Do we need to get over ourselves a mite?

I'm married. We read different stuff. We watch different stuff. We watch and read some of the same stuff too. I adore Jane Austen and re-read them like old friends. I don't know many men who do, my husband among them.

There's a difference between "compatible" and "lockstep."

And yes, if I had a significant other who was reading "Dianetics" and believing it, that would give me pause. But what's wrong with just reading it to see what's there? I've read a lot of things under the general heading of religion that I think are bunk, but I'm glad to have read them and decided that for myself. Should I deny my husband the same opportunity?

I like chick flicks. I watch them with my girlfriends. He likes movies with explosions and watches them with his guy friends. It's fun to find movies we both like, and books we both like. We're both voracious and omnivorous readers.

But there's a lot more to what makes a relationship tick than books.

My son, specifically. OK, he's still in elementary school, and we've got a tutor to help with reading. He's getting better, slowly, and I'm coming around to understand that he may never read for entertainment, because it's just too damn hard. Reading for me is easy and always has been. For him, it's work. Not fun. Not even when he's interested. It's the equivalent to me of sitting down to digest an actuarial table.

He's an intelligent kid, loves audio books, loves documentary movies on any subject you can imagine, has both of our voracious loves of information, but plowing into a book is probably something that is not going to happen. It's been sad for me to realize this, but I need to be realistic.

I hope that some future mate won't judge an otherwise intelligent, well-educated, kind person by his media choices. Being an audio-only reader limits the available library by about 3/4.

Single-industry towns are almost always a bust.

I grew up in the middle of the dying Oregon timber industry, where propaganda would have you believe that if it weren't for those damn environmentalists, we could have cut down every last old growth tree and everyone would still have timber jobs. Money would grow on trees just like it always did.

Ain't so. What really "killed" the timber industry was and is the same thing that "killed" farming: automation. It just doesn't take as many people to run a sawmill now as it did forty years ago.

Yup, it stinks to lose a job. And it always hurts the little guy worst. But it's the way of the world. Just ask the miners next to played-out mines, the fishermen of overfished oceans, or the UAW workers in Detroit.

My dad worked his whole career for Ma Bell. AKA blue collar union job that mostly doesn't exist any more. When he was young (late 50s), the old-timers told him stories about the depression.

What Ma Bell did, during the depression, was cut everyone's hours equally, and they didn't lay off anyone. The phone guys knew they had the loyalty of each other, their union, and their company, and they all survived. No one starved. They got down to where they worked 10 hours a week or less, but no one starved. In the 50s, they reminisced about how those were the best years--they had all the time in the world to camp, to fish, to work on their houses with scrounged materials, to play with their kids.

It's another relic that will unfortunately never come again, that concept of loyalty to and loyalty from a company. I've been laid off, I've been left behind when my friends got the axe. All of it sucks. I'd like to hear about just one company that weathers this economic storm by keeping their workers instead of dumping them like rotten fish.

Our local science museum puts on fabulous science camps all summer long, for all ages. Dinosaur camps. Archaeology camps. Volcano camps. Camps to look at tidepools and seawater under microscopes. Travel camps to places out of state. Astronomy camps. All great stuff, reasonably priced, no second mortgage on the house needed. If you live anywhere near a decent science museum, it's worth some research.

I'm with the "send 'em to another camp" camp. Camp is great. The camping part... making friends, having fun, hiking, being outdoors, singing songs, etc. The judgemental, anti-intellectual part I can give a pass to.

It's no surprise to anyone with a checkbook that Starbuck's is not a necessity. When times get tight, you cut the frills. Coffee itself may not be a frill, but Starbuck's is.

I love my cuppa joe as much as the next caffeine-jived person, but mine comes from my coffee pot at home. $4 a pound at Costco, brewed in a pot at home, goes right in the thermos. Voila. Hot coffee all day when I need to go out.

I'd bet that restaurants of all kinds are in the same bind. When money is tight, people brown-bag their lunches. Starbuck's, at the end of the day, is a restaurant like any other. And unless you're traveling for work, restaurants are not a necessity.

and they can't remember life without her. Now that they're in elementary school, and the dog is just as much part of the family as one of the kids, I've had to explain that she'll only live about 4 more years, maybe 6, and that's pushing it for a big dog.

I know what's coming, I've been through the deaths of pets before, and it doesn't make it any easier. But the kids haven't. I wish I could spare them what will come about middle school or so.

She's 8, and big... still a puppy who loves to wrestle and fetch and greet people at the door. She does sleep a lot more now during the day when the house is quiet, and her muzzle has gone white. It makes me sad.