I miss the Sunday paper.

I read the paper online, these days, and we don’t have the newspaper delivered any more, and I miss it. I miss it enough that I’m considering signing up for the weekend edition of the New York Times, because I love the book review and theatre sections, despite the fact that we leave nowhere near New York.

Granted, the Sunday Times wouldn’t come with Kohls coupons, or, in fact, any local information, but I love the way the paper feels so much, I don’t think I’d care. I mean, I’d still have the crossword puzzle, right?

Crossword puzzles were meant to be done with pen or pencil on a table in a cafe, or in the living room by a fire, not on the computer. I know there are sites that allow digital crosswords, but the fun in them comes from not being plugged in. From having to rely on your own brain, and using them as a means of engaging strangers in conversation. “Excuse me,” you say to someone who has an interesting hat – a black bowler, perhaps, that reminds you of your Uncle Phil, who really wasn’t a blood relative, but he dated your Aunt Margie for so long he may as well have been. “Can you give me a five-letter word that means ‘comprehensible’?”

And either not-Uncle Phil will shakes his head apologetically, and go along with his own plans, or he’ll smile and suggect, “Lucid.”

And you’ll sip your coffee until it’s gone, even though there are biscotti crumbs in the bottom, and when you get home, you won’t care that your hands smell of newsprint.