I'm a big kid now.

I really have enjoyed reading the New York Times this past week or so. Of course, as with any and every newspaper or news website there are stories and posts that interest me and stories and posts that don’t.

With The New York Times, you can find just about anything on any topic that you would like to look at, so finding something that I could sit down and read was not hard at all. So, oddly enough, while scrolling down the page, the very first thing that I clicked on to read more about was a picture of a house. The article was about what type of house a certain amount of money could buy someone in a particular place. The picture was what caught my eye, being a huge A-Frame structure that instantly made me daydream of living in it, however, I honestly liked thinking about the different aspects and value of money, like what it will buy you and not buy you depending on where you are. This really amazed me.

Of course, I had my fair share of balloon reading through The New York Times, as I am sure everyone did through some news source or another. I read on the topic of the little boy in the balloon in regards from everything to the actual event and the horror of it all, to the attention seeking parents…oh how embarrassing! This story is becoming another ‘Michal Jackson’; we are all just getting sick of hearing about it.

I also read about the war in Iraq quite often. Before, there was hardly ever a time I would focus on the war or read about it, and I barely paid attention when something came on the news broadcast on TV. But being able to pick what I wanted to read so I didn’t overwhelm myself with the information allowed me to become a little more informed about what is happening.

There were many more things I read about while reading through the material in The New York Times. The stuff that I did read had an impact on how I participate in conversations around me, which I rather liked. For instance, I was on the phone with my uncle who is in his early 30’s. He was talking about how he and his fiancé are going to build a house on their farm in stamping ground. This made me think of the article that I read about houses. I mentioned to him how I had read the article in The New York Times and then discussed how different amounts of money would buy different size houses. We talked about how interesting it is going to be to see what the same amount of money will buy here in Kentucky. I could tell he was happy to be having a conversation about something other than what homework I had to do, not to mention he was impressed with me actually reading a news paper, especially The New York Times.

Thumbs Up for The New York Times… not only do I become a more informed citizen, but you make me look good, too! :-)