Patience is a virtue, but . . .

It’s something that I don’t have much of.  And it’s not a secret, either — my family, my friends, my co-workers and certainly my wife would agree that I need to work on patience (often and comprehensively). 

For now, I am just content to struggle with seeking patience.  Consequently, I take a particular interest in anything that doesn’t require patience.  I’d rather watch something vaguely interesting on Encore or IFC over something that I actually like showing on a network channel.  Not only are there too many commercials per break; but they also occur way too frequently throughout the program.

Take The Office, for example — I’ve taken to watching it, but only by taping it on the DVR to watch later when I can fast forward through the commercials.  I think the show ends up being about 20 minutes with 10 minutes of annoyance.  That’s ridiculous.

My impatience drives another quirky habit — before I wil read a magazine I have to go through it completely and remove all the annoying inserts.  I don’t like my reading to be interrupted by those kind of “magazine commercials” either.  Too many of them, thicker, rougher paper and overly redundant.  I mean, how many subscription cards does one issue really need? 

So I was quite delighted when Erika showed me a copy of Cook’s Illustrated.  She received a complementary copy for some reason.  I read it cover to cover the other day and enjoyed it thoroughly.  Here’s the top three things I like about this publication:

• First off – they don’t accept advertising, so there isn’t any in the magazine
• They test recipes and brands and cookware in the vein of Consumer Reports and share their findings with their readers
• There are a lot of illustrations and how-to diagrams for various cooking techniques

So, I will be buying a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated.  And a word to the rest of the publishing world — I’d read more of what you spew forth if you’d lay off those stupid insert cards and advertising on every other page.

I’ll keep working on the virtue of patience, who knows maybe someday I’ll be content to read a regular magazine or watch a network show . . . maybe