My history with TIME magazine

Today was not a very good day. It was the kind of day that kept going wrong, regardless of my actions. Frustrating. I would like to box it back up and ship it RETURN TO SENDER. I've decided to go to bed an hour early (i.e. as soon as I am done with this blog post), and look forward to a much better day tomorrow. If the baby decides to kick-start my day at 5:30am again, hopefully I will be prepared. (BTW, what is with her and waking up early on Saturday morning? There is no television with which to watch Saturday morning cartoons! Go back to sleep, crazy little bugaboo!)

Anyhoo, let's move on to something else...

I have a subscription to TIME magazine. From time to time (pun intended), I read an article in the magazine that arouses strong feelings, and I want to share the article and my reactions. This happened just a couple of weeks ago... although I can't remember the particular article. (How sad is that?) Nevertheless, I wanted to give fair warning that I might share some things from TIME as the mood strikes me. You might see a bit of my nerdy/analytical/economist self poke through on these occasions. Beware. :o)

So how did I become a TIME subscriber? Glad you asked...

Once upon a time (pun definitely intended) when I was a teenager, I did a bit of traveling. I racked up a fair number of frequent flyer miles. Not feeling that said miles were of much value for anything, I did not hesitate to trade in some miles when, in my freshman year of college, Delta made me a sweet offer. Get a free magazine subscription in exchange for.... flyer miles? What the heck are those things, anyway? Deal.

My subscription was good for a year. When it came time to renew, I had to pay money. What?! I liked the magazine, but I didn't like it that much. No deal. Goodbye, so long, I had a real nice time. (Yup, pun intended.)

A couple of years went by. I got a part-time job and got married. I was in my senior year of college and TIME made me a new offer -- one year for $30. Okay, not bad. A year was 52 normal issues, plus four bonus issues, which were all about seasonal fashion trends and were printed on extra large pages. I also got a cheap alarm clock thing. Good enough -- deal.

Another year lapsed. TIME stopped doing the seasonal fashion issues, but they offered me a pretty neat history book with my one-year renewal. Ehhh.... okay. I was working at my first post-college job and felt like I could afford to "splurge" on this magazine that I had come to enjoy.

Things got a little more interesting the next year. I was pretty busy when the renewal reminders started coming in the mail, so at first I ignored them, setting them among a stack of to-do items. And a funny thing happened: The closer I got to the renewal deadline, the better the offers became. A lower renewal price...a better bonus gift...an even lower price... etc. So I delayed my renewal right up to the very last couple of issues (maybe I even let it lapse for a month?) and finally they offered me three years for $30 AND a fairly nice duffle bag. I was mostly excited about the heavy discount on the cover price; when the duffle bag came in the mail, I was surprised by its quality. Deal? Heck yeah -- score!

My subscription is up this summer. They've started pestering me to renew... But I'm holding out for at least the same deal as last time (oh! pun not intended, but that was funny anyway).

Moral of this story? Do nothing and you can get everything you want. Or something like that.