Things I Like the Idea Of

There used to be a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live that featured a couple of guys talking and the tag line was something like "Who am I kidding... that's just another thing I'll never do."

I find myself using that line sometimes. There are so many things we can spend our time doing while we're on this planet, but we can't do them all, can we?

Of course the big area where this applies is free time. I could easily find a dozen hobbies that I'd love to immerse myself in. Instead, I periodically spend some time studying the trappings of those hobbies, either on the internet or in catalogs from mail-order businesses that I'll likely never patronize.

Lots of guys my age play golf regularly, and I think I'd enjoy it, but it just takes up too much time. I'd rather spend my free hours doing other things, like working with my casino chip collection, painting, reading and writing.

Astronomy is one activity I think about delving into again and again. I've studied those Meade catalogs for hours, debating which mega-telescope would be best. And the cool thing about astronomy today, is that computerization has made it easy to find any particular star or galaxy with a few keystrokes.

I'd also like to find time for model railroading, but there's not quite enough attraction to make it worth the time and space it would occupy. When I was a kid and we went to visit my grandmother in Childress, Texas, I would sit on her front porch and watch the trains roll by directly in front of the house several times a day. I still love looking at the wide variety of artwork and lettering that adorns the sides of boxcars. But, the miniature versions really don't excite me like seeing a real train does. I like the big ones. I think I'd really rather be a railroad baron.