Girls these days

I stole a teen magazine from an actual teen girl. It's her own fault. She left it out on the kitchen table and her mom made the mistake of inviting me in for coffee.

It's been awhile since I read a teen girl magazine, and I might be old and fuddy duddy (I can't be that fuddy duddy, I just lifted a mag from my friend's kid)...

But they don't make teen mags like they used to... Or I wasn't reading the right ones.

The first thing that caught my eye was the article titled "What's up down there?" "Are you normal? Vanquish those vajajay worries right here."

I'm not sure Cosmo is that straight forward, but me and my vajajay feel much better after reading the advice.

Like any magazine targeted at the fairer sex, there are a lot, A LOT, of ads for tampons, pads, liners, etc. It's clearly a marketing definer.

My favorite is the tough girl soccer player kicking a red-wrapped present with the label "Mother Nature's Monthly Gift" under the headline "BRING IT ON." Ah, youth. Have a couple of kids and you start yelling bring it on to menopause...

Newsrooms

I miss the newsroom. On big nights (elections, Oscars, crimes, etc.) you felt like you were part of something bigger. Disseminating information is a powerful thing, an amazing process. It's why I love newsrooms.

It's also a great cover for my obsessive compulsive need to watch CNN for hours, read every wire story I could find and then search for more to read. The internet does a decent job bringing that into the home, but it's missing the journalists hanging around throwing their two cents into the fray.

Fire

I turned off the TV so I would quit obsessing over the fires. The area above Porter Ranch is on fire and threatening to burn to the sea (remember the year it did?!). Lake View Terrace and its surrounds are still burning. 

And the winds keep blowing. Tis the season.

I remember last year's Castaic fire and the Buckweed fire that burned canyons behind our home. We also had a flare up a block or so away on a hillside. At the time, the computer I use was upstairs, facing a window. It was dark out and all looked good. I looked down at my computer to work and when I looked up a few minutes later a hillside was ablaze. 

Relatives on the Eastern side of the U.S. would call and we would reassure them that it was just across the freeway or the canyon behind us. It seemed far enough away to us, but I'm not sure "just over the freeway" was all that assuring to Grandma in Atlanta.

I've had too many years of reading the wires non-stop, watching the news shows and just doing what you do in a newsroom. It's a nasty habit.

So now I'm obsessing on the internet. Nothing healthy going on here.