimes-daunting task?
5. What’s your method for paying bills?

1. Ohhhh boy, do I ever have a routine. First, I MUST be the first one to read the paper, lest it get messed up. Seriously. That means nobody else can even look at the front page. I take out the following ads and place them to the side: Best Buy, Target, CompUSA, ShopKo (a Target-like store), Toys R Us, and any other ad which looks interesting. I read each section of the paper (mostly AP and NYT reprints--sometimes several days old) and then place it face down, keeping the newspaper in the same order. That is vitally important. Then I put the ads in order (ShopKo, Target, TRU, Best Buy, CompUSA, with others probably going before ShopKo) and go through them looking for good bargains. (Rare.) After that, they go back in the paper so that the whole thing looks like it was never touched. And no, during this time nobody else is allowed a section.

2. Morning, in no particular order: Slashdot, CNN, Ken Levine, noise to signal (depending on the time of day; if it's early, I look at nts at work instead), and It's Your Turn to see if it's my turn. Evening, in this order: Slashdot again, Joystiq, The Red Ferret Journal, Gadget Madness, Lifehacker, Daily Gadget, and The Rude Pundit.

3. Throw away garbage, organize what's left into piles, deal with the piles, vacuum.

4. I think this year we did most of our shopping online. The hardest part is deciding what to get for people, and we handle that by making The Wife think of stuff. Then I say "no" to everything she suggests until...uh...until I don't say "no". Depending on what it is and where we get it from and who it's for, we either ship it directly or we have it sent here and we wrap it. Honestly, I don't think we set foot in a store for Christmas shopping last year. I know I didn't.

5. "Holy crap, these bills were due yesterday! Quick, pay the ones we can over the telephone and FOR GOD'S SAKE GIVE ME THE CHECKBOOK!" Values of "yesterday" may include "two days ago" and "three days ago." We need a better routine. One of our friends has a hanging wall calendar with little pockets and she stuffs bills into those.