Here comes summer

Being that I put the newspaper together on a daily basis, I’m pretty up-to-date on what the upcoming weather is going to be like. Today I got the nice surprise that Friday is supposed to hit 79 degrees. Holy crap. It’s going to be hot. I’m so not a fan of hot weather. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come because I’m not sure I can take a long hot summer.

We had a long hot summer last year. Half the state burned down. I told Jess if I had to sit through that again this year we’d be moving. I can’t handle moving and I know Jess would put up a fight over it! Honestly, living here is pretty cool and I’d love to get out and explore the mountains around here. I didn’t get to do that last year since it was too smokey. I intend to use my free Fridays this year to do that.

Speaking of free time. I’m going to take some vacation next month. I’ll have a total of 5 days away from the newspaper starting June 10 but I have no idea what to do with that free time. Jess and I have talked about me going down to Colorado to spend some time with my family. It’s just hard to imagine taking a trip like that without Jess. It’s hard being away from her and a vacation without her wouldn’t be near as much fun. (Especially since it doesn’t involve skiing!)

So… any suggestions from reader land on what I should do with my time?

My Momma

Ahh, Mother’s Day. That’s my mom in the photo. The one on the right. My dad, of course, tried to steal the scene but you have to expect that with him. This is one of my favorite photos of my folks, I have it on my wall here in the house.

Anyway, my mom is awesome. She’s a stellar cook, a great friend and the best mom a boy like me could have.

There were a number of years when I probably wouldn’t have said that. See, I was the first-born. I was also a very moody teenager. Those two things combined to make me a very volatile member of the family for a number of years. Mom bore the brunt of that most of the time. Dad was always the heavy… he backed mom up. But mom and I had a number of very loud and very emotional yelling matches.

As I got older, wiser and more mature however, mom and I began to get along better. After a while she and I learned to communicate better and use passive aggressive statements less and less. Now things are swell!

So mom, happy Mother’s Day! (I would have called but I got off work and you were apparently already asleep… you didn’t respond to my text message. I’ll call tomorrow when I get off work.)

MVP, MVP, MVP!!!

The Lakers have been the best team in the playoffs so far. (Hurts don’t it JP?) Tonight, before the game, Kobe Bryant was awarded the MVP award for the NBA. Awesome. I wish I’d been at the game. They apparently gave out shirts for the people at the game. I want one. They were Laker gold with the words, Our Team, Our Time, OUR MVP on the front in purple. My biggest regret about my time in LA was that I never got to go to a Lakers game at the Staples Center.

Jess and I have sort of started to talk about the idea of a trip to So. Cal sometime next year. If we do it during basketball season I’m gonna try to go to a Lakers game. I don’t know if it’ll happen or not or if we’ll even make the trip… but if we do I have to get tickets.

Tonight’s game was pretty good. Obviously the Lakers winning has a lot to do with that. The Lakers just looked in control of the whole series. Utah looked beat. I doubt they’ll look that way in the next game since it’s in Utah but now they’re down 2-0 which means if they’re going to win the series they have to win 4 out of the next 5. Good luck with that!

Other than basketball, not much has changed. I wrote the editorial in the paper again. This time it’s about the proposed gas tax holiday. (Preview: I’m against it) If you’d like to read it, click HERE. If you want, check out the main page too. The paper’s web site was redesigned finally and is a bit more up-to-date style wise. I had nothing to do with that unfortunately. If I had, it wouldn’t look like it does but that’s another post for another time.

This is why Montana schools are ranked so low in the nation

Today was a big day in the county for school levy elections. Several of the school districts in the Valley were running elections to impose mill leves (taxes) so they could meet budgetary shortfalls thanks to a serious lack of state funding. So the town we live in, Hamilton, was running a $300,000 levy.

I voted yes. I’m a strong believer in education and I know how much the schools around here need the money. I have been by many of the schools and I know the condition they are in. I also know that the text books some of them use are ridiculously out of date. (i.e. social studies books that discuss the USSR… and not just as a historical reference… the books are that old)

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of people in the valley are old. As in, really old. That puts them on a fixed income most likely so they NEVER vote for the levies. I can kind of understand that. Another downside is that they are also the majority of the people that actually vote. A possible contributing factor to this fact is that almost everyone around here works more than one job. That’s the economics of our valley. So we end up with a relatively low voter turnout representing a disproportionate number of elderly people on fixed incomes.

The schools seem to get the short end of the stick more often than not. Looks like at least one teacher will probably be looking for a new job next year. Unless this state figures out how to fund the schools, the education system here is going to collapse at some point. That is something the people of this state should be working to prevent.

I don’t know what to title this…

It’s the weekend again! I enjoyed my first day off for the weekend. I did a whole lot. A whole lot of nothing! I slept in then got up and puttered around until Jess came home for lunch. Then we sat out on our steps and ate lunch while our spaz of a cat frolicked in the yard. After Jess went back to work I went and picked a movie for the evening. After dinner out we enjoyed the movie “27 Dresses” which was a total chick flick. It was bearable though. Jess enjoyed it more than I did I think though.

I just read online that it looks like Kobe Bryant is going to get the NBA MVP award this year. About time. Gotta burn JP up a little bit though. Of course it might make him feel better that his team got swept by the best player in the league. I’m sure it burns though… first 50-win team in history to be swept from the playoffs. Ouch.

In totally unrelated news… I’ve been spending a lot of free time trying to figure out what skis I’m going to get next year. It’s the off-season which is when ski bums like me obsess about the one thing we can’t do.  I’ve got it narrowed down to two I think. One has been out for a year and is very well liked by pretty much everyone that skis it. The other one is a totally new design that it seems no one has gotten the chance to ride yet. That means I’ll probably have to wait until August when the gear guides eventually come out.

Tomorrow we’ve got big plans… Sleep in, farmers market, lunch, boat-RV-recreation show, movie, dinner then home for the night. Gonna be a fun day!

Snoopy pajamas

Jess bought me some new pajama pants. They’ve got Snoopy on them. It’s from the Snoopy vs. the Red Baron series. So he’s flying around my pants in a Sopwith Camel. Or however you spell it. Gotta love the Snoop Dogg…

It’s nice to have comfy pj’s. I like getting to come home from work and put them on. Helps me unwind.

Anyway… we’re totally getting into summer here. Not with the temperature thankfully. The sun is staying up later and later. For example, tonight the sun was out until a little after 9 p.m. Another month and it’ll be light out until 10:30 or 11. That’s one thing I’ve had trouble getting used to. It’s so weird to leave work at or after 9 p.m. and it’s still plenty bright out. I will have to put my sunglasses on to go home from work. Weird.

It also makes me adjust how I judge how I’m doing on time at work. During the winter you can gauge how on track you are with how much light is left outside. Now it’s just daylight all the time so you have to be more aware of the clock. Just one more thing to keep in mind while I assemble the newspaper.

Things are going well at work still. That’s a good thing. I have a couple weeks off from writing editorials which is pretty nice. I just got through the first week. I have next week off too and then I’ll probably be writing a couple again. Hopefully I’ll get an interesting topic to write about.

It’s so weird that it’s May. April went by really fast. Hopefully May will go by quickly too because then I can start taking some vacations and get my head back in the right place. I need to get a break from the newspaper so I am recharged and excited for each day. It’ll help me maintain my creativity. When it’s a bit of a grind it’s hard to continually come up with new and fresh ideas.

Ok, I need to get to bed. I’m just rambling. But it’s an update so I guess I accomplished what I set out to do.

Lakers got out their brooms…

Lakers 4, Nuggets 0.

JP owes me a burrito.

I will give the Nuggets this, they played a very good game in game 4. Unfortunately it was too little too late. They didn’t win a single game. I can’t believe that. I never expected a Lakers sweep. Now the Lakers get plenty of time off before they have to play another series. That should help with a few of the little injuries they’ve gotten in this series.

I’m really looking forward to my burrito.

Lucky for JP, the burrito is cheap. Illegal Pete’s is my preference for burritos. So good. To be honest, I’d buy it myself… but I won my burrito fair and square so I’ll enjoy my tasty treat on Jimmy Cracked Corn’s tab.

My parents are nuts… and I love them!

I haven’t posted this weekend because I had some unexpected events go down.

Friday morning as I was sleeping in on my day off, my phone rang. Since it was my day off, I let it go to voicemail. Moments later it rang again. So I just laid there for a minute. Sure enough, a voicemail sound came from my phone. So I got up and checked it. It was from my parents who had apparently decided on a whim to road trip up to Montana!

So I started in on the projects I’d planned for the day. Then I started cleaning. Fortunately the house wasn’t too bad but there was plenty that needed to be touched up. I spent the whole day “working” instead of goofing off like I normally do on a Friday.

They made it to town late Friday night. (Almost Saturday) We got up Saturday morning and joined them for breakfast. Then they came over to check out the house and see the progress we’ve made in decorating and stuff. Then we spent the day checking out the shops in town and the sights of our little community. We went to a movie (Leatherheads) and dinner too. It was a pretty fun and full day.

They got up this morning and we once again joined them for breakfast. We also celebrated a very early Mothers Day since we likely won’t actually see mom on Mothers Day. Then they loaded back up in the car and headed back to Colorado.

What a whirlwind trip! It was great to see them though and spend some time with them. I needed a little visit from my fam. It’d been a long time since I had seen them. Now that the weather is warming up we’ll likely see them a bit more often through the summer because they’ll be able to fly up here. That’ll be great.

What a crazy weekend though. My parents wore me out! I’m exhausted!

Another one down

It’s the weekend again. I’m living for the weekends these days. I haven’t had a vacation of any sort since Christmas. I’ve worked 5 days/week for four months. I need a break. Unfortunately I don’t have one coming up too soon. Not until after May.  I have 88 hours of vacation to use before the end of September. Working backwards… I have a trip at the end of August and the beginning of September. That’s going to use seven days worth of vacation. I’ve got a trip in July to Flathead that will use up two more days. That leaves me two days worth of vacation time. After Memorial Day I’ll have an extra one. So the running plan is to spend them all at once during June.

I have no idea what I’ll do. Jess doesn’t have the time to take off with me so I’ll just have to find something to do around here. Hopefully it’ll be good weather and I can get out and have some relaxing time in the wilderness. I just need a break from the paper. It’s a bit of a grind at times and I’ve been doing the office two-step trying to keep everything running smoothly. I’m ready for a break.

For now though, I’m thankful for the weekend. It’ll be nice to sleep in and get some non-work-related stuff done. And of course, hang out with my lovely wife. I always look forward to that.

Lakers 2, Nuggets a big fat 0

I thought I’d put in a video that might make JP smile a little. I’m sure he’s sad because his Nuggets just can’t find a way to stop Kobe Bryant. Admittedly, the Nugs did pretty well for three quarters. Unfortunately for them, the game is four quarters and the Lakers went off in the fourth.

It’s great fun watching these games knowing that my bro-in-law is 1,000 miles away doing the same thing. I only wish I could have been there so we could go see one of the games in Denver together. Unfortunately it didn’t work out this year for me to be able to go to a Lakers/Nuggets game with Big Jim but maybe next year.

The video up there is one of a series of commercials for freecreditreport.com which I know next to nothing about… but I dig their commercials. They always make me laugh. I think Jess is getting tired of them because I sing along when they come on TV and I’ve kind of got them down at this point. Especially the one above.

I wrote the editorial again. The good news is that the editorial board finally met this week. I ended up with the two editorials for this week but now I’ve got a few weeks off from writing before I have to do another one. If my job was to write editorials that’d be fine… but I’ve got a lot of other responsibilities too so it’s nice to not have to worry about them for a couple weeks. At any rate, here’s the editorial… click HERE.