Lakers baby!

It only took five games and the Lakers are in the finals! Yeah baby! I’m sure this is just eating JP up right now. His team gets swept out of the first round, my team is in the finals with a week of rest before playing for the title. Awesome.

They pointed something out on TV last night that really shows how crazy good Kobe is this year. The Lakers won the Western Conference regular season. Kobe was named MVP. If Kobe can win the title, be named Finals MVP (which he most certainly will should they win the title) then go on to get a gold in the Olympics this summer, he’ll complete a year that only Michael Jordan has done. Talk about elite.

I’m sure Jess is pretty happy they won since it means she gets a week off from watching Lakers basketball as soon as I get home from work. Then it’s on to what I’m sure will be a very difficult series. The Lakers can pull it out though. They’re on fire!

Famous person coming to town…

Yup… Big Bill is headed to the Bitterroot Valley. He’s going to be at an event in Stevensville this Sunday. Stevensville is about 25 minutes from our place. I’m planning on going because I’ve always wanted to see him speak. I haven’t asked Jess yet if she wants to get up and go with me. If I get a chance to talk to him I’m going to ask him if he remembers running for Governor against my grampa!

I should say up front that I won’t be voting for Hillary in the primary next week. I know that will sadden my grandfather who told me early on that he’s a Hillary supporter. Being the last state in the nation to have a primary I’ve gotten the chance to watch the whole thing unfold and see how Hillary has handled the whole thing. She’s obviously a policy wonk and I won’t even try to argue that… but I just don’t like the way she’s shown a willingness to do anything to win no matter how it affects the party. Then there’s the whole “sniper fire” thing and her flip-floppiness on Michigan and Florida. She didn’t care when she didn’t think she’d need them, now she does.

I just feel like I’ve had enough of typical politics and I’d prefer something with a different flavor. Some say this country won’t vote for a black man for President. I’m not convinced. Plus, I’m pretty sure the country has had enough of Bush style politics and McCain has shown that he’d continue to carry out much of that ideology.

This is a big primary here. The Republican party switched to a party caucus system that included only 2,000 party officials. Since Montana has an open primary system, almost all voters will be participating in the Democratic primary. Working for a newspaper I get to see a lot of the polls. McCain has decent support in the state (it’s a fairly conservative state) but Romney was the state’s first choice. Ron Paul, surprisingly, was the second. McCain was a distant third. According to polls, Obama holds a pretty sizable lead over Clinton. I’m looking forward to the next week as we should be the focus of the nation.

I like politics. This is such an exciting time.

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

A few of us in the newsroom have been chatting lately about Memorial Day and stuff which leads to the whole discussion of the war. The topic we’ve discussed recently though is how different the war we’re in now is compared to wars in the past, most notably the Vietnam war.

There’s a lot of opposition to this war. I’ve said from the beginning that I was against going into Iraq. I just thought it took the focus off of the real goal of catching those responsible for the attack on the Trade Center towers. Over the five years since we entered Iraq, support for the war has continually declined. It’s pretty hard to find someone in support of it anymore.

Vietnam was like that too. The majority wanted to get out of the war. The difference here though is that we are doing a much better job of separating the politics from the soldiers. Back then soldiers returning home from the war were yelled at, spit on and generally treated with no respect. Now they’re treated like the heroes they are.

Let me be very clear in my views… Though I abhor the war in Iraq and the administration that put us into it, I think the soldiers that are involved in the whole thing are unbelievably brave and honorable. I have great respect for those that are willing to risk their lives in the armed forces. These days it’s a very dangerous profession. Though I am staunchly against the war, I’d gladly shake the hand of any returning soldier and tell them they do great things for their country.

This Memorial Day, I hope and pray that all of the soldiers that are serving our country return home safely and more importantly, soon. I believe that supporting our soldiers includes supporting them in times when you don’t agree with the war they’re involved in. They are not responsible for that decision and deserve our support and our respect.

Boats

I want a boat. Actually, I’ve wanted a boat for a long time. That one up there is the Moomba Mobius LS. I got a pretty catalog from Mobius the other day. I get them occasionally because I signed up for a free Discover Boating DVD one time. That apparently put me on the mailing list of just about every boat manufacturer in the known world. I don’t mind though. I like looking at boats.

Jess minds. She’s afraid I’m going to go out and buy a boat some day when I’m bored. Though tempted I’m pretty unlikely to do that. She should really be worried that I’d go out and buy a snowmobile. That’s way more likely than me going out to buy a boat out of boredom!

Boats are pretty expensive these days. Who knows why… The one up there is actually relatively reasonable all things considered. They’re still expensive though. Plus you’d have to add the price of a wakeboard or two cause what’s the point of a sweet boat like that without a wakeboard to ride behind it?

Someday I’ll get my boat.

I’m melting

It’s been pretty hot here these past few days. That would be bad enough but the air conditioning at work is busted. As in, not working. Yesterday the temperature in the office was 85 degrees. Today I didn’t check the temperature but it was hot. We had all the windows open hoping for some kind of breeze to cool us off.

The repair guys should be there tomorrow to get us all fixed up. Hopefully they’ll have it fixed before I get there. It’s also supposed to cool off the next couple days and rain a bit. Yay for that.

That photo up there is a waterfall we drove past on our Idaho trip. It was pretty cool. Jess spotted it as we drove along and I turned around so we could get a sweet photo of it. It was totally unmarked so if she hadn’t seen it we would would have totally missed it.  She didn’t though so we had a nice little break in the drive to enjoy some of nature’s beauty.

I wrote the editorial again. Click HERE to check it out.

There and back

We went to Idaho! What a strange trip that was. The drive over there was gorgeous. Huge canyon with a huge river running through it. The river was beautiful and the drive was windy but not too bad. The whole time I was thinking, “Gee, I see why people live in Idaho now.” Then we got to Lewiston, our destination. It was UGLY. Plus, there was a big paper mill in town and it smelled terrible!

The good news out of the trip was twofold. 1) My bro-in-law’s girlfriend graduated from nursing school. Good for her. (Go Steph!) 2) My bro-in-law’s girlfriend is now my bro-in-law’s fiance! It’s about freaking time. He has dated her for about four years or something. Now they’ll be engaged for a year or so. I’m glad they finally got engaged though.

The bad news was we had to sleep on an air mattress. I’ve decided that air mattresses should be illegal. The one we were on leaked pretty bad. My back is shot from basically sleeping on the floor for the night. Two days of driving plus a night on the floor/air mattress and I’m all broken. Oh well, it was a small price to pay to see Mattie and Steph and find out they are engaged.

I got some pictures along the way but I haven’t gotten them off the memory card yet. I’ll have to post some as soon as I do that. There are some good ones I think.

Road trip!

We’re going to Idaho for oh… 24 hours or so. My goofball brother-in-law, the one that wants to be a rockstar, has a girlfriend. We want her to be his wife. Anyway, she’s graduating from nursing school tomorrow night. So Jess is getting off work early, we’re loading up the Vee-hicle and hitting the road. I’ve only been through Idaho on the way to Spokane so this should be interesting.

Supposedly we cruise right by the Snake River. That should be cool. Especially since the region is going to be super warm this weekend so all the snow’s going to be melting like mad. That’ll make the river a raging torrent of madness! So cool.

Can’t wait for Idaho.

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.