Decembers To Remember

Pretty interesting week in the world of the Reedman so far. Right now, the Christmas season is reminding me of a lot of things. Like that I still need to do all of my shopping. Or that I need to figure out what to get for everyone. But there was another thing I was reminded of.

People are important in life.

For whatever reason, I was reminded of this today while I was doing my “Day in the Life” story on a pastor. That’s right, this morning I got to hang around with a local pastor for a few hours and learn how he prepares for a service a “Day in the life” if you will. Another fun thins is that my picture will likely be on the front page of the paper tomorrow with me doing something (I didn’t know what it was because my new editor took the picture) I think that why I thought of this topic. Kristal and I are getting along well right now. Of course, Kristal offered to take me to breakfast at the American Legion in town this morning, (some good French toast) before I started hanging out with the pastor. I should be grateful, Kristal set this up for me on Thursday when I didn’t have any idea of how I was going to do this. Kristal’s first day as my new boss is tomorrow and tonight I get to interview her and write a short (and I will emphasize SHORT) story on her being appointed. Good times. In all honesty, I think I’m just happy to have someone around and we get along all right. That’s about all it goes to.

The reason I thought of that story was because of a conversation I had with Chief Broken Dish this week online. She’s now living in Maryland and was nice to catch up and see how the former chief was doing. Chief Broken Dish was part of another December memory during finals week a couple years ago. During my junior year of college, we went to Rachel’s Roadhouse for our semesterly dinner. Chief, J-Dye and Sheryl all rode with me and made sure I had a great time by basically making fun of me the whole time and making sure I had a ton of great laughs. The one endearing memory I have from this is stopping at a gas station in Grove City and while I am fueling I hear the three of them laugh really loudly at about the same time. Why? Well, since my windows were all fogged up, J-Dye wrote my name really huge on the one window, Chief wrote my name inside a heart and Sheryl wrote my phone number. Hilarious moments there. And in a strange bit of coincidence, all of them live in Maryland now. I think my unofficial name for them will be “The Maryland Gang.” Let’s see how long it takes for that to be vetoed.

The weather has been great all week and should continue to be that way. But for now, that’s just about everything I can think of. And by the way congratulations again to everyone who graduated this year and can now celebrate sweet, sweet freedom. Enjoy it!

You Can Take Reedy Out Of College, But You Can't Take The College Out Of Reedy

Wow, what a week this has been. As some of you may have heard, this week was the week to put together the Winter Sports preview, a mixture of pagination, tiredness and lots of caffeine. It also included what I like to call an all-nighter. Let’s explain the fun that was Wednesday.

The Ridgway all-nighter

10 a.m. – wake up

11 a.m. – arrive at work

Noon – am told there are problems with ads on one of our sister’s papers tabs. Have to fix it.

1:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. – Paginate eight pages of tab while my co-worker gets yelled at for still doing his stories while I’m trying to paginate. We cut the tab from 12 pages to 8 while I do an awesome job of moving ads to get it to fit.

6 p.m. – I wait for composing to PDF ads while I hear entertaining stories about lots of stuff told by Jeff about Turkey and Gravy soda (apparently a real thing) and lots more great stuff.

6 – 9:30 p.m. – Ridgway boys basketball and losing for the first time this season. Not surprising since it was their first game of the year.

9:30 p.m. – 10:30 p.m. – I think we get everything squared away with the tab.

10:30 p.m. – 1 a.m. – Write a story, upload some pictures do a scorebox and then I think I had to paginate sports as well.

1 a.m. – 3:30 a.m. – This part is pretty much a blur but I do remember learning how to PDF pages with the copy editor there. We’re getting along pretty well right now, which is always good.

3:30 a.m. – 6 a.m. – I was still there and again I don’t know if I was actually doing anything other than light typing for news.

6:30 a.m. – Go home and sleep. By the way I should mention the reason this happened is I had to come in and proof early in the morning. But since our paper’s press is broke, the deadline was moved up and going home and sleeping for 2 hours seemed useless at the time.

Let’s hope the snowy weather holds off for a while. Driving in that stuff is just rough. I’m surprised so many people like it. I’m not particularly fond of it just that much anymore. I can stand the cold to a degree and now I’ve gotten used to the wintery weather and cold, just like I did while at school. The only difference is the sidewalks in Ridgway aren’t icesheets and I have to actually drive.

I guess I really shouldn’t have been surprised to see last week go so tough. Last week just happened to be the last week of classes at the Slippery Rock. I remember what those weeks were like, and they were worse than finals week. They were rough because all the professors seemed to think it was a great idea to make projects due the final week. Doing three to four projects at one with my constant procrastination and it could turn really rough.

So that’s about it, and the semester is coming to an end with the holiday season coming up faster than a friend request on Facebook. Good luck to everyone in finals week and especially to those graduating soon. That’s all for now, it’s back to the grind tomorrow.

That's A Nice Set Of Horns

Over the past week, I got to see a ton of happy people. People that just happened to have dead deer heads in the backs or trunks of their cars. Our paper sponsors a big buck contest and we had over 20 entries come in (Not literally, they stayed outside) and enter the contest while interested onlookers and passer-byers would ooh and ahh at said deer, especially its horns. Now for whatever reason, I had the esteemed duty of taking most of the pictures of the hunters. It made everyone else feel good for the most part, which is a huge key at work.

Lots of people have birthdays at the beginning of December which is really cool. I know quite a few and I wish them all a happy and swell birthday to grow a year older. Since it’s also the end of December it looks like the fall semester is coming to an end pretty soon. I also happen to know a few people that will be graduating soon, and I know they’re all excited. Trust me, I’ve talked to them and they have all told me so.

It must be the Christmas season. Everywhere I look, I see a commerical for jewelry anywhere from the typical family Christmas morning setting where the husband gets the wife some fancy schmancy jewelry or those other commericals. Today, I saw the relationship timeline of kisses, going from first kiss, to wedding kiss, to baby kiss, to middle-aged kiss, to good-bye kiss. (OK, that last one isn't real, but since this is America and one of out every two marriages end in divorce, it really should be.) So now I remember that "Every kiss begins with Kay." (Which I NEVER understood the literal reality of the saying until it just dawned on me today) Also, I guess if you really want to impress your mate, go ahead and go to Jared, because "it could only be Jared." By the way, the stuff that's ignored os the astronomical price of some of these diamonds. The real saying should be "You may not have lifelong love, but you'll sure have lifelong debt." Oh, yes, you all probably have realized that I won't have to worry about that at least this year. And I am more than OK with that.

I probably forgot a few things, but if I did, I’ll add them in at another time. Until next time, don’t get too stressed out and keep the Kleenex in the box.

My Green Chair Broke

OK, I’m going to try and blog again. Let’s see how this one works. Apparently, people are reading it since the last 2 posts have had three comments about them. Let’s do it.

First of all, I had a sad moment. My favorite green chair broke that I’ve had for over three years. So if you’re planning your Christmas lists, guess what now you know what you can get me. I got the chair in May 2003 as it was originally my first college roommate’s at the time, before he generously and without much care, gave it to me as he was in as big a hurry as possible to leave school forever. (He dropped out) The chair had a lot of good memories and lived it three different dorm rooms, home and Ridgway not withstanding the countless hours of time I spent playing video games instead of going out and getting a social life with anyone I associated with.

Work has been going fine as of late, although this week will be busy because we are paginating our winter sports preview. Good times. I’ll be busy with that and will likely have to do most of the pagination.

By the way, thanksgiving was nice as I got to see the family again and do some other stuff as well. Yippie skippie doo. Mom made me take back my little small tree which is currently out of the box and positioned in my living room with garland and lights in there.

We’re in the baby processes of the next-gen systems with the Nintendo Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 where gamers that have WAY too much time on their hands, spent days and days in line to spend their life saving on systems that will go down on price. Needless to say, I didn’t go out to get one of those, I have something called a job that prevents that. However, I won’t rule out buying that in the future. And by the way, I’m getting a PS3 if I do because I’m avoiding any mention of the Xbox 360 (Especially HALO 2) and the Nintendo Wii (which is still living off Zelda and Mario).

Winter came back to Ridgway today, especially since it’s December. That makes enough sense. But speaking of things that don’t really make much sense, I read a certain post by my esteemed friend Jen about Rocket coffee. Now as many of you know, I used to work at The Rocket for a while and I guess I really never paid attention to the coffee, because I never drank it. But letting mold grow on the coffee pot? A little odd. And by the way, Jen’s not kidding when she says she turns into a bear when she doesn’t get the coffee. I’ve seen it. It’s not pretty, folks.

I heard everyone had a great time at their Senior Seminar dinners Thursday night. While you were at your etiquette dinners. Guess what I was doing? That’s right.
I sat at an etiquette dinner.
Thursday night, I covered the Ridgway football banquet and ended up sitting with the team boosters. And you know what, it was a good time, even though much like the senior sem dinner I had in the spring, I barely ate anything (OK, I barely ate anything compared to everyone else who cleaned their plates) and couldn’t put my elbows on the table. I must also say the table I was at it not exactly suited for anyone taller than 5’10” because I kept hitting my knee on the top of the table. That was a very fun banquet though, especially with coaches and players trading friendly jabs at each other. We laughed a lot for 3 hours. Now there’s a great way to spend your Thursday night.