OK, I know I’ve been saying that posting is going to be more regular, but I’ve had some other side projects come up, and this has been pushed to the back burner.
Here’s my past few days in a nutshell:
FRIDAY - Work, go out drinking with Mal and some of the girls from her sorority, grocery shopping, cook a week’s worth of dinners, workout, sleep for a couple hours.
SATURDAY - Go home to Danville, find out that everything in town closes at 1 p.m. on a Saturday, help build a couple walls for the extra bedroom in the basement, wire the walls, clean up the room for the electrician, visit with the family, play with the cats, finally watch the season finale of Nip/Tuck, drive back to Charleston, work out, kill a few Russian henchmen with a sniper rifle on the Gamecube.
SUNDAY - Check out my photos on the front page story in the Chicago Tribune, work, lay around with Mal and talk about our fears and dreams, hang out with Laura and Erin for a while and get filled in on all of the latest DEN gossip, have a NERF gun fight with Thill at 2:30 in the morning, work out, chat with the guy that started the camera toss thing for a couple hours.
MONDAY - Work, send in some camera toss photos to the AP, work out.
TUESDAY - Work, go to Mal’s for a while and listen to the drama that is only possible when you put four females under one roof, work out, make a few lunches for this week.
As you can see, my life has been pretty boring.
This will be a big shock to all three of you, but I am beginning to loathe a couple of my coworkers. One doesn’t seem to want to write a good story with solid sources (meaning ones that don’t work three feet away from him) or have any initiative to work on a story more than two hours before deadline. The other hasn’t displayed a spine or an ounce of news judgement since I’ve been there. Needless to say, for a news whore like myself, both people frustrate me to no end.
Hillary and Jenni are working at the paper as interns now. I keep joking that their main job is to keep my coffee cup filled up. It’s good to see that we’re utilizing some talent from EIU, hopefully we can use a little bit more and make the paper more appealing to the college demographic. Probably not, because that would require planning, communication and change, which are the three words we don’t speak of in the newsroom.
I’ve been training Eric to work for me on Sunday nights. The overtime is nice, but I would like to actually have weekends off. I plan on using my time off to travel the world.
Danny is settling in in Champaign as the intern at the News-Gazette. He has also started up a new blog, the Chambana scene.
Speaking of DEN people, they have rolled out the long-awaited redesign of their site. There are a few little bugs to work out, but I think the new format looks great (look Nora, I said ‘great’). They have added a blog section, a photo of the day, a section dedicated to intramural sports and other features that make the site a lot more useful. Good job guys.
The only problem I have with redesign is that the new URL is DENNEWS.com, which means you’re going to visit Daily Eastern News News on the internet. Oh well, I guess we have ATM machines, LCD displays, AC current, PIN numbers, IRA accounts, NPR radio, VIN number, AIDS syndrome, UPC codes and ISBN numbers. There is actually a condition for this called RAS syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome) and is, which makes me chuckle, itself a redundant acronym.
For the computer nerds out there, I’m trying to build a flash-driven calendar that uses XML or loadVars to display images based on the selected date. If you have any suggestions, I’m dying for help.
I do have sad news…Pastor Dennis Rogers, from the church I grew up at, the First Assembly of God in Danville, passed away last week. The Commercial-News did a great story on him. He was a great man, and will be missed by many people.
Now playing:“Sweetness in Starlight”
Matt Wertz
Twentythree Places
