I wasn’t quite as caught up on reading my magazines and newsletters as I thought I was. One day this weekend I saw the book bag I had packed for our two summer trips. In it was one volume of The Annals of America, which I use for history article and essay ideas. Also in it were about five mags/newsletters I had taken on the trips but never read. So I put them back in the mag pile, along with two others that have arrived since I wrote my last blog post. Maybe I’ll read and finish one tonight. I’m way ahead of where I expected to be on my current book.

But my mag piles at work seem to be growing. I didn’t think I received that many. I don’t subscribe to a lot, but some come to me as a result of having attended a conference and visited a booth and been put on a mailing list. Then there are three or four that the chairman of the board sends me. I try to go through something in a mag every day, but still never catch up.

Because these are piling up, and because magazines were on my mind, I decided to go through my piles and make an inventory of what comes my way, and how many issues per year.

Arkansas Asphalt News – 4
Stormwater – 6
Environmental Connection – 4
Geosynthetics – 6 (gonna ditch this one soon)
Grading & Excavation Contractor – 6 (this one as well)
APWA Reporter – 12
CE News – 12
Journal AWWA – 12
Erosion Control – 7
Standardization News – 6
Opflow (newsletter) – 12
Pollution Equipment News – 6
Missouri PE newsletter – 4
Kansas PE newsletter – 4
Arkansas PE newsletter – 4
Arkansas Drinking Water Update – 4
Land & Water – 6 (not sure I’m still subscribed)
Water Environment & Technology – 12

If my non-calculator math is correct, that’s 129 mags a year, which I should get through in 220 or so working days. No wonder they are piling up.

For the more important mags, I try to read them closely. Many articles and news items are of importance to my work. Heck, even most of the ads have information in them about products I ought to know something about.

So they pile up. I get through at least one article a day. Some days I do more, even a whole magazine of the lesser important ones. I think, because I’ve been diligent with these as of late, the piles are actually a little shorter than the were at the beginning of the summer.

Right now, I’d better close this and see where I left off in the May 2010 issue of Erosion Control.