01.22.03 6:08pm

Remember when you were in elementary school (or college), and on the morning after a big snowstorm, you'd sit in front of the TV, praying that your school would be cancelled, so you could go sledding all day (or, depending on your age, drink all day). Well, my classes were hardly ever cancelled because the superintendent was a jerk.

Anyway, while my friends in other districts had the whole day to sled, build snowmen, or drink themselves into hibernation, I always had to go to school. And school, as we all know, sucks.

Now I work at a news station, and last week I came to a realization while working on the 4am newscast. While we're broadcasting all the area school and business closings, we will never be so lucky. I'll never get a phone call from my boss telling me that we're going to be closed tomorrow, so sleep in. If anything, I'll get a call telling me to be there earlier, as was the case last week.

So, to my friends still in school who think they might someday want to work at a TV station, keep that in mind, and only apply where it never snows.

We're still packing everything up for the move, and I'm sure that moving in the middle of winter will be a good time. I can't wait to see how a big U-Haul truck handles on a layer of ice.

Finally, as a follow-up to my last update, someone out there has a pretty sick mind.

01.18.03 1:00am

How did you find this site?

...and did you get that door fixed?

01.15.03 12:00am

So what have you been up to? I've been pretty busy myself. The other day I spent a few hours driving around Lawrence, diving into the "cardboard only" dumpsters looking for suitable boxes. All towns should have some sort of cardboard box depository, kind of like the "take a penny, leave a penny" tray at the gas station. However, because of its abundance of brown dumpsters, I hereby proclaim LAWRENCE, KANSAS the "Easiest Town to Move Away From," because if you're not above rooting through dumpsters, there are plenty of places to find boxes in this town. Stop thinking you're better than me.

Earlier tonight, my closet exploded, spilling all my clothes and old beta tapes onto the floor, which forced me to start packing earlier than I had planned. So it's a good thing I had all those damn boxes.

We showed our current apartment to a girl from California on Sunday, and she really seemed to like it, but we haven't heard back from her yet. Coming from California, our apartment must feel huge, because I understand that her last place was actually just a closet in someone else's efficiency apartment, and cost $11,000 per month, plus utilities (of which there were none).

I still haven't gotten the mirror on my car fixed, mainly because I lack money. The Chevy dealer wants to charge me $200 to install* one that won't match the one on the passenger side, so I think I'll just wait a little while longer, order a couple of aftermarket mirrors and put them on myself. (By the way, John, how many times per day do you still check your missing mirror? I'm at about 20 or 30 times per outing.)

In other news, I am training on the 4:30-7am news shift, so technically, I should be asleep right now, because I have to leave here by 3am to be at work on time. So, you know, good night.

[Footnotes:] * = "Screw on."

01.07.03 1:43am

Since I'm on the topic of New Year's resolutions (still), I should confess something. There was a 17th resolution that I neglected to list in my 01.01.03 update, mostly because I thought it was a little private, and that maybe it was something I should keep to myself. Well, after having seen "About Schmidt," I feel that I can reveal my last resolution: All I wanted to do this year was see Kathy Bates and Jack Nicholson nude, and thanks to "About Schmidt," my prayers have been answered.

It's not a bad movie, overall. Some good laughs here and there, and I suppose Jack Nicholson does a pretty good job of making you feel what the movie is supposed to make you feel. It just seems that this same story has been told before. Sure, this one features the added bonus of Kathy Bates nude, which was worth the price of admission alone.

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In other news, we found a place in Overland Park to move to, and assuming we can find someone to take over our current apartment soon, we'll be there by February. Here is a tiny picture that was taken with some sort of "camera."

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As the tiny floorplan shows, it's a townhouse, featuring a basement and attached garage. That way I'll have plenty of room to "store the inflatables" when it's "not pool weather." Man, I love euphemisms.