What five years can do

Five years ago, I was one of the top news editors for the eighth largest newspaper in the United States. I was 33, and had been a professional journalist for more than a decade and a half. I had assembled sections for some of the biggest stories ever -- the first World Trade Center attack, the Branch Davidian siege, numerous World Series and Stanley Cups on impossible deadlines.

All ego aside, in whatever newsroom I was working, when something big broke, I was the go-to guy on the production side. I don't know much, but I will put my newspaper production and design and decision-making skills up against anyone anywhere in the world. I know how to put out a daily newspaper.

At 9:34 a.m. CDT on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I was summoned to work early to put out the most important edition ever of the nation's eighth largest newspaper. I covered the 34.8 miles to work in 32 minutes, hitting my car's electronically governed 112 mph limit on the way.

As I pulled up to the building, with the newspaper's big Gothic nameplate on the side, it started to hit me. I pulled my car -- somewhat more slowly -- into a parking spot, near the news helicopter pad for our TV station. I got out. I closed the door. I began walking to the employee entrance, just like any other day.

Then I stopped.

A thought kept ringing in my head:

I don't know how to do this.

I stood there, on the top floor of that parking garage, for probably three minutes. Just stood there, the staircase down to the door in front of me, the car behind me. To my right was the skyline of the eighth largest city in the nation. A city that, for all I knew could have been the next target, being as it is a symbol of American consumption and oil power.

There I was, the Go-To Guy, just standing there. I don't know how to do this.

I took probably 100 deep, deep breaths. Somewhere around breath No. 45, I thought about going back to the car, back home to my family, and pretending it never happened. That thought went away before breath No. 46 came out. But I still stood there for another minute and a half. I don't know how to do this.

It was 10:01 a.m. My deadline for the extra edition we were publishing was 2 p.m. A quick review of a post from 2002 tells the story something like this:

I got out of the car and stood in the parking lot for a second, trying to get my pulse rate back down to normal. It hit me then that this was the Biggest Story Ever. I don't know how to do this, I thought. I don't have any idea. It was as if my brain had been wiped clean of everything I had learned over the past 16 years.

As soon as I was in the building, I was herded to a computer terminal and told I was designing the cover of our Extra edition. Deadline was 2 p.m. God only knew what more would happen between now and then. I didn't worry about it. I started designing, and fast, because everybody on the newspaper's masthead -- the publisher himself, the editor, the executive editor, the managing editor, and assorted others -- was standing behind me.

I hit the button on that page at 1:58, and turned my attention to the regular paper. The final page count was 48. I don't remember a lot of specifics from that exercise. We were just hunting and gathering and trying to determine what was true and what wasn't.

Back then I wrote, "I stood there for a second." I remember now it was much longer than that. Over and over in my head, I don't know how to do this.

I was responsible for the front page, back page and two inside pages of that Extra edition. I did the other pages fast enough to be able to spend time on the details of the cover. I remember fussing for several minutes over the spacing between the words "of" and "terror" in our main headline, "Day of terror." I switched the main photo five times, as a different photo editor brought me a new and better photo for the front page.

The front page I did that morning -- with the entire masthead of the nation's eighth largest paper standing behind me, watching every mouse click -- is now hanging in the Freedom Forum's Newseum. Everything on the page was spelled right. The words "of" and "terror" were properly spaced.

The main story was being written and revised right up to the point when I hit the button to send the page. It went out two minutes before deadline.

It was, in short, the culmination of everything I had learned and everything I had done in 16 years in journalism. I was handed a monumental task, and I delivered at a level that I never had before and never did again.

I worked more than 14 hours each of those first three days; then, one night, I broke down. Cried like a baby. I was able to ignore the full impact of what happened to our country, to a bunch of people whose only crime was not calling in sick on a beautiful Tuesday morning. But I could only ignore it for so long.

Dick Cheney tells us that the administration policies are working, and proof of that is that we haven't been attacked in five years. Excuse me, Dick, but we also weren't attacked in the 60 years before Sept. 11, 2001. Dumbass. The administration has accomplished nothing, and in many ways has made things worse. We've created chaos in a little country that had nothing to do with the attacks. We're stirring up shit in another. Meanwhile, the man with the money behind what happened is still out there, somewhere, with full ability to do it again if he wants to.

As for me? That was probably the beginning of the end of my journalism career. I damn sure never want to be part of another story that big, or that awful. The stories in the years afterward -- Afghanistan, Iraq, the threat from North Korea, day after day after day of human suffering and awfulness -- I just didn't want to know anymore. I still do know, of course, but on my own terms.

I'm not the go-to guy anymore. Journalism is a young man's game. I aged a lot those last few months of 2001. I just hope the young people who are taking it over learn to ask the right questions and don't accept everything that's being handed to them. It's more important that they know how to do it now than it was for me to know how to do it then.

Afghan Hall of Shame

The Soviets. The Taliban. The Americans. You pick which has contributed most to the ruin of Afghanistan. It's a long read,and it's disturbing.

Eerie déjà vu, updated

You've got to be kidding. Surely that thing'll take a turn ... or dissipate ... or something ...

MONDAY UPDATE: That post was written when the forecast had it as a Category 3 barreling straight into New Orleans. Then it looked like it was going to pull a Charley on us. Now it looks like a lot of rain on Wednesday. Fingers crossed ... and exceedingly relieved that NOLA appears to have been spared.

The tide is turning

Newspapers really are dead.

Relaxing under the family tree

This past weekend in Missouri wasn't nearly as somber as I expected it to be; perhaps not even as somber as it should have been. That's OK, though. Nobody is particularly worried whether that's the way Grandpa would have wanted it. That's just the way we are.

We said our goodbyes to Grandpa in proper fashion, complete with taps and a 21-gun salute to honor his time in the Navy. The service was in a beautiful setting; out in the hills of southeastern Greene County, in a tiny little cemetery bounded by what could only be described as a meadow. There were even butterflies, dozens of little yellow butterflies flying about. It was bright, and quiet, and peaceful, the way a peaceful rest should be. My dad's father was 89, and he had earned a peaceful rest.

After the service, we repaired to the home of Grandpa and Grandma's fifth son, the Uncle Who Made Good. Downstairs, a pool game broke out; upstairs, 20 or 30 family members, many of whom I actually knew, were eating, talking, occasionally shrieking with laughter, and generally enjoying each other's company. This is a very, very good thing. Frankly, it's hard not to enjoy yourself around this group of people, no matter the circumstances.

"Diverse" doesn't even begin to describe the family into which I was born. My dad was one of eight children (the oldest died very young, several years before my dad was born.) Six boys, two girls. Seven of those eight produced 20 grandchildren. Ironically, the first-born of my generation also died young. Born in 1964, he died in his late 20s of cancer.

Among the remaining 19 are a doctor, a TV reporter turned marketing guy for a worldwide poker outfit, the journalist-turned-software-guy, a banker, a receptionist turned mortgage processor, at least three high school dropouts, a vice president of a renowned national museum (thanks to the wonders of Google, I just discovered this fact a few minutes ago; more on that later), a couple of good ol' boys, and a few who are still struggling to find their places in life. One of them actually has no biological connection to the rest of us (yeah, we'll come back to that one, too.)

All of us have a talent of some sort that sets us apart from the rest of the world:

Two of the high school dropouts, sisters in their early 20s, are fantastic singers; one of them is a very good mandolin player.

Cousin Otis's writing speaks for itself, but I'll speak for him to remind you of his National Headliner Award from a few years ago.

The banker has a great deal of technical acumen, more than the one of us who actually makes his living as an IT guy.

At least two of my cousins are capable of growing ZZ Top-style beards (I, meanwhile, can barely grow facial hair at all).

My sister is an uncommonly beautiful woman who graduated from college with a GPA that was within a short reach of 4.0.

Pretty much any of the boys can pick a guitar. All of us, with the possible exception of my sister, are comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people. I guess we came by that naturally.

And I can say this with little fear of contradiction:

I haven't talked to the ZZ Top-bearded cousins or the mortgage processor cousin or the high school dropouts more than maybe five times in the last 15 years. We're not people who would associate with each other if we weren't related. But: If I called one of those people in need of something, they'd do whatever they could to help. As I would for them.

That undeniable bond is what Grandma and Grandpa left behind. That's a success that can't be measured in dollars or square feet or any other of the empty units of measure to which we too often attempt to ascribe importance.

-----------------

A couple of mentions above begged further explanation. I'll try to explain here.

My two oldest living uncles are, shall we say, men of mystery. Each has been married several times; one of them, well, a few more than several.

This particular uncle, T, is not somebody who has lived life by the book, unless that book was written by somebody like Hunter S. Thompson. He is emphatically not a role model. Where there is family controversy, T is at the center.

Uncle T is 63. He is currently on (we think) his eighth marriage, to a woman who is younger than me. About a year ago, she gave birth to a child. Said child is credited as Grandchild No. 20, despite the fact that he very, very obviously is not biologically related to us. None of us tans like that, nor is any of us capable of growing an afro, and amidst all the diversity of my cousins, one common thread is blue eyes. But, the conventional wisdom goes, she had the kid while she was married to one of us, so he's one of us too.

Among this black-sheep uncle's other children is M ... who is the aforementioned VP of the renowned national museum.

I don't know her; she grew up with her mom in a town 100 miles west of Anytown. She's three years younger than me. Grandma sent her Christmas gifts every year, and occasionally received pictures from M's mom. (As I pointed out in my tribute to my grandmother, one of the most striking aspects of her funeral service was the number of her sons' ex-wives who came to pay their respects.)

The last time I thought about M was 17 years ago, when she graduated from high school. Grandma proudly told me that she recorded one of the highest ACT scores in all of Missouri. M is now 35; she lives in a large city on the East Coast under her maiden name, behind which there are many letters. I'm not sure if she's married.

None of my cousins nor I have seen M since probably 1972, if even then, which means she would have been a baby and none of us would be old enough to remember having met her. But if she had been at Grandpa's funeral -- or if she came to Anytown for Christmas -- there'd be a seat for her, and she'd be immediately mobbed by 20 people wanting to hear about her life and asking her opinions and making sure she had plenty of food and drink. Somebody would say, "You're a lot bigger than last time I saw you." One of the ZZ Top Beards would give her a big, vaguely frightening hug and tell her he loves her.

It's an undeniable bond. Fascinating, sometimes infuriating, occasionally a bit unnerving ... but always undeniable. It outlived my grandparents, it will outlive all of us, and it will always be one of my favorite things about being me.

Grandpa, 1917-2006

It wasn't easy to find prosperity in northwest Texas in the late 1930s. It wasn't easy anywhere, really, as the Depression still had most of the world in its firm grip. Those of us who grew up in the world those people fought to build will, hopefully, never fully understand.

It was in this environment where a 21-year-old man with a bit of a reputation for trouble married a sweet young redhead, and, with very little in the way of raw material with which to work, began building a family.

The sweet young redhead who grew up to be my grandmother went on to the next place two years ago. Wednesday, my grandfather joined her.

The first few of his 89 years were pretty hardscrabble. I don't know a lot of the details of his childhood, but he once shared with me some stories of his teenage years. They made mine look pretty tame and boring by comparison. Tales of freight-train rides, of dodging the law (sometimes not so successfully) in Bonnie-and-Clyde era Texas, of never turning down an opportunity for a fight.

He took his attitude to the Navy just in time to wind up on a ship in the Pacific during World War II. He told me about getting in trouble for fighting and gambling. He was able to channel the former into a bit of an amateur boxing career while he was on the ship. My grandfather was not at all a big man, but what he lacked in size was apparently made up for in scrappiness.

He was father to three boys when the hostilities began in earnest in 1942. One more came along during the war, and one more was born a little more than a year after V-J Day. The oldest died in 1943. My dad was the second of a set of twins born in 1950, bringing the child count back to six when the decision was made to leave Texas.

At the end of the road was Springfield, Mo., home to Baptist Bible College and a newly opened paper cup factory. Grandpa spent his time studying at the former and working at the latter. He put in nearly 30 years at the paper cup factory, while learning the Bible and spending some of his free time as a preacher. It was never easy; two more children, both girls, came along during the 1950s, but the house didn't grow at all; still four rooms, still dirt floors, still outdoor plumbing on the unpaved Kansas Avenue. The poverty didn't really let up until the kids began leaving home.

He had mellowed quite a bit by the time I was old enough to hear his stories. I'd sit in the tiny living room on Thelma Avenue while he sat in his chair facing the TV and Grandma sat on the couch, shaking her head every once in a while at some tale he was spinning. I do suspect that the basis was in truth, but that details might have been altered a bit for entertainment value or might have, um, changed a bit with time. I was OK with that. I loved the stories, loved to hear of the fighting spirit and sheer willfulness that was at the root of my genetics.

He believed every word he said, certainly. He wasn't somebody with whom you were always going to agree. He didn't hold that against you, but you also weren't going to change his mind on most things. You might be right, but you certainly weren't going to prove him wrong.

Even in the last few years, he enjoyed a good debate, and he could battle as well with words in his 80s as he could with his fists in his 20s.

The spirit was silenced two years ago, when Grandma went on. The body, which has a tendency to keep running on sheer willfulness even after the spirit is gone, finally and mercifully gave up today. He's earned his rest.

A better obit can be read here. As for me, well, I continue the fight, in my own way. But I know from where the spirit is seeded.

I feel better, and I don't know why

This week was supposed to be a week for big things. Without the distraction of work, I was going to sit down tonight and rattle off a long and impressive list of accomplishments.

I was going to start a Self-Improvement Plan. You know, eat less, exercise more, be generally more organized and more disciplined.

I did actually do a small part of that: I haven't had a sugared soda in five days. This is a big, big step for me; I love the soda, love the CO2 bubbling in my mouth, love the sugar dissolving my teeth. Love everything about it, except the gut that those 150-calorie-per-serving delights have left me with. I have a refrigerator full now of various diet sodas. The goal is to wean myself off of soda entirely. A few weeks of repulsive diet sodas ought to do the trick. We'll see. I've tried this a few times before, and have not been successful in the least. I now understand how hard it must be for a dedicated smoker to quit smoking.

As for the other parts of the SIP: Nothing. Still ate crap, in copious amounts; exercised not at all. But I really did think about it ...

We began painting the exterior of our house during Thanksgiving weekend. Of 2004. We were going to finish this week.

Didn't happen. Too damn hot. And even if it had been 72 with no humidity, well, it still probably wouldn't have happened.

I was going to think about work not at all.

... until the phone rang Wednesday. Small problem, easily resolved. Then Thursday. Bigger problem, but also solved in one call. Then Friday. Real big problem. Had to intervene. Multiple calls, incoming and outgoing. So much for vacation. At least I was able to handle it all remotely; back in the newspaper days, I would not have been able to avoid dropping everything and going into the office for an issue of that magnitude.

I didn't go to the high school reunion.

Now I kind of wish I had. The committee just sent an e-mail a few hours ago with a link to the pictures (technology rules!) I was stunned at the number of people I didn't recognize at first or second or third or fourth glance. Where the hell did all those 38-year-old Realtors and teachers come from? I saw about 70 faces in the pictures, and was able to get solid ID's on about 15 of them -- and at least five of those I could only recognize because I could read their name tags. As Joe Walsh sang, everybody's so different, and I haven't changed.

Yeah, right.

---

I certainly wasn't bored this week. I did get to see the wonder of the Young Daughter becoming a first-class swimmer. I did spend a lot of time just hanging out with The Wife, and she in turn was able to catch a little bit of the break from some of her routine. I read a couple of Bill Bryson books. I had a great motorcycle ride last Saturday.

But other than that, I accomplished nothing in the last week. I crossed nothing off my to-do list. And I'm OK with that. I needed to waste a few days. I've spent a pretty long stretch trying to cram 1.6 days into every one day. I think I was owed a few. We're even now.

Just sit down and write

My life doesn't really allow much time for calm reflection. As I write this, I'm in an almost-empty house. It's basically pretty quiet, except for the two 5-year-old girls screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Well, actually, it's just the Young Daughter who's screaming. She does that a lot. That's how she earned the nickname Diva of Decibels. The other little girl, YD's best friend, generally gets her points across more quietly.

The rest of the group is out at a local water park. YD and I aren't much into water parks, so we stayed home.

I'm on "vacation" this week. It's my first extended time off since last year's family trip to Washington, D.C. It comes at the end of a(nother) marathon travel stretch, the kind of travel I thought I was going to be able to avoid after having been promoted. The deal was that, rather than project trips lasting 5-8 days, I'd be doing support-type stuff and management schmoozes lasting a day or two each. That's basically true. However, I just did five of them in the last three weeks.

My 20-year high school reunion will be held this weekend in Anytown. I won't be there. A small part of me wishes I was going; I'd love to renew some of those connections and hear what these people are up to. But that small part has been drowned out by the larger part, the part that doesn't want to see the interior of another aircraft for a good long time. I'm tired of talking to my wife and kids on the phone.

I'm still taking the week off. There's a garage to clean, walls to paint, kids to watch. It's nice to prioritize those sorts of things above work, for a little while.

I've been thinking a lot about writing. I've been thinking I just need to sit down and tap keys for a while, just to see what comes out. I've certainly had some interesting experiences the last few weeks, the kind that in years recently past I would have chronicled almost immediately.

In fact, I just spent the last 20 minutes chronicling one of them before giving it the Click-Drag-Delete treatment. After writing it all down, I decided it just wasn't that interesting.

Not all that long ago, I had a voice in this forum. I can go through the archives and see that time was when I could sit down and construct a series of coherent sentences. I've learned many things in the last two years: How to install and manipulate a database, how to manage an enterprise-wide software installation project, how to get a flight on another airline when my originally scheduled flight is hopelessly delayed, how to read and speak rudimentary Danish and French.

Somewhere along the way, however, I seem to have forgotten how to appreciate the things going on around me. That's a skill I need to regain.

Data transfer interrupted

I am reachable, by one medium or another, pretty much 24 hours a day, every day. The only time that I am completely out of pocket is during the one or two hours that I am on an airplane going somewhere.

Being constantly available, of course, does not mean that I am providing better service. It just means that I can half-ass more stuff. It means that I can be in a meeting while driving a rental car from a customer site to an airport. It means that, while a customer is paying some absurd sum for me to be on site, I can simultaneously be helping two other customers who are not paying for the privilege.

This is a true story, and yeah, it's a little gross, but it's an illustration of what American business has become: Yesterday, I was on the phone with a customer and answering an e-mail ... in the bathroom. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

And don't think that I don't know where to find the "Ignore" button on my phone. There are plenty of unanswered items in my Inbox. At some point, I do have to sleep. At some point, I'm with my family, and that means With My Family. At some point, the sign has to turn around to "Closed." But every one of those Ignored calls and unanswered e-mails is still a tiny little failure.

One thing that makes my job extremely complicated is that the European co-workers on whom I depend heavily have a minimum of five weeks of vacation. Over there, it's acceptable to basically accomplish nothing in June, July and August. Over here, it's not acceptable to be unavailable while you're in the john.

I'm not complaining. I have a family which is very well-provided for. My roof covers a large number of square feet. The bills are paid and times are largely good.

But I know in some way, I'm paying for all this prosperity. And I also know I'm not the only one. This is the way We live. I just wonder what the end result really is.

As the fog descends ...

What would be fun, really, is to sit here and write while I'm at the complete edge of exhaustion, just to see what would happen. I've been in constant motion since last Wednesday: fly, drive 2 hours, meeting, drive 2 hours, fly ... one-day weekend lull ... fly, drive an hour and a half, meeting, drive an hour and a half, fly, get another rental car, hey! why is there a traffic jam in downtown Boston at 11:30 at night? lost in Boston, find freeway, drive an hour and a half, meeting, and eeew, that was why there was a traffic jam in downtown Boston.

So I'm in New Hampshire right now, with another day of meeting, fly, drive in front of me. And yeah, with the downtown Boston tunnels closed, it's going to be a bitch getting into Logan. Tomorrow's flight goes to North Carolina, where thankfully the meeting will be held in the same city in which we're landing. Then, fly and drive home Friday night. Weekend lull, then off to Southern California next week. Fly, drive an hour, two days of meetings, drive an hour, fly.

Then, a week of vacation. No plans, just vacation. The plan does not include moving eight miles a minute, as Seger once sang.

So writing all that was a long way of saying no, I'm not going to go to the reunion. That would be another three days of flying and driving, and I'm just not up for it. I can come up with more reasons to not go than reasons to go.

The fog is coming faster, the eyelids are getting heavy, the thoughts are coming both fast and slow at the same time. It's like the gears are turning without any actual power, the perpetual-motion brain that is spinning 7,600 rpm on the way to nowhere. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten why I'm in New Hampshire, and why I'm going to North Carolina. I'm just here, typing, not even in full control of the text I'm currently entering. I wonder how much longer I can do this.

Ken Lay, 1942-2006

Another thief bites the dust, and far too soon ... I really wanted to see that bastard suffer as an old, formerly rich man in prison for a while. Too bad Enron pensioners can't be made beneficiaries of his life insurance policy.

Resetting

Technical difficulties. Testing only.

Four days in Paradise

It's been a helluva fun weekend. No details are really necessary ... it's just been a wonderful string of perfect days. Such a string deserves to be acknowledged.

No greater love

Back in the late '80s, the high-school girl who would become my wife was simply a tall, skinny girl named N, who was around our house a lot, a friend of my little sister. N and my sister were part of a larger group of girls, whose main recreational activity during their junior year in high school involved driving around in somebody's 1965 Mustang and teasing fraternity boys at college parties.

Among this group of girls was a girl we'll call Marie (not at all her name, but it's better than a pronoun.) Marie was a bit spoiled, and she knew it, and she was OK with it, best I could tell. I didn't know Marie as well as I knew my sister's other friends, but what little I knew of her suggested she was the one of that group with the "reputation."

She was also the one who ended up pregnant that year.

Marie was by no means the only person I knew in high school who became pregnant. She was the only person, however, who ever showed a visible sign of it. Marie chose to carry the child the term.

I can't imagine this was an easy decision, even for a girl who herself was adopted. She had to put up with the stares and the pointing and the ostracism and the talk of those who simply said it confirmed her "reputation." None of that mattered to her.

As the rest of the group drifted away from Marie, N stuck by her. This foreshadowed the adult N, by the way; the girl who stuck by her friend in a tough situation became an intensely loyal woman, a woman who people can depend on no matter what. This is cool, and is one of the things I love about my wife. Back in 1987, though, she was just a girl who was trying to do the right thing.

Marie's child was born on N's 17th birthday. N was there for her at the hospital. I'm pretty sure he was the first newborn boy she ever held.

A few days later, Marie's child was headed home, home with his new parents. Marie went home, too, back to her parents. She was back in school a few weeks later.

Even at 17, a girl has maternal instinct, and that instinct would rebel mightily against separation. Marie had to be convinced that he was going to a better place, a place with people more qualified than she was to provide what that baby needed. I can imagine nothing more beautiful, and more painful.

Life went on. Marie never quite reconnected with that group of girls; she had been forced into adulthood, and acted accordingly. She and Natalie were still close, sort of, but nobody would ever fully grasp what Marie had been through, and it probably didn't matter to Marie if they did. They all graduated from high school a year later and went their separate ways.

Marie contacted my wife by e-mail several years ago. The electronic reunion was brief; a couple of messages exchanged, then life moving on.

Natalie still mentioned Marie's boy on his birthday the first few years we were married, but hadn't for many years. As I was giving the new Dixie Chicks album its 249th spin on my iPod, I gave a close listen to "Voice Inside My Head," a heart-shredding song from the perspective of a woman who gave a child up for adoption.

Immediately I thought of Marie, a person who I hadn't thought of since we received that e-mail four computers ago. I did some quick math, and I said to Natalie: "Remember Marie's baby?" She said, "Yeah, he was born on my birthday."

I said, "Yeah. He would have just graduated from high school a few weeks ago."

"Oh. My. God."

My wife has recently developed excellent research skills. If your name has ever been snared by Google's spiderbots, she'll find it. She found Marie. Marie is now living in a large East Coast city; she married exceedingly well, has two little girls and by all accounts wants for absolutely nothing. They're exchanging e-mails again.

That little baby boy that N held is off to college, or a job, or the military, or whatever. We'll probably never know. Life went on, and it went on very well for Marie, which is as it should be.

Marie called upon some serious strength that day 18 years ago, and that strength is having to carry her through the rest of her life. I admire her, and other women who made the same decision. Unplanned pregnancy brings up complex questions that can't be answered the same way for every person. They most definitely cannot be answered politically, or through legislation.

The 16-year-old Marie, even though she likely didn't know it at the time, came up with the right answer for her situation. Things worked out for her. Hopefully they worked for that little boy, too.

I still have to think that no matter how gilded your life is, though, that's gotta be a hard memory to carry with you, and that you wouldn't be able to help but wonder how things might have been different if ...

20 years now; where'd they go?

Rumors keep circulating that my high school class is going to have a 20-year reunion this summer. A few days ago, I received an e-mail detailing the program. Looks like a lot of fun; a golf tournament, a cookout, a trip to a Class AA baseball game in Anytown. I'm still not sure I can bring myself to go.

For one thing, we're 1,400 miles away, and even with the absurd amount of airline miles I've amassed in my recent travels, it's not enough to get all five of us there. I'm not sure I can pull off going to Anytown without my wife and kids; the rest of the extended family back in Anytown would be profoundly disappointed. Plus, I have a fair amount of business travel scheduled for July. Since my recent promotion, I'm not doing as many five-day trips, but I still have to do a lot of one- and two-day schmooze-fests, and I have many of those in July.

For another, I don't need people pointing out that 20 years ago, I had hair past my shoulders and weighed 100 pounds. I have dramatically less of the former and quite a few more of the latter now. I'd take the under on how quickly I get sick of people pointing those facts out.

I rather liked most of my high school classmates. I had a lot of friends in high school, many friends who crossed many of the different strata of a high school class. You remember The Breakfast Club? At one time or another, I would have hung out with all five of them.

I'm kind of ashamed of myself for not having kept better track of these people over the last two decades. I've done quite well over the last 20 years, in my career, as a husband, as a father. The thing I sacrificed to do all that was my friends. Truth be told, I was like that before I left Anytown, probably, but I became even worse when I could use distance as a weak excuse. I'm a shitty, awful, rotten friend. Too busy for this, too busy for that, too busy to send a simple e-mail or Christmas card.

In short, I suck. I'm not sure how squarely I want to face that fact.

So I toss this out for feedback: Should I go, or should I clean out the garage that weekend?

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-SHADDUP!

No vacation here, sorry. Still trying to figure out the mysteries of ASCII characters 0D and 0A. For now, everybody's having fun around me. Oh well; my time will come.

I was right, I was wrong

SPOT ON: See the post headlined May 23: iTunes downloader ready. I was right; The new Dixie Chicks album is damn good. It's an exquisitely manicured middle finger standing tall against the crap they've had to endure over the last three years.

And it is, thankfully, more than that; it's a nice transition out of the hard-core country world into tunes that cross many lines. "Easy Silence" showcases the voice not of Natalie Maines the Texan, but that of Natalie Maines, the former Berklee student.

All that said, it's hard not to point out that the Chicks have been the top album download on iTunes all week while the president's approval rating struggles to stay above 30 percent. Take that, rednecks.

EATING MY WORDS: I wrote this in February 2002 after the Super Bowl. Musing about the commericals:

Cadillac has finally figured out that its customer base is, like, almost dead. The average age of a new Cadillac buyer is 69. The marketing folks catch a clue: Cadillac cues up the Zeppelin, finds a '59 Eldo, and voila, a star is born. Not crazy about the CTS; it's kind of a funny-looking car.

Well, maybe, I might have to amend that: Everybody else's CTS is funny-looking. The one that'll be in my driveway for the next 39 months looks pretty cool.

On the clock

I have 20 hours to complete two PowerPoint presentations for an upcoming conference. During that 20 hours, I must also have dinner, sleep, have breakfast and get children ready for school, and I'll lose one more hour to commuting.

How do you like my chances?

Flight 93 tapes out

First gut response while the CNN babe is reading her transcription of the Flight 93 tapes released today in Alexandria, Va.:

Am I to believe that, under moment of great stress and trauma, that these hijackers would be sending their final prayers to Allah ... in English?

UPDATE: The New York Times notes that the hijackers were indeed speaking Arabic. Which still leads me to wonder how a presumably non-Arabic speaking CNN reporter would know just minutes after the tapes were released what was being said. No tinfoil-hat stuff here, just saying ...

Sad and pathetic

A lot of heavy stuff here lately ... time for a chuckle in my most favorite way -- at my own expense.

Funny scene on the streets of suburban Tampa on Friday afternoon:

Guy in a black 2006 Rapidlyagingdudemobile, late 30s, sun shining off his receding hairline, windows down, 7-speaker Bose cranked up to the max, just absolutely rocking out ...

The song? "Behind these Hazel Eyes" by Kelly Clarkson.

Hi.