Headed for rehab
I write this having just cracked open an ice-cold Coca-Cola, despite the fact that I haven't had any quality sleep for three nights and spent yesterday feeling like my throttle was stuck wide-open. I have to face a fact: I am a caffeine addict, and I am to a point that it might be causing me a problem.

My typical consumption:

7-9:30 a.m.: Four cups of coffee, with breakfast and during the very long commute.

10-11 a.m.: Two cups of coffee during the morning meeting circuit

Lunch: A big Dr Pepper or Coke.

After lunch: Another big Dr Pepper or Coke.

3-4 p.m.: Two cups of coffee during the afternoon meeting circuit

4 p.m.-on: At least one more Dr Pepper or Coke.

That's the first time I've ever written it down, but it comes to eight cups of coffee and at least a half-gallon of caffeinated sodas a day. Not quite so much on the weekends.

I carry cups of coffee like people used to carry cigarettes, before smoking became gauche. I fly into a rage if somebody takes the last cup of coffee and doesn't make a new pot. I'll be late to a meeting before I leave the coffee pot empty. I view the fact that we get free coffee at work as the best job perk I have. I very rarely leave my desk without the coffee cup.

I first noticed the warning signs Monday, when I left work in a near-rage over a situation that barely merited being miffed about. Then a discussion with The Wife turned into a semi-argument. Then I didn't sleep Monday night. Then I got out of bed Tuesday, wide-eyed, thinking very clearly, "Man, I don't need coffee today." Then, I proceeded to make a pot. Then I didn't do the routine fillup of the coffee cup at work, until the headache got so bad I couldn't see. The warm liquid made a soothing path down my throat and into my bloodstream, and suddenly all was better. Then I didn't sleep Tuesday night. I woke up in a little better frame of mind Wednesday, did the routine, and discovered that I could barely read my morning meeting notes because my handwriting was so shaky. Then I didn't sleep Wednesday night (but more because of thunderstorms scaring The Boy.)

I drank the breakfast coffee today, but skipped the morning-meeting coffee. It's 1:40 p.m. and I'm having my first soda. I'm trying to cut myself off after 3 p.m., depending on how bad the headaches are.

Who would have thought? For Pete's sake, the best damn part of waking up was Folger's in my cup. I can't even go to a posh rehab center and sit through group therapy ("My name is RJ, and I'm a Dr Pepper-aholic.) I gotta go on this journey all by my lonesome. Wish me luck.

Wheeeee! Here we go
Zigzagging like a Corvette with the 1989 version of me at the wheel ...

--See on MSNBC that some British group has declared Sunday an "Internet-Free Day." Thinks you should get off your ever-expanding asses and go see what's out there in the real world. I can hear the cry now: "How am I supposed to know what to do if I can't check the Web to see what's going on?"
--Speaking of ridiculous "-free" days: Friday at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper was a "Meetings-Free Day." Upper management thought this would be a good morale-builder. The catch: The ban on meetings did not apply to meetings directly related to the gathering of news (of which I have two, daily); or meetings relating to breaking news (of which I had two on Friday.) Bottom line is this: Meetings-Free Day doesn't apply to me. And since attending meetings is 85 percent of my job, I suppose that's a good thing. Otherwise I'd be completely irrelevant.
--Went for a haircut today. That's not a monumental event in itself, but it did expose my twisted decision-making process. I walked into one location of the Cheap National Chain Haircut place, looked around, and determined the following: "All of the stylists working are unattractive people ... with bad hair." Do you want somebody with bad hair making decisions about what yours should look like? I think not. So I left and went to another location. Hairstylist had very good hair. Now, so do I, and a lot less of it. That's a good thing.
--Are we ready to see Kordell Stewart in the Super Bowl? I certainly am, seeing as how I was one of the loudest people out there on that limb six years ago declaring him The Next Big Thing in the NFL. If that doesn't happen, another great angle arises: The New England Patriots will have reached the Super Bowl ... without Drew Bledsoe. Just another reason to wonder why bad teams fall all over themselves drafting quarterbacks. This is why we love football: Because some guy you've never heard of is a heartbeat away from getting his team in the Super Bowl while Brett Favre is still trying to figure out why none of the guys catching his passes last week were wearing the same color shirts as he.
--Computer fact of the week: Did you know that having more RAM makes your system last longer? That's what it said in the magazine I read while I was waiting for that aforementioned haircut. I have no idea if it's true or not, but, as a guy who's about to drop a huge dime on a new system -- with lots and lots and lots of RAM -- I'm willing to believe.

One of the bad things about writing these little potpourris is that there's not a clean, snappy way to wrap it up. I think about a lot, usually. I've had a lull in my thinking lately. It's good to see that lull might be ending.

We must be quarantined
The dread illness has struck the house. Two of the three mini-humans and The Wife. Vomiting, chills, diarrhea, the general ick. I dropped out of work early to come home to lead the Sick Bay, being the nice guy that I am. Of course, I pondered the decision long and hard: Do I stay at work, and help coordinate the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper's coverage for the latest Rich Guy Who Died, and not get sick; or do I go home and risk contracting the dread illness myself? Being bored with local celebrity deaths (five in the last two months), I decided to take my chances with the D.I. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, I have this generalized feeling that something big and wonderful is ... just out of reach. Can't really explain that feeling. I've made reference before to some interesting new things we're trying around here, things that would be pretty momentous in other households but are just New Things to Try here. Things like spending A Lot of Money on a Dog, with some thought that it might generate return on investment. Things like putting the house on the market (no takers yet). Things like taking on the Freelance Gig, which involves being a system consultant and Web-page designer despite the fact that as of the time I took the Gig, three weeks ago, I knew little more about a system than the average really competent end-user and had only designed one web page (this one, based largely on a template).

Oddly, all of a sudden, I've learned quite a bit about computers, and have now designed another web page, and it looks pretty good (and no, you can't see it yet) using nothing but raw HTML. It's really very cool, the way I learn; kind of like being at school, except it's a hell of a lot less expensive and I learn in the way I learn best, which is by sitting down and doing it and really f---ing it up and then figuring out where I f---ed it up and fixing it. Then, when I really get stumped, I refer to the book. Or, in a real pinch, Heaven forbid, I'll ask somebody.

The good thing about being able to learn this way -- and I am aware that not everybody does -- is that I'm bound by few conventions and have nobody to impress but myself, and, occasionally, somebody who knows less than I do. The bad thing is I never become really, really good at anything. I learn enough to be competent (or slightly better than competent, in a few cases) but no skill ever really gets developed. For instance, I'll soon be a pretty good Web designer, for a newspaper guy. I'm a pretty good newspaper page designer, as sports writers go. I was a pretty good sports writer, for a young kid. I'm never really really good at something. I'm just pretty good at [x], considering that [x] is not my main skill.

That presumes I even know what my main skill is.

Anytown, economy-style
You'll notice something ever-so-slighty different about Anytown, USA. We're now just going to bore you one day at a time. If you miss a day (or a week, or a month, or whatever), head over to the archives on the left. Newest stuff first, just to make it that much easier on you.

I've spent way too much time in front of this machine today. But I've learned more in the last six hours than I have in the last six months. Results to come, very soon.

A leisurely day, so far
Working in Netscape. One can argue -- strongly -- that Blogger's interface looks better in Netscape. But not being one to argue anything strongly, I won't.

Taking the day off from my real job to celebrate Dr. King, and, more actively, to catch up on some freelance duties. The freelance gig is something new, and very exciting. However, it certainly provides its own challenges -- namely, the inability to work more than three minutes at a time without being interrupted by a mini-human.

Living out here in the hinterlands, I have known of a lot of people who work at home. I admire and envy them, but at the same time, I wonder how in the hell they do it. It's nice to be able to work in one's underwear, I suppose, but it's not easy to maintain focus.

Speaking of the hinterlands: Not a lot of demand for the house yet. Something about too much supply in our price range. We'll give it a little more time and see how it goes.

Sorry, no Hall of Famers here
Probably you've heard about the guy in Massachusetts who killed the other guy at their kids' hockey practice. Another black mark for youth sports, etc., etc., etc.

The problem with organized youth sports is simple: They exist.

When I was growing up in Anytown, I played football, baseball, basketball and four-square with the kids in the neighborhood. We played on a vacant lot at Elm and 7th Avenue, behind the South Side Baptist Church. We changed sports with the seasons, just like the pros. That was about the only similarity.

On a given day, we'd have anywhere from 10 to 14 kids playing, both boys and girls. No coaches. No refs. No fights -- rare even was the occasional pushy-pushy over a hard tackle (yeah, we were playing tackle football, with no pads) or an argument over a call. We called our own penalties and fouls and balls and strikes.

After we were in junior high, those of us who had any athletic skill at all (and that wasn't very many of us) went on to the organized-sports thing. Not being a very big kid, I ended up on the track team, as a distance runner. I knew I wasn't any good, and I lived up to that. I was just participating in a sport just to participate in a sport. My parents weren't living vicariously through me; hell, they never even came to the meets. I was just a kid having a good time.

Now, having a good time isn't allowed. My daughter couldn't round up 10 kids in the neighborhood to play anything; they're all too busy with their scheduled activities.

It's all about trying to get scholarships and/or show up the other kids out here in White Plastic Suburbia. I spent my Saturday afternoons last spring umpiring youth baseball, kids 7 to 10. I didn't see any real egregious incidents; there were a few instances of bitchy parents and over-intense coaches, but nothing terribly out of line. I was struck by two things: 1/the kids were extremely well-behaved and 2/very few of them appeared to be having any fun at all.

Here's the thing, parents: I saw probably 100 kids play baseball last spring. Maybe one of them has a shot at pro ball -- probably that left-handed pitcher who was smoking 65-mph strikes past befuddled fellow 10-year-olds. He might have a shot at making money playing baseball someday And by that, I mean a year or two in Class A, making $1,200 a month in Port St. Lucie or Oneonta or Appleton.

What many people don't understand about professional sports is that hard work is really incredibly secondary to having natural talent. The last man on every NBA roster was at least all-state in high school; the stories of average kids making it big in pro sports are very, very few and far between. I could have busted my ass shooting free throws and 3-pointers and doing ballhandling drills till my hands bled, and all it would have gotten me was bloody hands. It was never going to overcome the fact that I was going to be 5-foot-7 for the rest of my life. That's the fate to which my children are most likely doomed, and it's probably the fate that your kid faces, too, no matter how much you scream at him or her on the soccer field.

If I live vicariously through my children -- and I'm not saying for a second I would -- it's not going to be on the ball field. It's going to be making sure they do their homework, and making sure they use more than 40 percent of their brains on their schoolwork, making sure they fill out their college applications on time. Not that I feel like an abject failure, but I do have that nagging feeling at times that I'm not fully exploiting whatever potential I have. That's what I'd like to save my kids from.

Your kid will not be a professional athlete. He just won't. So lighten up and for Christ's sake, let him play. Even better: Stay home. And take the coaches and refs with you.

A small triumph for right over wrong
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

It was almost as if he knew. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said those words on April 3, 1968. On that day, it was almost as if he knew he had changed the world by the force of his own will. It was almost as if he knew that a people who had spent centuries being punished for no reason other than the color of their skin were on the verge of being welcomed into American society, if somewhat grudgingly so in some corners. It was almost as if he knew that despite all the progress that had been made, there was so much more to do.

And it was almost as if he knew he was going to die the next day.

Dr. King is one of the very few people who ever lived that I consider a hero. He saw a problem, and he worked to get it fixed. He worked to get it fixed without killing anybody or directing anybody to be killed. He worked to get it fixed despite being a target himself. He worked to get it fixed despite the fact that many, many good and intelligent people refused to acknowledge that there was a problem.

Dr. King is a hero, despite his flaws. Dr. King's work saved me, a white man born of Southern heritage. It saved me from being brought up in a world where stubborn ignorance -- or benign neglect -- was considered right.

One of my lifelong dreams is to be able to ask somebody like Strom Thurmond, or Orval Faubus, or my grandfather, one simple question: "Why do you think you were right?" Racism can be justified by many arguments. All of them are wrong. They're logically wrong, and they're morally wrong. I understand that's just the Way it Was. It was still wrong. It's wrong that black children should go to substandard schools in any year, but especially wrong that it was the Way it Was in places that I have lived as late as 1971. Some younger people who think segregation was merely a vestige of America's Dark Age don't realize that it was happening -- overtly, not in the current covert way -- in their lifetimes.

(And before you start cluck-clucking about Southerners, you better know it's not restricted by geographical boundaries. I will stand by my statement that the most generally racist place I've ever been is Cincinnati. Certainly, the recent racial incidents there didn't debunk my argument.)


We're a lot closer to having made Dr. King's dream come true. We have a long, long way to go.

Dr. King would have turned 73 on Tuesday. He should still be here. He still had work to do. He should be here to be an influence on my children. He should be here to see the results of his work. He should be here to continue advancing the cause. I'm angry that he isn't.

But I'm glad that I am. And that my children will.

It was a bizarre day ...
... although it started out so promising. I can't even put my finger on what was so bizarre about it. I'm competely sure it's job-related. Just a weird, weird day. Possibly I'm overdosing on sensory input.

I remember writer's block from my sportswriter days. It never happened when I had to write a 16-inch story in 16 minutes, because those were easy. Write the facts -- who scored what, what they said after the game, who the teams play next -- and then, if you have time and the available brain cells, pop something clever on top to sucker people into reading it. It was a little tougher on non-game stories, when you had to actually sift through your notebook and determine which angle would actually hold up all the way through the story. And if you didn't get it by the third try, it probably meant you didn't have a story, which meant you wasted a lot of time and you were going to Look Bad in the Eyes of Your Superiors. I hated that part.

Now, the only writing I do (other than the aforementioned memos) is here. If I'm suffering through a block -- and on this night, I am -- I can't fake it. I have no facts around which to build anything. All I have is my brain, and right now, it's mush.

Good advice I once received: "When you don't have a story, the least you can do is keep it short." So shall this be.

Wanna buy a house?
You can have mine. It's for sale. This tells you something about me and my family: We'll put our house on the market, with not much more aforethought than we'd put into going to the grocery store. "Well, it's January; time to put the house on the market." For most people, it would be a momentous occasion, or cause for great trepidation, or something. For us, it's just another project.

The purpose is simple. As I've mentioned before, the one-way commute to work is 35 miles. That's too damn far. It's been too damn far since the minute we moved here in September 1999, but it got a lot farther a year later when I gave up my four-day-a-week night job for a five-day-a-week day job. Driving 35 miles at 2 a.m. four times a week is one thing; driving 35 miles at 9 a.m. -- supposedly not the peak of rush hour -- every freakin' day is another thing entirely. Even so, I was just kind of starting to get used to it. I feel a bond with the talk radio assholes. I'm up to, like, 10 CDs in regular rotation. I can rattle off all the exits in order from Highway 121 to the Woodall Rodgers Freeway.

Then one day the unthinkable happened. One day, The Wife had to drive to the big city to take the Young Daughter to see the doctor. When The Wife does something, and doesn't like it, things change. After making that drive, she proclaimed: "Dude, your commute sucks. We shall sell the house and buy a house closer to the Big City." And so it was.

So there's a sign in our front yard declaring the house can be yours, for a price. And it's a pretty steep price, and we're not shy about saying so. We're in no hurry. The reason is simple: We have no place to move. We have some ideas about where we want to live, but nothing is on paper yet.

This house holds a special distinction for us: In 11 years of marriage, it's the only house in which we've spent three consecutive Christmases.

We like change, and that manifests itself in some pretty dramatic (if not totally financially responsible) ways. In 2001, we neither bought a car nor moved -- only the second calendar year in which we've done neither. The other year was 1998, and in that year, I had three different job titles in three different departments.

In a way, it's kind of cool. The one constant through all that time has been each other, and anywhere we both are, well, that's home. I don't need to stand in one place to be deeply rooted as long as I have her.

Oops, too late!
By one minute, I appear to have missed Jan. 10. Do not be fooled. This is Jan. 10's post. Really.

From the Be Careful What You Wish For Dept.: I was whining about not being busy enough. Now I'm too busy. Much of it is pretty high-quality work, not busy work. Some of it is busy work. Am told there's much more to come. Ideas are on the table to find ways to Make Me Happier. People in high places are getting behind these ideas. Could things be looking up? Really?

Or do I just need medication?

Here I am, trying to beat a deadline again ...
I'm staring down the barrel of midnight running a serious risk of not having a post dated Jan. 9, 2002. Compounding that is that it's really friggin' late (at least in my current world) and I don't have a lot to say. So, if I don't fall asleep at the keyboard, I'll offer up a few thoughts in one-liner form:

--Remember how Americans were going to return to civility after Sept. 11? Spend a few seconds (but no longer) at your local talk radio stop on the dial and see how long that lasted.
--Speaking of Sept. 11 (and I must say I've done a decent job of not doing so) and civility: The next talking head who refers to "Nine-Eleven", for Pete's sake, I'm going to throttle them. Ugh. Say it with me, people: Sep-tem-ber e-lev-enth.
--The next time you think there's anything good about American pop culture, take a look at Michael Jackson. Aieeeee. He popped up on my television set tonight in the minute between the end of "Law and Order" on Ch. 5 and the local news on Ch. 8. That's an image I didn't need.

Might as well ignore this post, too
Phase Two of figuring out what the hell I'm doing didn't go so well today. Which is not to say it went badly; I just don't think The Boss is convinced there is any problem. And it shouldn't surprise you to know that I was somewhat less than forceful in attempting to convince him of same. The Boss is a visionary, which I admire. He has a great vision of the way it should be. I must look at the way it is. Maybe I should do more to help get The Way it Is closer to The Vision. I just don't know if I'm up to it.

Bottom line is this: I'm a wuss. I admit it. I don't know if I can do anything about it. I wish I could.

That said, I expect this isn't the end of the story. I see chances for improvement on the horizon. That'll keep me going for the next few days, at least.

Ignore this post
Am having some techincal difficulty. Please stand by.

Blog, blog ... blah
You should know I'm doing this simply out of obligation. I made a promise to myself to post every day, unless I had some really good excuse. The fact that I got about three hours of quality sleep last night (thanks in large part to a 2-year-old having nightmares) apparently doesn't qualify.

So I'm posting, even though it was not a day worth recording. I took the Old Daughter to school, I drove the 35 miles to work, I worked, sort of; drove the 35 miles home, and watched a little bit of Ravens-Vikings before giving in to the fatigue.

So: I'm attempting to prove to myself that I have some self-discipline. Really, I do.

Oh, here's one work-related thing: You know how sometimes the best decisions are the ones you don't make? I had one of those kind of days today. My dissatisfaction with my job is fairly public knowledge, at this point. It's a soft hiring market and I don't want to move, so I'm not going anywhere. An opportunity is open in our Very Large Newsroom, however, and I was this close to asking somebody who could actually affect the decision about it. But I received some high-quality advice from The Wife: "Talk first to somebody who doesn't have a vested interest in it. See what they think." I talked to the person who had just vacated the job (who now works for our web site.) This person gave me some good, solid advice; solid enough that I'm no longer considering the idea. It's a job I probably could have, but I now am convinced it's a job I don't want. This is a good thing.

One home-related thing: wish Happy Birthday to the wife. She's now well into her 30s. She's better-looking and smarter than she ever has been. And she sets pretty high standards for both, so that's saying something.

There. See? There's always something.

Woof
The Wife and her Champion Dog were victorious in their first appareance on the show circuit. Champion Dog brought home first place in the American Kennel Club Sanctioned "B" Match for Golden Retrievers at a show in a small town south of Fort Worth.

Full disclosure: The Champion Dog has been a mild source of controversy in the house. I don't like dogs. It's one of my main weaknesses as a human being. I have no problem with other people's dogs, but I'm not real keen about sharing a house with them. Nothing personal. I just don't much like dogs.

My wife is at the opposite end of the dog-o-meter. We'd be running an ASPCA here, if she had her way. She loves all of animalkind, and has a good rapport with all species. I had to promise that when we bought a house, she could get a dog. I figured, one dog, how bad could that be?

We've been through a series of dogs since then, but it's always just been one dog. A few months ago, we had our one dog, an ugly foo-foo mutt who thinks he's a cat. The Wife then decided she needed a hobby. She's a stay-at-home mom; I couldn't disagree that she could use some relief. She decided her Hobby would be ... breeding and showing golden retrievers.

Yikes.

So she bought this dog. I'm not going to say how much this dog cost, but just know that no matter what your standard for A Lot of Money is, this dog cost A Lot of Money. She tells me that if the dog wins lots of awards and stuff, we'll be able to sell this dog's puppies for a like amount. If that proves to be true, it'll have been a hell of an investment.

I've been accused of not supporting my wife's need for a Hobby, but I can assure you that's not the case. I just don't like dogs, not even purebred golden retriever Champions-to-be. That said, the dog is looking good, and is off to a great start toward becoming a real dog champion. My wife is very proud of this dog, and I'm very proud of her. She's learning everything she can learn in a short period of time and making good contacts to learn more.

I have always said I really enjoy watching somebody who's really good at doing something, no matter what that something is. It can be football, auto mechanics, cooking, or, yes, handling a dog. My wife is going to be very good with her dog -- I can only hope it remains "dog," not "dogs," for as long as possible -- and I'm going to very much enjoy watching.

Time travel
I very rarely throw anything away, much to my wife's chagrin. I have stuff that dates to 1979; that stuff has survived four girlfriends, my high school graduation, my dad's car accident, 12 moves (count 'em; I've chagned addresses 12 times since 1988), a marriage, three kids, four jobs and who knows what else. Among the stuff:
*A Big Chief writing tablet from when I was 11
*A note from a girlfriend, dated Dec. 1, 1983
*Pieces of paper that imply that I once was a member of the National Honor Society, that I graduated from high school, and that I was accepted to a college
*My clip files from 1986 through 1991
*Game programs from 1986 -- the Oklahoma-Missouri football game (Oklahoma 77, Missouri 0) and the Missouri-Southwest Missouri State basketball game in Columbia (Mizzou, 56-53, in overtime, in the teams' first meeting since 1952.)
*Various newspaper pages I designed
*A cellular phone, circa 1992. It's huge. It's unspeakably huge. It's one of those two-piece jobs, where the receiver connects to the actual unit via a cord.
*A key from a car I owned from 1986 to 1988
*Computer disks from the early 1990s
*A Myers-Briggs I took in 1998. For the record, I'm an ENTP, described as follows: "Quick, ingenious, good at many things. Stimulating company, alert and outspoken. May argue for fun on either side of a question. Resourceful in solving new and challenging problems, but may neglect routine assignments. Apt to turn to one new interest after another. Skillful in finding logical reasons for what they want." That's a little scary in its accuracy, although it would probably describe me better if it read: "Likes the sound of his own voice. Often contentious, not because he has strong beliefs but because he finds it entertaining. Excels at high-profile assignments, hates the daily routine. Short attention span. Spends much time explaining why he thinks he's right."

I could go on, but you get the point. I keep all this stuff for a reason. I only go through it once a year, maybe less. But I take great comfort in knowing that it's there. It makes me feel deeply rooted, despite the fact that I've spent much of my adult life as a vagabond. It reminds me who I am. That's knowledge that is often lost when I worry about who other people think I am, or even who I think I am.

Because ultimately, no matter what you do or what you see or what you go through in life, at some point, you always return to who you really are.

Notes from the road
New radio station in town (actually, it's the former alt-rock mouthpiece). Bad slogan: "Classic Texas rock that rocks." Apparent translation: All Stevie Ray, All The Time, With a Little ZZ Top Thrown In. It's actually not a bad station, for those times when I need to be reminded what I was listening to in 1987.

Am just now home after the end of an 11-hour work day, which shows one of the big flaws of my job. I arrive at work at 9:30, go to a couple of meetings and then ... nothing, usually, until 2 p.m. That's a pretty big gap of nothingness. Then, things start to crank up, and when I'm actually doing something, I'm there until 8:30. The Boss makes his return from his Long Winter's Nap on Monday. Phase Two of figuring out what the hell I'm doing with my life begins then.

Have a day of single dadhood tomorrow. The Wife and her Champion Dog make their show debut. Wish them luck.

Hurricanes a whole bunch, Cornhuskers not very many
I've previously mentioned my disdain for all college football teams from Florida. Thank God I'm no longer there to endure a year of Hurricane fans spewing about their "national championship" and Gators fans spewing about how they knocked the crap out of Maryland and Florida State fans talking about how ... well, whatever Florida State fans talk about these days. I have no particular allegiance to any college football team; I just hate all teams from Florida. Not that I had any illusions that Nebraska deserved to be in the Rose Bowl -- they had it handed to them by Colorado, and they should have lost to Oklahoma -- but in whatever form the college football national championship is awarded, it needs to be awarded to a team from somewhere other than Florida.

Enough about grown men playing kids' games, for the moment. Consider this:
--Guess the war is over. The New York Times is no longer doing its "A Nation Challenged" section. My Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper is all but treating the war like any other running national story. I find myself caring less and less whether we catch the evildoers or not. The death toll from the attacks goes down, of all things, every day. I suspect I'm like most Americans; I suspect we all have pretty short attention spans. The question is this: Has the war been a rousing success, or are we just losing interest, much the way we collectively lost interest in March 1991 and decided it was basically OK to leave Saddam Hussein in power? Do we really think al-Evildoer has been taken down, or are we saying, "Hey, they've left us alone for almost four months, we must have beaten them?" I'm pretty much as against war as the next guy -- I learned the word "pacifist" when I was 10, and have never strayed far from that basic philosophy -- but I have to think that if a war is going to be fought, there should be some tangible goal and it should not end until the goal is reached or is proven unreachable. If the goal is to catch Mr. Head Evildoer, he needs to be caught. Otherwise, let's take our bombs and go home and let the Afghans figure it out for themselves.
--It was 14 degrees outside last night. Coldest night in my part of Texas since 1996. Didn't matter to me; it was 72 where I was, sleeping under goose down. Just needed to sound a note of appreciation for that fact. Wish I was smart enough to figure out a way that everybody could sleep where it's 72 degrees.
--Just received an e-mail from an ambitious relative who is planning a family reunion for next summer in Anytown. I'm getting the sense that people aren't falling all over themselves with glee over the idea. She's plugging away anyway, and I have to kind of admire her a little bit for that. I come from a very large extended family, and many of these folks are, shall we say, different. Which doesn't make us any different from most large extended families. I tend to view most of my extended family with a sort of benign bemusement. I find them somewhat entertaining, but I wouldn't go out of my way to be entertained by many of them. Probably we'll stuff the kids in the minivan and head to Anytown, go meet a bunch of people we'll never see again, get ready to hear "I remember you when you were THIS big" in thick West Texas accents about 80 million times, try to be nice when my wife asks for the 248th time, "Are we done here yet?" and go home wondering how the hell I came out of that gene pool. Then I'll think about it some more and be damn proud of my gene pool, even with its foibles.

Headline goes here
Click, drag, delete. Just saved myself (and you) from a completely indecipherable rant, thanks to those three wonderful steps. I'm a big fan of click, drag, delete. Probably should do it more often.

I'll throw down a few topics for discussion. Perhaps I'll even expand on them later.
--I have no emotional reaction whatsoever to the Bowl Championship Series, which puts me in the minority of football fans. It's no more or less screwed up than letting a bunch of fat, poorly dressed sports writers determine the national champion. (I was once one of those sports writers; not the fat kind, and others can be the judge of the poorly dressed category.) My feeling is this: As long as Florida, Florida State, Miami (Fla.) or Notre Dame isn't the national champion, I'm happy. (It's perfectly OK if Miami of Ohio wins, just not Miami of Florida.)
--Two guys I know announced today they were getting married. Happy new year, indeed. One is my cousin (soon to be known simply as Dr. Cousin) and one is a guy I worked with in Florida who introduced me to the concept of staying calm amid chaos and to the wonder that is single-malt scotch. He lives in D.C. now, working for the Newspaper that Brought Down a President. I couldn't be happier, for both of them. There is no better feeling than to know that you've discovered somebody so incredibly cool that you want to be around them for the rest of your life, vacations and days off included. I met that person when I was 17, but I didn't realize it until several years later. Thankfully, I realized it soon enough.
--Weatherman says it's going to be 19 degrees tonight. Am scratching my head, trying to figure out why the hell I left Florida. (Oh, there it is, right here on the desk; my paycheck stub. Now I remember.)

More new readers to welcome. Check out the archives, over there on the left. Some of the stuff in there is actually marginally interesting.

Two thousand two
Sorry, I just like the way those words look. Two thousand two. No particular reason.

While many people I know are well on their way to their annual Jan. 1 hangovers, we're getting ready to shut it down for the night here in the far-flung Texas suburb. The Wife was not feeling very well this evening, so we kept it pretty subdued. As per annual tradition, the Old Daughter got to stay up until midnight -- Eastern time, that is. I marveled at what a wonder she's becoming, and I'm not one to get real gushy about my kids. We played dominos (I kicked her ass) and Hungry Hungry Hippos (she kicked my ass.)

At some point, Dick Clark in the background noise said something about how happy most people are that 2001 is over. The Old Daughter -- who is 7, as well-informed as responsible parents allow her to be, and plenty aware of the world around her -- asked why.

Well, I said, 2001 wasn't really a very good year.

Then, a pause. She's thinking it over for herself. She looks back at the TV.

"Why not?"

If that doesn't get your two thousand two off to the right start, nothing will.