Yes, I know my blog has lain dormant for some time. The reason? My laptop died a couple of months ago and I still haven't gotten the new hard drive for it. I suppose I don't want to face actually having lost a bunch of photos and music I hadn't backed up. At least I didn't lose my documents! But as a slight interruption to this extended hiatus, I present the following exchange I had tonight with a co-worker. I copied this verbatim from our inter-office IM, where I'd just mentioned the TARDIS in a conversation about Halloween costumes. Whovians, prepare to be amused. Paginator: I looked up tardis and read an urbandictionary definition and am even more confused Me: umm.... so it's basically a time travel spaceship in disguise as a phone booth Paginator: back to being speechless Me: it's a big deal in the TV show Doctor Who. And it's supposed to be able to shapeshift into pretty much anything as a disguise, but the shapeshifter part broke so it's s...

I received a lovely surprise today at work: A thank-you bouquet from a WWII veteran. This veteran is originally from the town where I work and at 90 years old must be one of a very small number of men left who had served in World War II. He had seen an article I wrote recently about the Roll of Honor, a local monument to the area's WWII veterans (both the living and those who've passed on). So he called me this week, hoping someone at the paper could send him a photo of the monument. He lives out of town and had never seen it since it was rebuilt in 2010, even though his name and those of several of his relatives are on it. I couldn't find him any from the paper but I snapped a few with my phone on my way to an assignment and emailed them to him. He replied with his thanks and I figured that was taken care of. Then about noon today, one of the front desk ladies brought these peach roses, saying they were delivered for me. For the life of me I couldn't guess wh...

It's been a big, busy, exciting weekend. Saturday was my state's press association's annual awards luncheon, and I got an award. Not just one, though. Three ! All I knew going in was that I was getting something, but I figured it'd be third place in some itty bitty category. But I actually got a little certificate for being... punny. That and the other particular awards I got were completely unexpected. (But the award for being punny was the best. Remember, editors love puns. Especially in headlines.) And then today, I played piano . In front of people . And without reading music (because my musical-note-literacy is limited to reading one, maybe two, notes at a time). After years of plinking out notes and chords and then broken chords on the black and white keys, sans lessons, it's finally paid off. (Meaning, when church has absolutely nobody else to play the Christmas carols in December, it's not quite the disaster it could've been. :D )

My editor told me today to GO FOR IT! I'm to write a weekly lighthearted column for our entertainment page. My first column runs Friday. And it's about peewee football. :D

My editor got sick Friday, the very morning I emailed her my spec pieces for that column I mentioned, so I have not heard any response from her. I'll definitely post when I do! In the meantime, entertain and inform yourselves with the following random links... Only Canada, China, North Korea and the U.S. allow abortion after viability for any reason. 40 maps that will help you make sense of the world... including one showing where 29,000 rubber duckies made landfall after falling off a cargo ship in the middle of the Pacific... Which finally answers the question: How long would it take a rubber ducky to travel from the Hawaiian Islands to England? Somebody went looking for a novel about women that's not about love, and thinks they're frustratingly rare . I'm not sure what the big deal is -- it's just as easy to learn from a guy's "going it alone" novel as it would be from a girl's. Unless, of course, you admit that guys and girls have fu...

We have this page we do at the paper I work at that runs every Friday with a list of interesting things to do over the weekend, a movie review and some piece of outlandish entertainment news (like, Justin Bieber arrested again!). Along the side of this page runs a weekly column, something lighthearted or localized to set the tone for the weekend. We've been a bit frustrated by this column for various reasons, so I asked my editor a couple of days ago if we could replace it. She asked, what with? And I may or may not have volunteered to write the weekly piece. So, she said, write me a couple spec pieces -- that's journo lingo for "these are the pieces that will forever convince you of my fantastic writing ability" -- and we'll see. I wrote the spec pieces tonight (or... this morning?). I present them to her tomorrow. I mean today. If she likes 'em, I'm on the hook for writing something rather amusing each week (kind of in the style of the Life on my O...

A few weeks ago my work schedule changed a bit. I now work an early second-shift type schedule, much like my sister the nurse does, actually, but Tuesday through Saturday as always. The change came about because one position was cut from the newsroom. Now, there’s just the managing editor and me as editors for the six-day-a-week paper, so we’ve split the duties formerly assumed by the associate editor. As a consequence, I’m the one coming in late and staying late to edit copy (stories and stuff) and “put the paper to bed,” as we say. (That just means I read through everything that goes in the paper, tell the designers what to put on which pages, then read through it all again once they design the pages and make more corrections.) I still do reporting as much as I can, which feels like very little. It’s a rather solitary job, far more than reporting has been, anyway. Most of the newspaper staff leaves at 5 p.m. sharp and the reporters, who start a bit later because of the news cycle, ...

There, I updated my blog.         …..OK, so I’ll do a little more than that. (As my editor constantly quips – don’t say I never gave you anything!) It’s true, I’m buying a house. God pretty much dropped this wonderful little two-bedroom house into my lap. I saw it before it went on the market and the owners were thrilled to get the selling part out of the way before they’d even started looking for their next house. I’ll be sure to post a couple pictures of the inside once I get moved in later this summer! Sometimes, when it hits me again that I’M BUYING A HOUSE, I can’t help smiling and jumping for joy. Or at least bouncing up and down in my seat. Also, I’m now more an editor than a reporter at the paper I work at (though I still do a fair bit of reporting). The newsroom staff lost one position and the managing editor and I ended up having to split the duties of the associate editor, whose position is now lost to oblivion. (Story of the industry.) With that c...

There’s a song about changes, I know. I just can’t pull the lyrics out of my muddled subconscious. Or maybe it’s just one of those things that there should be an ultimate song about, but I haven’t heard exactly what I’m looking for yet. Change is a little scary. It’s like every kid knows—you undergo some change, it’s like starting all over from square one. Or falling down the chute in Chutes and Ladders and landing behind all your game opponents. I didn’t play that game much, but I wrote a scholarly essay related to it for a lit class one time. It’s much easier to do the same old thing you’ve been doing for weeks or months or years than to change it. Take jobs, for instance. It’s scary now to think of switching jobs, especially when the one you’ve got is pretty decent and not particularly unstable (at least not in the immediate future). So when is it worth it? Apparently, it’s worth it when I get to move from one Midwest town to another that’s nearer my cousins, possessed of a dai...

Early this month I had a novel experience. Marijuana stung my eyes. Innocent that I am, I’ve never seen someone so much as smoking marijuana, let alone growing it. Or at least, I’m not aware that I have. But to judge from the pictures I’d seen, it looked like either poison ivy or buckeye leaves. (That’s why some people joke that Ohio State University has marijuana in its emblems.) And then, I was sitting at my news reporter’s desk being all reporter-y. The chief of police in my town called up a little before my lunchtime, rather randomly I had thought at first, and asked if I had a minute to come take a picture. He could hardly disguise his glee—they’d found an in-home grow, he said. I wasn’t sure, but I thought that meant marijuana. I walked in the police station and the chief met me at the vestibule. Then, leading me down a short corridor, he began to descend a stairway. As I neared the stairway I could smell something. It reminded me of spearmint. You know how, if you have a hug...

About halfway through November, I finished six months at my first job after college, and the first job in my field. Here’s what my first six months of news reporting taught me: 1. Sunshine laws. There are lots of things government entities can’t do in their meetings… for instance, they can’t hold impromptu meetings, except if a dire situation demands it and only then after notifying all the local media. And any quorum of a government body in the same place, discussing business, constitutes a meeting—so elected officials can’t get out of this by getting together for morning coffee and accidentally talking about what-have-you. There’s a whole book on the open meeting and public records laws—and the state will send it to you free, if you want to learn about them. 2. Local government operations. I had no idea before I took this job how many branches there were of just a small city government—how many subcommittees a city council has, for instance. I’d only been to a couple city council m...

The only bad thing about vacations is that they end! After my wonderful trip to visit my college roomie, now going to grad school in Boston, I had one day to recover—thanks to long experience telling me I wouldn’t be either rested or prepared to go back to work immediately. I spent Wednesday sleeping, doing laundry, and generally taking it easy in order to be refreshed for the short workweek ahead. (Yes, very short.) Then came Thursday. It came early, too, beginning with a 7:30 a.m. meeting I had to cover. Such is the life of a reporter; my time, though flexible, is partly ruled by the meeting schedules of various governmental bodies. I barely dragged myself out of bed, still groggy from losing sleep over the entire extended weekend, and got to the morning meeting of the county park district. Doesn’t sound too enthralling, right? Actually it’s better than it sounds. It’s a good thing for the park district that their meetings are down-to-earth but not meandering! I look forward to co...

Saturday and Sunday… I helped get the last issue of the campus newspaper to press (seven hours in the Mac lab) I played my little part in The King and I , twice (roughly ten hours) I went with the cast to an after-performance Steak N Shake run (roughly four hours) I slept, some (six hours Sunday morning) and then went to Sunday School I spent the rest of Sunday wearily finishing a ten-page paper due Monday then relaxed by watching Oklahoma! with a couple friends, and taking a walk (roughly four hours) And tonight, I pulled together a 37-page portfolio. Don’t worry; I only had to write five or so pages of it. The rest was a matter of finding the pieces… and formatting them… and making up the cover page… yeah. I’m tired. But I’m glad to be (nearly) done. Oh, and yeah… I got a job, and will start right after I graduate. Full-time reporting job, and not too far from home so I can still see my sister from time to time. Talk about a blessing from God.

…and all my projects are finally wrapping up. 1. The church photo directory. I’m getting all the photos from the photographer today, and it should be a snap placing them all into the document. Then, PDFing the document, and sending it on to the assistant pastor to get it to the printer… and voilá, I should be all done with this. 2. I actually got the neighboring town’s coroner’s office to fax an autopsy report to the newspaper! And all it took was a little specific information, a couple phone calls, some courtesy, and some patience. Well, the patience thing was easy, since I got so busy I forgot to call back until a week later… which worked out. (The lady I talked to had also gotten busy, so we both picked up where we left off at the same time!) 3. One more week left of work at the warehouse!!! I’m so glad it’s almost over. 4. Gearing up for the semester of editing the campus newspaper. Well, I got everybody to pick some assignments, and did my own; and the ads manager and I go...

I got moved into my apartment on campus late this morning... spent an hour or so unpacking before lunch, then got my computer hooked up to the internet and the rest of the stuff unpacked after. Also rearranged the room a bit--my roommate for this time, whom I've never officially met (she remembered that we had a class together a couple years ago), gave me leave via Facebook message to rearrange the beds when I got back. Of course, there's not exactly a lot of space in this room, so I maneuvered the beds into the only other position possible. (I like that arrangement better.) And I'm off to go to work in about fifteen minutes. At which time I will return to my old job at the library ... for more than four hours! I've books and the internet to keep me occupied, of course, but I'm hoping to get some writing done as well. (Journal-writing, that is.) And after having listened to music for the last few hours, I will return to a world of silence and my own thoughts. ...

I came across a hidden bit of graffiti today at work--on a product shelf, of all places, and in Spanish. It was a sort of conversación to the effect of: "This place is horrible." "No it's not. I've seen worse." "It's very horrible." "How are you?" English gibberish pretending to be a Spanish answer to that. I couldn't quite make out what it was saying. Illiterate English graffiti to the effect of "Spanish is dumb." It resembled texting to me, I think. It's kind of amusing to see all that in such an odd place, you know? I wish now I had written the location down.... and on second thought, I could probably remember where it was....!

I've been quite busy this week... as I posted on my other blog, I've: Helped out with VBS two mornings Helped out with my church blood drive one morning/early afternoon (after a VBS) Judged several 4-H projects one morning Had a dentist’s appointment one morning Worked nine-hour days (till midnight-thirty) And worked eight hours yesterday. I don't regret one single thing in that list. Even though I suffered severe sleep deprivation (less than 3 and a half hours) Thursday morning. And even though my feet, back, and hands were sore by the end of the week. In other news--there is an apple slice sitting on the couch beside me. I do not know why it is there, nor do I know for whom it was intended (though I have my suspicions). Perhaps somebody will take pity on it, eat it, and sent it to little-apple-slice heaven. Not me though; I don't like apples all that much.

Sometimes I think of the most random things while I'm at work... ... like the meaning of "ix-nay on the upid-stay" from Aladdin. The Genie says it. I'm pretty sure it's one of those childish codes where you take the first letter-sound of a word... et cetera. I'm not really sure why I never realized this before. ... and like the allusion in the title of the movie "Dante's Peak." Dante's Inferno, of course, the picture of hell. I have no idea why I'm pondering Disney movies and old literature while packing boxes. But apparently I am.

I was at work today... for eight hours... eight long hours, but not as long as the eight hours yesterday. You see, when you're on your feet for your whole job, these moments of curling up on the couch are relished more than usual. Working second shift is nice, in and of itself... you feel like you have two whole days to do stuff. The morning/early afternoon is a day, then you still work a full day in the afternoon/evening. And of course, the rather foolish among us continue this second day into the wee hours of the next day, spending time on computer and blogging. ;) It's very interesting to watch people's reactions to stuff at work. It's quite a stressful environment--fast-paced. Some people do well; others, not so well. When a deluge of boxes comes our way (we're in a shipping warehouse), some deal with it by cussing out every other box; some just buckle down and do the task at hand; some treat it as a challenge, or a race. And at the end of the night--when ...

My sister had her graduation party, as did another good friend of ours (well, friend mostly of my brother, but we've known the family for ten years, probably). So Saturday was filled to the brim, and Friday was taken up planning for Saturday. And Sunday, of course, was Father's Day. :) My daddy got to watch "Live Free or Die Hard," the only Die Hard that's not rated R (and consequently it's acceptable in our house). I enjoy it almost as much as Dad does, to be honest. The script/characters are quite amusing. So, come Monday, and I find out that several books are waiting for me at the library! :) These books were: --Jane Austen's "Emma" --Jane Austen's early works --Jane Austen's "Sanditon" and other short novels (more early works) --and "A History of the Ancient World," by Susan Wise Bauer. Can you tell I'm on a Jane Austen kick? :) (By the way--if you're an Ohioan, call or e-mail your legislature and the ...