annual write of passage

annual write of passage
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

it may be the only new year's ritual i try to keep: writing something in my journal on the last day of the year.

used to be something i didn't have to worry about, as i wrote in the thing fairly regularly -- partly to practice writing, partly to work things out in print so i could see problems from different perspectives.

but this crazy site, what with more than 70 entries this year, has sopped up most of my mulling -- at least the less self-indulgent thoughts, anyway. (yeah, thank your lucky stars; there could have been more in-depth navel gazing than what you see here.)

why write anyway?

the blog pretty much fills the role of chronicle; at least until all the electricity is gone, the events of the year are in for posterity's sake.

my hopes and fears and ponderings, i can now share with my wife and get feedback, solutions or simply a sympathetic ear.

my grouses -- hah -- those are in e-mails with friends and colleagues on servers owned by both my employer and a few multinational internet conglomerates. (there will be a few grinding teeth and angry tears should those gripes ever hit the wrong inbox.)

the rest -- musings on women, accounts of dates, projections, rejections and all the relationship stuff of bachelor living -- was no longer in play once i bought the engagement ring.

so all i was left with were a list of resolutions -- a variation on the usual handful -- and a prayer for the new year.

(the resolutions: deepen my prayer; control personal finance; exercise; attend to family; keep house in order.)

let's see how we do.

in a year marked by many as downright disastrous, i can only see as blessed by the union of me and my wife, so i can't bid 2008 a good riddance.

let us instead hope and pray for a more blessed 2009.

happy new year.

our last sunday afternoon

looks like we've enjoyed our last look at long shadows from the setting sun, 5 p.m. mass and sunday night supper at home -- at least for a while.

this time next week, i'll probably be in the daily mail newsroom laying out a page for our first a.m. edition. hopefully, the only stress i'll be feeling will be that from deadline.

as copy editor jobs go, you couldn't have asked for a sweeter one than for the daily mail.

granted, the morning hours were pretty rough -- 6 a.m. (or 5 if you were wire editor that day) -- but afternoons and evenings home allowed the closest thing to a normal life you could get in newspapers outside of reporting.

rookie or vet, you worked monday through friday -- tuesday to saturday back when we published six days -- which you would not get at any other paper without some major seniority.

(the tuesday-saturday scheduled was especially sweet. we had only one edition, which meant we could be out by noon at the latest, so it was like having a 2 1/2 day weekend. plus, you picked up overtime if you subbed for someone on monday -- and double time if it was a holiday: memorial or veterans days, christmas or new years.)

even with the switchover, by copydesk standards, it's not going to be all that bad: sunday through thursday. friday and saturday nights off? a nightside dream.

i'd be lying if i didn't say i still resent a crimp in the lifestyle to which i'd grown accustomed. i think anyone who isn't a 20-something single person whose life isn't settled down would feel the same way.

and maybe it's tinged with the fear of the unknown -- and the known.

obviously, no one knows how this effort is going to turn out. watching our colleagues at papers across the country get bought out or laid off outright in this foundering economy only seems to heighten the tension.

i do know, from my years working at two other a.m. papers, that there was a persistent sense of dread as the sun moved across the sky.

unlike other jobs, where the end of the day promised release from labor, this job's hours portend the opposite -- and all the pressure that comes along with it. not much to look forward to.

i have to remember that in these times and in this line of work, lifestyle choice is a luxury not many can afford.

i will still leave the office without any dirt under my fingernails or the sense of relief of having made it with my life and limbs intact. it's still white collar work.

best of all, kris and i will be together on roughly the same schedule, so we won't be kept apart time-wise. that would have been a deal-breaker for sure.

i'm hoping the paper won't suffer from not having the reporters, editors, photographers and designers in at the same time as we do now. the camaraderie and collaboration makes us a pretty tight unit. i shudder to think of how disruptive the splitting up might be.

at this moment, we're still a two-newspaper town; rarity for a city of any size. i hope this change will allow us to continue to be that rare bird.

a jolly brown christmas

what started as a church hall christmas party for a handful of young filipino families in early 1970s beckley, w.va., has grown into a gathering for three generations from three towns in a small convention center.

a number of things have changed after almost 40 years.

it used to be pot luck, with every family responsible for either an entree or dessert, usually someone's special dish from back home.

this evening it was catered; save for the lechon, a roasted suckling pig, the buffet style meal was all-american -- mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, grilled chicken breast and roast beef.

(the bonus was the option to buy whole bottles of wine, say, for a table of family and/or friends. it seemed like a better deal than glass after glass of the stuff.)

the attendees were the same -- and different.

i saw harried young parents trying to balance enjoying themselves with attempts to keep their kids from running amok; i.e., doing what they themselves were doing 30 years before.

i noticed more self-absorbed college and high school students than i'd seen in a while. and following the trend of recent years, there were more grandparents than at the first one (they used to be the young parents).

i remember being the kid crazed by santa's impending visit and feeding on the mania of other like-minded children.

i also remember being the awkward, unsociable teen before morphing into the too-cool-for-this-ethnic-stuff college punk.

it's weird how the wheel turns but its axis never changes.

you can always count on three things at these big soirees: generous helpings of food and drink; some sort of folk -- and not-so-folk -- entertainment; and dancing, dancing, dancing.

i think the disenchantment i felt after i outgrew santa's party visits, where i questioned the relevance of these gatherings, has since been replaced with an appreciation of my own culture and the role we played in this part of the country.

my parents and their friends originally gathered because they, as an immigrant community, wanted to bring some of the pleasures and camaraderie of their old home far away to their new one.

in doing so, they brought over the cultural mindset of our people.

watching for the umpteenth time our moms and dads and "aunts" and "uncles" daring to perform choreographed dances whether or not they possessed real rhythm reveals to me a kind of un-self-conscious willingness to risk appearing foolish for a good laugh and a little entertainment.

this is a trait that i don't see being carried on by our present generation of filipino-americans in this state, which is a shame.

i suppose in becoming "americanized," being the focus of frivolous attention every once in a while -- as opposed to that for one's more serious accomplishments -- is something we're not yet comfortable with. (maybe it betrays a lack of confidence in our own acceptance as citizens -- or as adults?)

outside the home, i don't think we as children appreciated that for years our dads and moms were often the only medical care available to poorly served, rural areas of the state.

in return, we were welcomed into these communities and became a real -- if not surreal -- part of the the area's cultural fabric, the tan patch in the quilt, as it were.

i suppose in much the same way that west virginians never really lose the tether to their home state, so have we not totally cut the cord to our own philippine homeland.

that kind of sentiment and appreciation of place and time may explain why we've managed to keep each other such good company all these years.

and while not many of my peers seem interested now in maintaining the links to where we came from, i hope, as we grow more comfortable in our skins, this will be true for us, too.

labor of love

this is what kris, mom and i worked on sunday evening down in beckley.

it's probably the same view that anyone driving past the house this christmas will get, which is good. a drive-by or snapshot spares you the close-in look of all the wires and cords hanging, draped, wrapped and otherwise laid out across the yard.

it doesn't hurt that the night and snow hides said wiring and provides the added bonus of seasonal ambiance. it was probably about 15 degrees when i shot this pic, so in my head it even looks crisp and cold. (the forecast for tuesday calls for rain, which should pretty much negate that effect sometime later in the day.)

earlier sunday afternoon, we headed out to the little league christmas tree sale out at harry lewin field and lucked into a nice looking tree in less than half an hour.

as we drove home, we heard something shift and, after pulling into the driveway, it appeared a single branch tied at the bottom of the tree was all that kept the fir from flying -- or, more likely, dragged behind the jeep. (i wondered about the respectful distance kept by the cars following us as we drove below the speed limit.)

these were the two deeds kris and i promised mom we'd do after thanksgiving, since we'd spent the holiday with her parents and dad's heart catheterization that week forced him and mom to stay home and miss the annual trek to florida to visit pj and his family.

(the weather was so crappy thanksgiving weekend -- cold and steady rain -- that the prospects of standing around a tree lot, then wiring lights in the mud and wet convinced us to postpone a week.)

from a mood-setting standpoint, sunday was glorious -- bright, clear, ear-numbing cold. it felt like christmas. it probably went a long way in making what can be the drudgery of holiday decorating joyous and festive.

i add here that kris' presence as my significant other and helpmate for yet another family chore went a long way in leavening my demeanor.

where i would be short or curt as the day wore on and my tiredness would not kindly receive mom's suggestions or misunderstandings, kris defused and placated and otherwise interjected cheer into the dynamic. it was probably the most stress-free afternoon of christmas decorating i'd had in some time -- if ever.

it was heartening and a blessing to have a labor of love not deteriorate into a wired tangle of frustration and, well, the opposite of its intent and intention.

for that, i have to thank both weather and wife for a gift to my mom.

facing reality

well, as close as college football gets to reality ...

a few interesting reads today pretty much calmed me down re the embattled west virginia university head coach bill stewart.

they boiled down to this: 

a) even if we lose saturday, we will have a winning record and go to a bowl game; 

2) our failing has been in offensive play-calling, period.  tough to swallow, since probably the greatest football player the school has ever seen deserved better than to back into the record books; 

and d) good breaks here and there were responsible for a number of wins the previous three seasons wherein we enjoyed spectacular success -- and a lack of them this year has cost us four. (this from a wvu athletics department staff writer -- he's gone over the stats.)

the three-way collision of (unrealistic?) expectation, perception and reality is never pretty. 

i say any crash you can walk away from is a good one. let's see how well we recover next year.

post-thanksgiving feast

ever have one of those meals that you wished would never end?

i just ate a sandwich i tried to eat as slowly as possible just to make it last.

kris took some leftover flank steak from dinner, caramelized some yellow onions in balsamic vinegar and a little sugar and served it up on a toasted english muffin slathered on one side with some lo-cal swiss cheese and horseradish cream on the other.

it was lovely to look at, but after her first bite, kris said maybe we should eat them over the sink so the deep burgundy-colored onion topping wouldn't drip on the white table cloth.

i told her the secret, as with giant, kitchen-sink cheeseburgers, was to not set it down after the first bite, that way you can hold all the innards together until the sandwich is down to a manageable size.

it also helped to ensure the steak slices were also pointed downhill from your mouth; this helps make sure all the guts came out from just one direction instead of two.

my mouth was so happy, it told my brain we had to document this right away for sake of our home's culinary posterity.

meantime, kris was baking a practice pecan pie ahead of the bake sale for our paper's seasonal charity. (it was indeed full of sweet, gooey nuttiness. yeah. yummers.)

she was inspired enough by the result that she's now starting to bake some cookies.

i thank the Lord i married well.

a little christmas?

on a day that used to mark a silly exercise in good, old-fashioned, american consumerism -- the post-thanksgiving bargain shopping spree -- things went horribly wrong in our temples of commerce.

in new york, a seasonal walmart worker was trampled to death by shoppers wanting to save some money. in california, two people shot each other to death during a dispute in a toys 'r' us.

the cliche of american excess rears its ugly head in greed and violence.

meantime, here in almost heaven, thank the Lord i suffer only from deflated expectations as my mountaineers' less-than-perfect season suffered yet another setback, this time at the hands of our arch-bastard rival pitt panthers.

while the stakes were considerably lower -- a third-tier bowl berth, versus the national championship game last year -- the desire for sweet revenge, already blunted by pitt's own bungled season, went wholly unfulfilled in this loss.

i think i'm slowly making my peace with returning to the humble satisfaction of being merely above average and shelving the dream of gridiron glory. it was nice little run we had there. i suppose i should be glad we got to experience its tantalizing thrill.

kitty with string
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

kris -- after weeks of railing against the retail sector's efforts to pull off its own christmas miracle in this crappy economic climate by starting its marketing nearly a month before thanksgiving -- decided the time had come to make the house a holiday home.

after getting a free christmas tree appetizer server at the fruth drug store, i think she got inspired to start stringing up lights, hanging stockings and getting the house all christmased up. merry merry.

as you can see, i think the smidge is really going to enjoy this season.

turn the car around

kris sent me a quote from filmmaker michael moore on his answer to the auto industry bailout question. 

moore invoked fdr's world war ii edict where the commander-in-chief told the big three exactly what kinds of machines they were going to be manufacturing. 

this time, moore envisioned a president obama enacting something like: 

"We're going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reigns on these companies. They're to build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline."

now i dunno about that . . . and yet, it's a germ of an idea . . . .

while i'm not for soviet-style auto by committee and love too much the sense of individuality and expression that american car companies are still capable of creating, i definitely agree there should be a short leash, i.e. strings attached to any cash infusion.

i really don't know what to think.

do our guys ride this one out and come back lean and hungry? does the government step in and make what becomes a gutsy investment in the country's economy? or does the american auto industry go the way of electronics and textiles to manufacturers beyond our borders?

i can only hope the answer is "yes" to one of the first two because i simply cannot fathom the possibility that the epitome of all that is american, the automobile, might one day cease to be produced here. 

i still can't wrap my brain around the idea of the financial dominoes that fell to create this season's wall street meltdown. 

but i can look at gas prices on a sign and cars i covet in a magazine and guess why there aren't more than a handful built in the u.s. that appeal to me. 

i understand there are shareholders who wanted big returns on their investments and car companies that wanted to keep them happy and grow rich themselves. 

i also knew that rather than plow their money into short-term money losers featuring smart, efficient design, like the rest of the fuel-strapped automotive world, our guys chose to take the easy route of making low-concept, high-profit cars the way they always had and pocketing the returns. 

well, that kind of thinking came to bite them on their collective butts once the price of gas shot up. 

(the consumer can't be let off the hook, either. supply had to come from demand; and with easy credit and the desire to consume conspicuously, we lived larger than large, if not downright bloated.) 

with their fortunes suddenly tanking amid this fall's credit firestorm, the big three went to washington, hat in hand, seeking the same kind of help the financial sector got. 

problem is, no one seems to want to give any. (hell, if i knew the same kind of short-sighted thinking was going to stay in the heads of our automakers, i wouldn't either. )

still, though, what irks me about the lack of support for a bailout of our auto industry is, yeah, they made their bed and maybe they ought to have to sleep in it. 

so why didn't the high rollers of wall street have to as well? 

why do white collars trump blue? because ultimately, all those workers who found a good life not through college, but skilled trades, are the ones who are going to be turned out onto the street.

is it because the arcana of high finance is so convoluted, confusing and easily obfuscated that rather than get to the bottom of who is to blame, the feds just signed a blank check to make it go away?

(whereas, i suppose, the old model of manufacturing and supply and demand the big three practice is easier to follow and, thus, criticize and punish.)

maybe this is an act of seppuku -- slashing the guts of one of our last heavy industries -- to atone for dishonoring american ingenuity and work ethic.

we'd had our warning shots after the oil embargo of the early '70s. the country looked overseas for fuel-efficient cars since we didn't make them here. 

we had our chance to make good in the '80s, but we just quit trying once gas stayed cheap and lucrative SUVs became all the rage.

or maybe it's our politicians punting -- giving up on advancing the cause of u.s. manufacturing in the face of formidable competition and letting the global marketplace fill the void.

(plus it kills two birds with one stone -- we get cheaper cars -- for the time being --and hamstring big labor at the same time.)

i'm probably being hopelessly naive and romantic about what the strengths of this country should be. 

despite our tremendous strides and preeminence in this information age, i still believe we can turn out sophisticated, high-octane dream machines better than anyone in the world.

while we can have brains of silicon, i think it would be a mistake to move into the future without a backbone of steel.

first scrape with jack frost

jack frost wasn't teasing today.

after sunday's wafting hints of snow, enough came down last night that i had to turn on the defrosts and break out the ice scraper. seems like it's only been a few weeks since i did this last.

it was about 35 degrees out there.

this was kristina's first day back to work. after a day and a night of regular nyquil -- not the cough formula that kept her tossing and turning all sunday night -- she shot up with advil cold and sinus and mucinex tabs.

that was a good combo for grossly productive coughs and some pep from the symptoms of whatever it was she had. (she said she felt like she had a fever break in the wee hours of this morning, but as far as we could tell, she wasn't running a temperature.)

there were great lots of skids and crashes this morning, which kept our cops reporter busy. i kept hearing scanner talk about folks taking turns too fast, then braking too hard. you'd think no one had ever driven in the stuff before.

despite the automotive mayhem and traffic snarls, things did feel holiday-like watching the big, swirling flakes outside the newsroom this morning.

given the workday grind, though, it's hard to remember thanksgiving's just over a week away.

(of course, given the state of newspapers these days, every day we have a job ought to be thanksgiving day.)

baby it's cold outside

owing to a lack of skill and/or more sensitive equipment, this photo of otto will have to convey that it is cold out and that the lightest flurry of snow was wafting about a little after nine this morning. for what it was, it's the first good bit i've seen this season.

it's 37 degrees and kris is sick in bed. i ordered her back after she got up and told her to take a shot of nyquil and hit the sack. i made her a large mug of green tea with milk and sugar. (not sure how the milk's going to work with green tea, but i couldn't find the regular kroger decaf.)

the fact that she didn't argue just shows how much she really is ailing.

there's a lot work ahead. it's a good day for it.

homestead grays

dishes are piled in the sink and there are a few loads of laundry to be done.

somehow, though, on this cool and dreary saturday, they weren't reason enough to get up off the couch/bed and out from under the covers.

i did get most of the bills paid, though, since that could be done via the laptop and the internets. it was a good day for things, like money management, that could be done sitting.

and i'm embarrassed to say i spent more time on facebook than a middle-aged man should.

it began innocently enough.

i got up early and used the occasion to set my fantasy football league lineup on the site. (we'd used yahoo the last two seasons.)

so while i was putzing around to guess my way to the most points i could get out of my team, i caught up with a handful of friends, colleagues and acquaintances i knew on the site.

next thing i knew, kris was up and it was time to make breakfast and coffee.

luckily, the bill paying ensued thereafter and life continued for the remainder of the day.

but if you'd trace my cyber-footprints from the course of those hours this morning, you'd see them hopping virtually from minnesota to florida to california and getting into everyone's business that they choose to post online.

and as much as it gladdens -- and sometimes saddens -- me to catch up on their happenings and observations on the web, it's a little disturbing that this virtual life can keep us from the needs of the actual world.

besides dishes and laundry and housework, there's simple social interaction with real people outside the box, even if it's just shopping or talking on the phone.

if kris and i hadn't gone to watch some friends in a local performance of "the producers," i'd have spent the whole day pretty much in one room.

i suppose we're all due days where we simply lie fallow and turn over and mix the week's events with whatever foolishness catches our fancy as we rest. 

i can only hope this wet, leaf-strewn compost heap of a day will provide fertile soil for something good to take root in the days to come.

autumn finally falls

it was 26 degrees when kris and i left for work this morning.

i'm not sure why the leaves are clinging so tenaciously past october, but they are. maybe our dry, windless autumn has simply kept them undisturbed.

kevin, our resident naturalist at the office, says some just drop off later than others, which i accept.

still, though, the color this far into november has been impressive. my nephew from florida was kind of amazed at seeing the bright colors on the trees when he visited a few weeks ago.

(and i think i'm done pressing your leaves, carrie. expect them soon.)

the bright, indian summer we experienced seemed to reflect the newness of the world after last week's historic election. everything seemed in sharp, clear focus.

then my mountaineers lost saturday night and everything kind of went to hell.

seriously -- when is this team going to come together? it moves with the fits and starts of someone learning to drive a manual transmission.

i suppose this is the test of faith; we're not out of the conference title race, but we sure did make things harder on ourselves.

the weather turned cold saturday as a drizzly curtain of rain drew a partition from summer. i pretty much spent the day trying to catch up on the weird sleep from working the election day schedule.

by most accounts it could be considered wasted, save for the two loads of laundry i got through, having spent it on the couch and the internets; too tired to do housework, too jazzed to nap. a classic lazy saturday. now if we had cable tv, i could have been a complete couch potato . . .

the gray and the cold must have been the final, good grip autumn needed to complete the turnover on the seasons.

as a cold-weather lover, i welcomed it, as kris and i eased our way back into a semblance of a fitness routine. i'm taking very short routes outside just now. kris stays indoors on the yw aerobic machines.

the bonus of the chill, though, was the great reason for kris to use the oven. she breaded and baked catfish friday and made meatloaf and mashed potatoes saturday.

the house was warmed and smelled like heaven.

(the meatloaf, by the way, represented the last of an amazing gift package from omaha steaks that my college roommate and his wife gave as a wedding present. kris took the hamburger patties and turned them into the loaf. thanks to brian and lisa for keeping us well-nourished and convenienced as we establish our household. this also reminds us that we should celebrate thanksgiving by doing our wedding thank you's before christmas.)

top off the weekend with french toast and bacon for breakfast sunday morning and a treat of hot cocoa in the afternoon, and we are out of the starting gates for the cold month eating season that doesn't end until super bowl sunday.

thank God it's cool enough for comfortable running outside to maybe even out the caloric intake.

(and i can't believe the football season i was praying for in july is almost over, yet i can't bring myself to watch a game. i really must have been expecting a championship year.)

messed up

WV_CDM
Originally uploaded by Barack Obama

this is so cool.

it's like, i dunno, taking a leak as a guest in the lincoln bedroom at the white house.

i'm blogging off the president-elect's flickr page featuring the layout i put together wednesday.

i'm in barack obama's freakin' online photo album!

of course, so are about 50 other people . . .

our police beat writer pointed out this page to me friday during a work-break surf.

it looks like mr. obama's staff made jpegs of newspapers representing each state. seems our paper is west virginia's entry.

it feels like an honor, but if, as i suspect, they got their images from the newseum's online gallery of front pages from across the nation, there were only three other papers in the state that the group accepts images from.

and for some reason our neighbor across the hall didn't post a new one that day. so it was like choosing between us or the papers in huntington or morgantown, the latter of which didn't even run a picture of the winner on its front.

eh -- i'll take it.

meantime, the president-elect held his first press conference today. kris was eager to see what he had to say, for some reason.

we were in the newsroom and i was still doing some work, so i was kind of half-listening as a couple of our younger staffers joined to watch and critique.

i'm telling you, it was like listening to parents watching their child in its first school play what with the "ooh's" and "aww's" and "what are you thinking's?"

seriously, they're like groupies.

i get home and click on the cnn site -- which i never used to do -- just to see if there were any reaction, sort of like looking down from a high-rise hotel balcony when you're afraid of heights.

their panel of pundits was mostly supportive and appreciated his poise -- the adjective "presidential" kept getting bandied about -- although the token conservative took the occasion to cock his arm to cast the first aspersion of flip-floppery. (the right sure does seem to love its buzzwords. it will be curious to see which ones will stick to mr. obama.)

seriously. so much scrutiny for so few minutes.

the president-elect right now seems to be that new pair of sneakers fresh out of the box, all crinkly with white wrapping tissue and smelling like fresh-tanned leather, rubber and chinese sweatshop.

i think his supporters are dreading the first scuff that will mar their newly unwrapped object of affections.

but, y'know, while we'd all like them to stay pristine, shoes that get any real use will inevitably show some wear.

the question is whether they were chosen to just look pretty and not much else or for purpose and utility.

i'm betting -- and hoping -- that he's a pair of triathlon trainers or work boots. mud flecks and scratches look like badges of honor on them.

time for change

this is what you might have found in front of the charleston newspapers building around 3 this afternoon.

i wanted sort of a souvenir of how our papers looked on this historic day and how the gazette and daily mail chose to document the event. (that's my design in the green box on the far right.)

the hardest part was finding the right image. i was too amped to sleep long last night and wound up checking the ap wire for photos around 2:30 from home. 

i kept track of the ones i liked and e-mailed a list to myself at work, printed them out when i got there and presented them to our publisher, whose input made weeding easy.

i put together the page on which the stories continued with a handful of additional speech and reaction photos and somehow six hours passed.

i'm pretty pleased with the results.

i'm so tired right now, though, that the enormity of what's happened hasn't totally registered. 

what did hit me was an observation comedienne marsha warfield made back in the 1980s, after vanessa williams was crowned as the first black miss america: "we have a miss america named 'vanessa;' that's like having a president named 'darnell.'" 

dude, if we elected a fellow with a moniker as exotic and non-anglo as "barack hussein obama" to be president, there must have been some kind of change going on in the 20-some years since ms. warfield's line.

that's encouraging, right?

let's hope this guy's on to something.

the main event

at some point, i'd like to stop being too anxious to sleep. seriously, it's like waiting for christmas morning to arrive. but i've got to get some rest before 4 a.m.

it's been this way all day -- electric.

folks were out on all four corners at the bottom of the south side bridge with signs for their candidates. horns were blowing. supporters were hooting. 

i don't think i've ever seen that much give-and-take enthusiasm outside of the blue lot at mountaineer field on game day; it's a vibe of anticipation on a hair-trigger.

me? i was excited about today's front page mostly because, well, it looked cool.

on monday, our managing editor wanted a sort of catch-all of this historic election with mug shots of the candidates in hotly contested races. 

with about 4 hours to work, it seemed the perfect time to whip out the boxing fight card design.

after a quick google search, i stole a nice-looking graphic from a myspace profile that ultimately linked to a philadelphia citizens action group.

after some inspired verbage from one of our editorial writers, some wonderful cleanup work from our graphic artist and some pushing the bounds of silliness on my part, we wound up with something not so run of the mill for these parts.

(i'm proudest of my description of one sarah palin: "the thrilla from wasilla.")

i thought i was done for the day after cranking out a quick life section front for wednesday, but our publisher wanted me to consider a commemorative edition-style front featuring the presumptive front runner.

while i thought that was counting chickens before they hatched, i cobbled together something that was bold but basic.

at some point, watching the reactions of the younger staffers peeking over my shoulder, it began hitting me that there could be something special going on, that history really was going to happen -- and i was going to help chronicle it.

the sense of resignation among our more conservative editors made me think they thought election was over.

i don't know. i've watched my favorite sports team snatch defeat from the jaws of victory too many times to not believe anything was over until the clock read 00:00, which pretty much makes me a believer without a lot of faith.

maybe i don't like drama. (which is why i agree with the missus that she'd rather see whoever wins do so with a clear-cut margin.) maybe i can only handle the kind of tension that arises in a half-hour sitcom versus, say, a hitchcock thriller.

unfortunately, i can't stay up to watch the end of this one, which is why maybe i should start powering down and get to bed.

all saints

it's not even noon yet, but i'm pretty much done with what i needed to do today.

i voted.

with kris having jumped the gun thursday, i went alone today, the feast of all saints, a.k.a. the last day of early voting. she figured 10 minutes before the registration office opened was early enough time to get there.

well, as you can see above, i had a bit of a wait.

actually, it wasn't too bad. met a fellow from another precinct in my neighborhood who was actually born in my hometown of beckley. we talked newspapers and music just about all the way to the door. it was a pleasant way to pass the time -- a little more than 45 minutes or so to wait.

(and if you ever want to get rid of the elvis and beatles records, robert, you know where i work.)

the weather was cool and the clouds were burning off in the morning sun. 

i think everyone was a little amped and chatty, seeming to sense this was a special election. (the more i think about it, though, i'd suppose all general elections are -- the chance to chart the next direction of the country being at stake and all, right?)

it was like waiting in line at a football game where fans of both teams have to get along before picking up hot dogs and sodas. no one was too loud and it was nice no one talked politics that i could hear. 

the sight of the line stretching down quarrier street was daunting, but it was also encouraging to see people caring enough to show up and have their say.

there was an older lady ahead of me talking to some guy in a car -- a son or husband to her companion -- who was telling her to vote tuesday and maybe skip the line.

she replied that her hip was hurting, but she didn't know how much worse it would be tuesday and that at least she was standing there now.

the woman in front of her assured her she'd been this far back before and the wait wasn't as long as it looked.

so the lady stayed.

having lost my registration card, i was glad to know my license was enough to get me to the voting booth. 

the room was packed with people and voting equipment. the staff was busy answering questions, herding voters and helping them work the ballots.

i was nervous and actually worked to make sure i filled the right bubbles the right way; i even assumed the "test-taker crouch" over my ballot to discourage prying eyes. 

i could hear my neighbors getting instructions.

"you fill in the blanks; you don't have to punch holes." 

"take your ballot over there."

the lady who took my form stuck to script to tell me what was happening with the tallying machine -- my choices were being recorded on a chip and the hard copy was going into a bin. she and her counterpart were perfunctory and dutiful in verifying my ballot. 

it was early in the day, but the volunteers seemed chipper and proud of their roles and pleased to see the public exercising their rights. (the first woman i spoke with said she wished everyone was this active in every election.)

oddly, despite the presence of voters of at least two stripes milling inside and outside the registration office, i couldn't help but feel this terrific sense of unity and purpose, that we were all integral parts of what's still basically a good machine.

i can only hope the direction in which we point its wondrous action will be forward.

hold on to that feeling

this is tim, a former colleague, who left charleston, s.c., wednesday morning and drove about 700 miles to watch the phillies win the world series in five games with a 4-3 victory over the tampa bay rays in philadelphia that night.

i was amazed and impressed to learn the story behind the photo. he said he couldn't believe that he made the trip -- and that the phillies finally won almost 30 years after their last title.

i wrote he should relish that feeling -- the grueling trip and the sweet reward he enjoyed for having the faith to make it -- the satisfaction that comes when a long-suffering sports fan's loyalty is rewarded.

after our mere fortnight of discontent, my west virginia university mountaineers pulled their fat out of the fire with a confidence-building smackdown of the similarly disappointing auburn tigers of the storied southeastern conference.

whether this was a case of one program finally getting its act together to reach its potential or a battle of attrition between two middling programs on the skids likely won't be answered until the bowl season is over.

until last week, there was plenty of waiting for signs of life after two bad stumbles. three uninspired wins gave no confidence that we were headed for anything but mediocrity, if not out and out failure.

that this began to enter the thoughts of three guys i regarded as the voices of reason -- mike, jack and frank -- actually became cause for despair, in that resigned, sports page kind of way. i mean, to hear it from fans spoiled by the view from the college football penthouse is one thing, but to hear doubts from impartial, knowledgable observers like these was truly depressing.

(seriously, though, wvu has enjoyed only a 3-year stay near the top of the heap. why should we have ever felt justified that we should always belong there? unlike the notre dames or alabamas who earned the expectations with a lineage of national championships, we were nouveau riche right down to the bedazzlered denim. we have all of zero titles in the major sports.)

still, living in momentous times with a national election only days away, and anxiety simmering from the international financial community down to our own little newspaper building, i'm almost embarrassed to express the great comfort i took in an impressive football performance.

seriously -- for a while there, i think i was more concerned with the productivity of our formerly high-powered offense and the ability of our school's coaching staff than i was with the economic policies being proffered by the republican and democratic candidates for president.

seeing the possibility that chef stew's new mix of ingredients might actually be cooking up into something appetizing allowed me to savor new bragging rights, bask in renewed regard and dream about more spectacular things to come.

the outcome of a 3-hour game gave me a happy place for my mind to wander. it provided diversion in the truest sense of the word.

well, we've had our 10 days to relish, dissect and re-live a big victory. come noon saturday, it will be time to prove our mettle yet again.

trick or treat

after last night's county-mandated trick-or-treat night, it's for real all hallow's eve -- and probably the last entry of the month.

it's also the last weekend of what sure feels like the most important election since i've been voting -- not the lark of a callow collegian who believed the country was on auto-pilot.

this is real substantive stuff -- issues i hope will mark the beginning of the end of the brutish and divisive, calculating and corrosive politics we've been practicing for almost 20 years.

with any luck, i'll have voted by this time tomorrow.

by this time next week, we'll see what kind of country the majority of my fellow citizens desire. i pray i may find reason to abide by their choice.

sweater vest weather

sweater vest
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

the day after we turned on the furnace for the season, i donned the sweater vest for work for the first time this fall.

the hidden bonus of sweater vest weather is that it leaves you that much less dress shirt to iron.

now in a real, professional situation, i probably wouldn't try it, but in a dress-down newsroom where i roll up my sleeves anyway as soon as i get to my desk, i figure it passes.

shot this with the photo booth app on the mac after work today.

octoberfesters

woke up this morning making full use of our wedding comforter as it was all of 39 degrees outside.

we figured 7 degrees above freezing outdoors and 59 indoors was reason enough to cave and kick on the furnace.

it was a great way to get things going for a full-on fall fest of housework.

kris did two weeks of grocery shopping after seeing the great deals in the kroger circular. (apparently, everyone did, to hear her tell of her trip for provisions.)

we figure the 10 staples for $10 was their response to no one buying anything in these amazingly uncertain economic times. might as well capitalize by encouraging stockpiles of nonperishables and frozen goods.

meantime, for me it was updating the web site with the stunner of colin powell breaking party lines and endorsing the democrat barack obama for president. (whoa, nelly, i say.)

between updates, it was lots of folding and hanging a couple of loads of laundry.

then came the work of autumn.

seeing the forecast for today on saturday, we punted on the leaf clearing in favor of a warmer and sunnier sunday.

and it was glorious -- sunny, blue skies and temps barely in the 60s. the leaves were dry and crunchy. it smelled like fall. (if only someone were burning leaves, it might have been perfect.)

kris finally got to use the lawn mower to mulch the leaves while i climbed up on the roof to clear the gutters.

i suspect i'll be back up since the tree out back still has green and the maple out front has yellow and brown stragglers still hanging on and may be just waiting for clear gutters to fall into.

kris tidied up around the yard as we made plans for some kind of attention to the garden in the spring.

more and more, we're getting into this nesting thing. i'm trying to memorize this establishment of a home and putting together the little things that will become the parts of our home that any children the Lord gives us will regard as simply "always having been."

we ended our labors with a yummy butternut squash soup, lima beans and pork loin. soup and oven-cooking weather is finally here.

it was a perfect little day; we were glad and rejoiced.

suddenly, she sees

i suppose it was because of wanting to emulate my father that i always liked eyeglasses -- even when i didn't need them.

i remember putting on a pair of sunglasses with the lenses popped out to see what i looked like. then, in the third grade -- mom says second -- i did. oh happy fault.

as big as a hassle they were for me -- in athletics and water-related activities in particular -- i figured i looked better in them. (possibly as something to hide behind? discuss.)

but for convenience, they always beat contacts, which were a terrific pain in the ass in the one or two years i used them.

plus, every few years, i'd get a new pair, which not only re-sharpened my vision, but gave me a new look, too, so i always looked forward to picking up that new pair at the optician's.

kris today experienced that for the first time since grade school when we picked up her new specs.

this culminates the chain events that started when she tried on her friend's new glasses and saw what she was missing. it became health priority no. 1 and she finally went last week.

the intervening hours since she picked them up have been amusing.

she kept expressing her amazement at the things that suddenly had focus and sharpness and legibility -- like highway signage.

it was like traveling with helen keller.

"look at that!"

"pretty!"

"i can see (insert name of person or thing here)!" (this she says with lots of giggles in familiar places that suddenly have detail.)

even when we got home, looking out the window, she couldn't stop marveling at the shapes of leaves on trees that before i suppose were blocks of color.

she's very much like a newborn baby taking in all the wonders of the visible world.

she keeps looking outside. she couldn't wait to see how she sees in the dark. she suddenly notices how dirty the kitchen floor is.

she also says she wants binoculars so she can spy on our neighbors, but i suspect we won't be seeing that any time soon.

now for some one-handed driving, no-look video that i don't recommend for young motorists to shoot. (all edits done at home, btw.)

out of gas

today was the last day of operation for frosty's chevron downtown.

marvin, the owner, decided he was too old to be running the place and decided it was time to shut it down.

it was one of the last full-service gas stations in town. tire patches, oil changes, state inspections -- they did it all.

i may have gotten a state inspection there years ago, but i haven't had any work done lately.

i kept coming for the reason a lot of his customers did -- free air.

as most stations that offered full service pumps did, frosty's sometimes charged a few cents more for a gallon of gas than convenience store stations.

but if you factored in the cost of putting air in your tires at those "convenience" shops -- which was 50 cents when i first moved here and is now 75 -- those few cents per gallon didn't add up to the cost of adding air to a tire, so here i went.

it bums me out that we're running out of shops that make it easy to care for your car. 

the great american love affair with the automobile is losing more of its romance. the service station -- now bereft of the come-ons of free drinkware, advertising trinkets and a squeaky, squeegee-cleaned windshield -- is headed for extinction.

even in its modern, diminished form, if you went to full-serve, it was like a mini-check-up every time you filled up -- pop the hood, check the oil, coolant and tire pressure. good to go.

now, if you don't know how to do it yourself, well, that'll cost you more -- at another auto center in some place other than where you get fuel. real convenient, right?

maybe it's just me mourning another piece of americana falling away as the country draws a bead on offering less and less for more and more.

one last link in people talking to people is almost gone as we move to card swipes and buttons for informational exchange; much more cost effective, apparently, than paying a friendly, knowledgeable person a salary and benefits.

i'm not sure how much a "how's it goin', buddy" costs, but over the years, i think it becomes an investment in trust. 

i'm not sure i'll ever get such a return from a magnetic strip.

sarahndipity

one of my favorite nuns, sister janice, back in beckley, gave me a great little line about the wonder of chance: "coincidence is God writing anonymously."

my lovely wife late last week began experiencing an odd affliction -- a hot, red breakout on her face and right forearm that would flare up for no apparent reason.

our colleague brad pointed out a little rash on her cheek at work last thursday, which turned into a full-fledged breakout at dinner.

inquisitive worrywart that she is, kris started searching up and down the internet her symptoms and found illnesses ranging from toxic shock syndrome to shingles.

by saturday, when she awoke to find her eye swollen, she added lupus to the possible ailments.

the rash struck me as an allergic reaction. and, indeed, every time she'd take a dose of benadryl, the swelling would subside.

we tried to think about anything new we'd added to our diet or anything different in our clothing or linens and came up with nothing. same food, same detergent, same everything.

this was what she told her doctor today, who prescribed antibiotics to tame the bit of infection in her follicles that the allergy had roused. he also told her to stop washing with ivory soap, which he called the worst thing to put on your skin.

but barring food-related allergens, he suggested washing all her clothes and our linens in dreft, that hypoallergenic laundry detergent. i wondered what i was doing buying fragrance-free cheer all these years.

anyway, since she had the car, kris picked me up in front of the newspaper office after work.

while waiting for me to come down, she looked in the visor mirror and noticed that her face was flaring up again. this sent her into a new tizzy because she'd just taken the antibiotic.

at this point, a friend from across the hall at the gazette, sarah, swings by on her smoke break and they begin chatting about this new breakout.

i was downstairs by now and putting my junk in the back seat as i listened to their conversation.

sarah was recounting how she developed a similar rash after pouring orange juice for a church function.

i threw out the idea that maybe the organic oranges kris picked up could be the culprit. it was the first time she'd ever gotten them, i remember her saying, as we normally bought non-organic citrus. (organic was cheaper by the bag rather than in wrapped 3- or 4-packs.)

we began connecting dots and linking flare-ups with her orange consumption. we were beginning to see a pattern when sarah headed back to the office.

the little rash brad noticed was from some juice on the plastic bag where kris put the sliced oranges for work. she must have touched her face. the full-on breakout followed after she ate them with lunch.

she had some before dinner that night. and on and on through the weekend. (she ate the orange slices with her right hand. sometimes the juice would run down her wrist; hence the outbreak on her right forearm.)

the benadryl calmed the reaction before she'd eat more slices. then it would start all over again.

we always ate oranges, so we overlooked them as "new" to our diet. but maybe it was either the organic fruit or that kris hadn't had them in a while that she either developed a new allergy or was sensitive to something in the specially grown citrus.

and if we hadn't spoken with sarah out on her break, kris would've completed her drug regimen and we would have washed loads and loads of laundry to no avail. i don't want to imagine the panic and frustration that would have followed if these offered no abatement. (well, aside from finishing up the bag of oranges.)

one recollection shared opened just enough of a crack in the door for us to see the way through to a solution.

i'd been praying small prayers for a little help in this very minor ailment -- especially since i'm already praying very hard for those with some major ones -- but would have liked just a small touch off the hem of His garment, y'know?

so at grace tonight, we thanked the Lord for what we called the miracle of coincidence, a serendipitous meeting that pointed to a calming of little fears.

we will continue to pray for those dealing with much larger ones.

speed demon

here are a few numbers from the trip back from central florida:

total distance: 794.4 miles

total drive time: 13 hours, 20 minutes

average speed: 59.7 mph

average gas mileage: 21.4 mpg

fuel stops: 3

costliest: $63.50 @ 3.99/gal, yemassee, s.c., bp

cheapest: $55.50 @ 3.50/gal, wytheville, va., hess

the numbers going down aren't as complete, but here's what i've got:

total distance: 795.4 miles

average gas mileage: 22.2 mpg

fuel stops: 3

costliest: $62.25 @ 3.85/gal, palm coast, fla., shell

cheapest: $58.00 @ 3.79/gal, cola, s.c., bp

drive time was a little over 13 hours. didn't think to log this stuff until the trip home.

overall, i was pleased with the stat count. the average speed up was probably dragged down a bit by gawkers at a fender bender near some road construction outside of lake norman, n.c.

i'd set the cruise control at about 65 mph, maybe the slowest i'd driven since what was either a mileage or time experiment back in the late '80s. (my brother who was riding along told me if i ever drove that slow again, he'd kill me.)

with kris' civic temporarily off the road, it was up to brutus the jeep to take us down to sunny florida. 

and while he's great hauler and a willing off-roader, fuel economy isn't his strong suit. so the slow cruise speed was a real-life effort to save some gas. 

i'll have to say the deck was stacked in the jeep's favor: brutus had a new set of state inspection-mandated tires and had just had an oil and filter change.

all told, with the new tires, clean oil and slow, steady speed, the mileage was improved over the 19 mpg i normally got driving around 70 and much better than the 14 to 15 mpg around town.

i read not long ago that studies apparently still showed that 55 mph was the most fuel-efficient speed for highway travel.

what i'd thought in my youth was some government conspiracy to keep the public driving like little old ladies actually still held water or, in this case, gasoline.

still, you'd think in the 20-some years since the feds allowed more pedal to the metal that an auto engineer would have designed an internal combustion engine that would perform more efficiently, say at 70 mph. perhaps technology has hit the wall for gas consumption.

anyway, while the opportunity to test the validity of the 55 mph recommendation in actual highway conditions was tempting, the prospect of stretching a 12-hour drive (by aaa reckoning) much longer forced a compromise between my normal highway speed and the ideal, so i split the difference.

i gained some additional perspectives in addition to my fuel economy insights.

you know those people who putter along in the far right lane as traffic whizzes on past? well, for this trip, i was one of them.

and it confirmed what i'd always noticed when driving the speed limit: you rarely have to deal with slow moving vehicles ahead of you.

i can remember for years justifying my high-speed passes as the necessary evil required to keep the road ahead clear of obstructing vehicles.

the problem, of course, is that there is always a leadfoot who wants to stay in front of everybody.

or the person who's driving just one mile an hour faster than your cruising speed and won't let you pass.

or a whole host of traffic peeves that all the speed and driving skill in the world won't rid you of without either someone ending up in jail or on the highway to heaven -- or the other place.

nope, if you can practice planning and patience, there's a whole world of aggravation -- including white knuckled anger and gas pain -- that can be bypassed by staying in the right lane.

late night post

because it's easier to write about things others might care about instead of just yourself, i'll go to my standby because, well, the things that are keeping me up at 1 in the morning are way too complicated for something as frivolous as a public, online diary.

thanks to the tumble my west virginia u mountaineers have experienced in the past two weeks, the natives are restless -- teetering between the foaming masses who are demanding a return on their investment in the preseason speculation of the football team's fortunes and a more patient minority who don't believe being handed the keys to a ferrari instantly makes one a race car driver.

while i'd hoped the transition would be seamless, i'm seeing that there are still kinks to be worked out not only between the coaches and players, but likely the coaches and the coaches. the importance of chemistry can't be underestimated.

still, it bugs me to see us stumble, watch the vultures circle and hear the "i told you so's" as we try to shake out the cobwebs. believe it or not, i'm still on the fence -- i'll expect the worst and hope for the best.

thud

that is the sound of hope after it falls from the top shelf.

the hope was a dream of gridiron glory for my west virginia university mountaineers set high on the lofty heights of national championship contention.

now, well, they're a little bit more down to earth, courtesy of a 24-3 keel-hauling at the hands of the east carolina pirates.

going into the season, i had my doubts about whether new head coach bill stewart was a one-hit wonder after the fiesta bowl or if he'd learned from his years as a top assistant at some good schools.

well, the doubts are still there, which i suppose is a good thing, given that i can't rightly say whether his tenure is a success or failure based on two regular season games.

his boys ran into the same buzz saw that virginia tech's hokies did last week, so this was no flukey loss to a no-name squad. ecu will probably be the talk of the season if they keep up this pace.

by the same token, we knew all that -- and failed to rise to the occasion.

what does all this mean?

well, it takes the bull's-eye of high expectations off our backs, that's for sure.

and as i commented on this fellow's sober blog, wvu's football teams have a proud tradition of fighting hardest when our backs are against the wall.

i suppose it's best we got our warning shot early in the season. our young defense is going to have to grow up really fast. 

and our coaches -- well, they're just going to have to do a better job getting a game plan together and our boys ready.

me? let's just say i'm not going to mothball my mountaineer football fatalism any time soon.