Reading everyone’s senior columns in the Evergreen today made me nostalgic. Lisa was right — her column was somewhat depressing. In fact, all of them were bittersweet. And they made me think about all the great times I had at the Evergreen and with all the Evergreeners.
The columns also prompted me to look through my archive volumes and find the column I wrote last year at this time. Its full text is after the jump. (more…)
I took a day trip up to Spokane today to check out four apartments I found on Craigslist. If you don’t remember, I’m moving back to the big metropolis.
My current place in Pullman has spoiled me a bit. I’m not looking at apartment complexes or buildings that have more than three units in them. And I’m looking for two-bedroom apartments that have a dishwasher and on-site laundry machines. A nice kitchen, a nice bathroom and a balcony/deck/patio are also preferred.
All of the apartments I checked out today were on the South Hill. I’ve decided I don’t want to live back in Browne’s Addition. While my time there might have been fairly short, I feel I’ve been there, done that. (more…)
Filed under: Events
Saturday night, Lisa and I went to see rock-piano master Ben Folds at Beasley Coliseum. It was awesome, besides the fact he didn’t play an encore despite at least five minutes of cheering from the fans.
He played a lot of songs I didn’t know, which surprised me. I thought I knew his collection fairly extensively. But that means there are plenty more great Ben Folds songs I still must download.
Filed under: Journalism
On Friday, I reported and wrote a story (kinda an obit/feature hybrid) on the guy who owned Cougar Country Drive-In (a Pullman hotspot burger joint, for those of you who don’t know). He died the week before.
It was a pleasure to write; I’ve found that obituaries are some of the best articles to do because, perhaps surprisingly, people really like to talk about their loved ones who died. Maybe it helps them cope. (more…)
Filed under: Down Time
I suppose it should feel nice, and I shouldn’t be complaining, but I have been so not-busy this week it’s frustrating.
On Monday, I got a taste of the good ol’ breaking news rush (Glenn Johnson is home from the hospital and fine, by the way), and I think that set the tone for my week. Unfortunately, the rest of this week has not lived up to Monday’s promise.
I took the day off Tuesday, calling it my second weekend day because I worked on Saturday (my birthday). That’s fine.
But Wednesday, argh. I wanted to work, but it just wouldn’t happen. I tried to schedule interviews with WSU athletics, but they didn’t even get back to me until about 4 p.m. So, I ended up looking at Spokane apartments on Craigslist.
That was the most productive thing I did.
Today, on the other hand, has been different so far. I hope it stays this way. Before the time I even got up Wednesday (10:30 a.m.), I have already taken my car to two shops (Jerry’s Auto Repair and Les Schwab) for some residual rattles from last week’s repairs, I have gotten a haircut at Fantastic Sam’s, and I have re-ordered contact lenses.
I have also set up my two athletics appointments, though they aren’t this week — attending rowing practice on Monday and interviewing the new volleyball coach May 1.
But, honestly, it’s not like I’m in an energetic newsroom being part of the day’s excitement — whatever that may be. It’s weeks like this I’m looking forward to moving back to Spokane.
I may not be envious of Lisa’s current extreme overworkedness (that’s not a word), but I’m sitting here bored. I wouldn’t mind some sort of balance between the two.
But, I guess it is the slow season for sports reporting.
I received an unfortunate phone call from my editor at 8 o’clock this morning — Glenn Johnson, to whom I usually give the title “everything ever,” was in the hospital for “stroke-like symptoms.”
Bummed, but assigned a breaking-news article (woohoo!), I dragged my only-four-hours-of-sleep self out of bed and into the shower. I was kind of out of it, and still didn’t even know where to start calling once I sat down to work.
So, I called City Hall. (What a marvelous idea!) They gave me info. I also had an AP brief and a few internal WSU e-mails to work with.
I quickly wrote up a long-ish brief and posted it online — on the SportsLink blog and in the Spokesman’s breaking-news headlines. Lisa — I had called her while shaving to alert her — rang me up to tell me we both got done with the quick briefs at the same time.
I won’t bore you with the standard reporting stuff. (I got stonewalled at Pullman Regional Hospital, had a pleasant conversation with City Supervisor John Sherman and stole four minutes of Erica Austin’s time — wherein she took the opportunity to relate Johnson’s incident to how much the Murrow School needs to be the Murrow College, because they don’t want to overwork their staffers. I, uh, didn’t use that in my article.)
But if there’s one thing I’m proud of about my reporting today, it was my frustrating quest to figure out Johnson’s current age.
No one knew, and everyone said they probably wouldn’t be able to tell me anyway because of privacy laws. (Yeah, right.) None of the other news outlets had his age — mostly because the AP completely ripped off my online brief (or used it because of a contract with the Spokesman).
I started searching the internet with the intention of cross-checking bios to deduce an age. But try Googling Glenn. You get surprisingly few results of substance. I tried everything from “glenn johnson” to “glenn johnson mayor pullman wsu bio” to “karen doke 1996 glenn johnson kathryn obituary” — the latter a failed attempt to find any mention of his daughter’s death in a car accident that might give me his age in 1996.
Then I remembered one of those crazy tricks we learned in journalism class: online voter registration databases.
I found the Washington one, searched “Johnson, Glenn” and — by God — there he was. He was born Jan. 10, 1944. He’s 64.
I rule.
————
Here’s my finished article and blog post.
Get better soon, Glenn.
Filed under: Random
Lisa has posted a similar topic before, but today I was cruising the only web forum I cruise and found a thread called “People with great names.”
Among gems such as Magma Jesus and Staff Sgt. Max Fightmaster was the following man, whose arrest is documented in this article.
I don’t want to spoil it on the front page, so I’ll write the guy’s name after the jump.
Filed under: Random
These past two days, I’ve been subtly making fun of my brother because it’s been snowing in Seattle. Yes, snowing in Seattle in April.
But the whole time I knew we could be next, over here on the East Side.
Here’s the National Weather Service’s seven-day forecast beginning the evening of April 19. Oh, joy!
LATE UPDATE: Added link
————
I’m 23.
Woo!
After a delicious breakfast and an unexpected adventure to campus, I spent most of the afternoon working.
Woo.
Anyway, here’s what I finished — a video tour of the Martin Stadium renovation.
But now I’m done and have my birthday evening ahead of me. Lisa and I are going to go have a delicious (late) dinner at Swilly’s.
Woo!
As far as I can tell, my Suburban is now fixed.
I got an intake valve replaced Wednesday to fix the leak that had coolant bubbling out of my engine block. Because I gave them so much money the other day, and because they didn’t think the valve would need to be replaced, they gave me a flat rate of $300 to finish up the work. After tax, I paid $323.
That brings my total for this round of repairs up to $1,074.
If you take the perspective that I traded my parents a can of Cougar Gold for the Beast (yes, there’s a story there), $1,074 for a car doesn’t seem that much. Also, the original $751 was for repairs my car needed anyway.
In December, mechanics at a shop in Spokane told me I would need to replace my radiator soon. I gambled and stretched my old one as long as I could. Presumably, my car’s subsequent overheating this past weekend blew the intake valve in the engine. So, one could argue that my gambling cost me $323.
That’s better than most people’s trips to Las Vegas. (Or is it Los Vegas?)
EDIT: Oh, the story about the Cougar Gold.
When I was home in Seattle this winter, my step-dad, Brad, signed the Beast’s title over into my name. The idea was they were just giving it to me, which was awesome. However, the cost of a new title was $20, which I didn’t have when Brad and I were at the licensing place.
I had just brought him a can of Cougar Gold from Pullman. Those cost about $22. So, I didn’t pay him back for the $20 title, and he didn’t pay me back for the cheese.
I traded a can of Cougar Gold for my Suburban.
