Night Owl Cards

  I'll say one thing for March, it's never not interesting.   I probably go on way too much about this month, but it keeps coming up with new and irritating ways to mess with my life. And I have a story to illustrate.   Since it's March, we're in the thick of state high school basketball playoffs, along with collegiate hockey playoffs and, heck let's start the spring season earlier and earlier because there's nothing else going on this month. It's always the busiest month at work and getting busier.   A co-worker was scheduled to work Thursday, Friday and Saturday and travel to cover our basketball teams in state play two of those days. On Friday, he sent a text saying he had a cold and wouldn't be in Thursday, he'd work from home. OK, no problem, nothing to cover that day. But late that night, I realized he did no work from home at all, and I had to do it, because we've been shorthanded since 2023 and we've got only two guys.   Friday came a...

  This has been a weird holiday week as far as working my job. In general, holidays don't mean much in the journalism world, the news doesn't stop and newspapers come out every day (mostly). But my paper has always been good about holidays and I often am able to take some time off. Not this year. I worked on Christmas. Not unusual but not ritual either. I also worked on New Year's Day. Both of those are very common days to have off in the general work world. Also I did a little work on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve even though I was technically off. Meanwhile, my work computer decided to stop working two days before Christmas. Apparently it wanted a vacation, too. And good luck getting someone to look at it during the holiday week. I've been working from home ever since. I could go on and on but to sum up, I feel like I'm the only one working the last 10 days. I'm a little sick of it. So what we have here is a lazy write-up on some cards that came to my d...

I'm currently in the process of trying to fill a vacancy at work. Trying to find a sportswriter is a bit of an unusual task. Since there are a limited number of newspapers, you attract résumés from everywhere, and I mean everywhere: places like India and South Africa. But we're looking for a specific kind of person: someone who can write well, tolerate our remote location, and live on a salary that would outrage a teacher. It's not easy. Yesterday I thought I had a good candidate lined up: his cover letter mentioned collecting baseball cards as a kid!! His writing seemed crisp, he didn't let off any weird vibes in his email communications and he knew the area. But when I called him, he seemed bored out of his skull. I don't know if eight media companies are knocking down his door, but it was quite off-putting. And, I hate to get personal in situations like this, but it was especially off-putting knowing that he collects -- or at least collected -- baseball ...