The daily deal for June 20, 2008 is men's t-shirts at Eddie Bauer. You can't buy a t-shirt on the boardwalk at the Jersey shore for less than $20 nowadays, so these seem to be a real steal for $9.99 reduced from $16.50 to $19.50.

The short-sleeve classic pocket tee is available in 14 colors in small through XXX-large, regular and tall sizes. The short sleeve classic tee (no pocket) and sleeveless tee are also available for $9.99. Several others styles are also available for $14.99.

Eddie Bauer is one of those catalogs that sends you teaser sales throughout the year hoping you'll take the bait, but if can hold out for a real sale like this one-their "ultimate sale," it's worth the wait. Sales in other departments also turned up some finds, including some cute sundresses, and the clearance section is worth a peek too for deals up to 65% off original prices.

Since Tim Russert's death was announced by NBC Friday afternoon, prominent journalists and politicians have paid tribute to him. I won't attempt to compete with the likes of Andrea Mitchell, Tom Brokaw, Barack Obama, the Clintons or various members of the Kennedy family, who praised Russert as the best political journalist of our time, a devout Catholic, patriot, devoted father and husband and loving son.

Instead, I'll try to explain why I cried for an hour last night while watching televised tributes to a man I never met. For starters, I am a Jesuit-educated journalist with working class roots and a passion for politics. Russert's son Luke just graduated from Boston College, my alma mater. Russert was a fellow Bruce Springsteen fan, something I learned a decade or so ago when I read an essay titled Springsteen & Me in a magazine called P.O.V. So we had a few things in common.

The daily deal for Friday, June 13, 2008 is men's bathing suits at Old Navy.

Been wearing the same bathing suit summer after summer? Elastic gone and color faded? Not to stereotype, but men it seems, don't go out and buy themselves a new bathing suit until the old one is torn to pieces, or they grow out of it, to put it kindly.

If this sounds familiar, head to Old Navy, where there are more than a dozen men's bathing suits on sale. Most bathing suits are reduced from $19.50 to $11.70, and they come in sizes small through extra extra extra large.

At this point, even overnight shipping won't arrive in time for Father's Day, but a recent trip to my local Old Navy store found plenty of bathing suits in stock, and flip-flops for as little as $3.

With just a few days to go till Father's Day, if you don't have any good gift ideas, books are a good fallback. Here are a few you can find in any bookstore:

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis: I laughed out loud when I read the New York Times review of this compilation of three out of print works by deceased British author Kinglsey Amis, an authority on booze. I love his comment about dieting: "The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree."

Bobby Flay's Grill It: If your dad is more into cooking than drinking, famed chef and TV food host Bobby Flay has just published his fourth grilling cookbook. Although he could never top the first title, Boy Meets Grill, his recipes are winners.

The daily deal for June 9, 2008 is 400-thread count Egyptian cotton sheet sets at amazon.com. The sheets set includes a flat and fitted sheet, plus standard pillow cases made by Pinzon, and come in 12 colors including neutral tones like ivory and white. To be honest, I found the sheets while checking out a new web site I just learned about called Bradsdeals.

The sheets, which typically retail for $50 to $120, are on sale from $22.99 to $49.99, depending on the size (twin, queen, king, full and California king--whatever that is). What's more, the sheets are eligible for free super saver shipping because the order exceeds $25.

If you need summer clothes for your kids, check out your local Talbots Kids store--but hurry, word has gotten out about their blowout sale and pretty soon it will be slim pickings. Talbots Kids, which sells preppy summer clothing and accessories, always has good end of season sales, but right now everything is 50% off original prices because all Talbots Kids stores are closing.

Talbots announced last winter that it planned to close its kids and men's' divisions, and it intended to focus on its core businesses, women's clothing. Talbots is in the process of closing 78 stores, including 66 kids' stores and 12 men's stores nationwide.

I was tempted, but didn't buy one of several exquisite white dresses perfect for a flower girl or first Holy Communion dress. I also could have stocked up for next summer but it's hard to predict a child's size a year ahead of time. Instead, I figured out what my daughter needed for summer, and picked up a sweet white sweater to wear over floral sundresses, a pair of capris, some t-shirts and a black and white floral skirt–this was the best bargain-reduced from $48 to $15.

I was disappointed in the boys selection: there wasn't anything my 9 year old would wear – the clothes are a bit too stuffy for his skaterboy tastes, and since all sales are final I didn't want to chance it.

The daily deal for May 30, 2008 is a shell mosaic table, reduced from $19.49 to $12.99 at Linens and Things. The table, made of hand-laid mosaic tiles is water-resistant so it can be used outdoors on a patio or deck--perfect holding two margaritas next to a chaise lounge!

The table is 16 x 21 inches, and requires minimal assembly. The table also comes in a palm leaf motif or green floral mosaic design for the same price. Shipping will run you $6.99, but you can check online to see if a local Linens and Things carries the table, and save yourself shipping costs.

The first time I heard about e-books, I was in journalism school back in the early 1990s. I remember lively debates about whether newspapers, magazine and books would be rendered obsolete by the turn of the century, replaced by electronic versions you could hold in the palm of your hand. At the time, these predictions seemed both blasphemous and futuristic.

Last year, when I read about Kindle, Amazon.com's e-book reader, I still didn't believe wireless reading devices would catch on. Kindle sold out in hours after it was released in November, 2007, and remained out of stock for months.

Now Kindle is back, and I read in paidcontent.org that Amazon has lowered the price by $40, which is surprising, given its success when it was launched. It's now going for for $359, still more expensive than Sony's competing digital book, which sells for about $300. Apparently, as production of the Kindle reader increased, manufacturing costs decreased, in turn lowering the retail price.

As I age, and my short-term memory fades, I rely on lists more than ever: at any given time, I have several going, on bits of scrap paper next to the computer, on a notepad I keep next to the driver's seat in my car, and in a master notebook of everything I need to do for the next say, three months or so. Every once in a while – ok, about once a week at least – I think of something so urgent that I resort to scribbling it on my hand. No, I'm not 12, but I have been doing this since I was a teenager. It can be embarrassing if people see my hand covered in ink, but it works for me.

I just read about temporary to do list tattoos on boingboing.net. Each package includes 12 to-do forms you can affix to your body and a skin-safe felt tip marker. I found the tattoos on amazon for $3.45 but they were temporarily out of stock. Fred and Friends, the manufacturer of the tattoos, also makes some other funny, slightly useful products like the irreverent Jesus Look at the Time watches, with an image of Jesus on the face.

I doubt I'll actually buy the to-do list tattoos, but the fact that there is this product--and it's already sold out on Amazon-- does make me wonder how many other grown-ups out there actually write on their bodies to jog their memory. For the record, I also have a calendar, which I prefer over technologically advanced options like Blackberries. I understand these devices are very good at helping people like me get organized, but I will have none of it. I'm perfectly happy with my system, and it's free.

This post is part of our series ranking the top 25 bygone products and trends we'd like to see return.

On Christmas morning, my house, like thousands of others, is a chaotic, frenzied scene, with children frantically opening gifts and squealing with delight.

But the joy in my children's faces inevitably turns to frustration after they tear off the gift wrap and are unable to get their little hands on the toy inside the package because the darn thing is sealed up tighter than a coffin! If you haven't opened a doll lately, with a plastic hairbrush, barettes and the like, all smaller than your fingers, these toys and many others are taped to the cardboard box, then each piece is individually wrapped in a twist-tie that makes it hard even for parents to open without a well-stocked toolbox.

I miss the days when it was simple to open a new package, like an over-the-counter medicine bottle that didn't have childproof caps or an album wrapped in plastic so thin I could puncture it with my nails-as opposed to shrink-wrapped CDs and DVDs. The editors at Consumer Reports seem to agree with me, since they started something called the Oyster Awards (named after the infamously difficult to open mollusk) in 2006, a "hard to open packaging hall of shame." Last year, top honors went to the Oral-b Sonic Complete Toothbrush Kit and the Bratz Sisterz doll, which apparently earned its moniker before a little girl even got to play with the toy.

Consumer Reports mentions a few reasons manufacturers have made packaging so much more difficult to open, including safety laws and to prevent theft. Consumer Reports also applauds some "good guys," and claim that manufacturers are beginning to make improvements -- apparently brought on by consumer backlash -- such as a user-friendly clamshell package and toys without twist ties.

What shopping experiences of yesteryear do you miss?