Beware sources bearing gifts

Okay, I make a point of never blogging about work because folks get busted for that all the time, but since this is relatively harmless, here goes.
As a journalist, you often get gifts from sources, companies and PR flacks. Most of it is schwag (no, not that kind): pens, mugs, notepads, baseball caps, etc., emblazoned with company logos. Features reporters get inundated with press kits for musicians, DVD releases, album promos, books, etc. Some of it can get pretty outlandish and most newspapers have strict ethics policies about what you can accept and what you must refuse.
But since I've been a business reporter, things are getting out of hand. Here are some of the gifts I've recieved so far:
• A 20-pound basket full of different kinds of gum after I wrote a story about the local Cadbury-Schweppes plant (makers of Trident) and told the general manager I chewed Wrigley's Orbit.
• A Christmas basket filled with all kinds of schwag from Rockford Memorial Hospital, including an instant shoe-shine sponge, a keychain flashlight, a plastic Collins glass, and a box of chocolates.
• A stainless steel ruler for measuring orifice depths on parts and a baseball cap from a local machine shop.
• A shoebox full of cookies the size of coffee-can lids from Cookies By Design from a grateful source. Did I mention they were sandwiched together with a layer of frosting between each pair?
But today was the most embarrassing:
• Twelve long-stemmed red roses from a florist that I just interviewed for a regular showcase on local small businesses. Why give a reporter red roses? It sends the wrong message...

Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile,The girl with colitis goes by

Meegan has been very sick all week and spent most of it in the hospital. She came down with C. diff colitis, a bacterial infection of the colon, after taking antibiotics for strep throat a couple weeks ago and working around sick kids for her clinical training.
She was in a ton of abdominal pain; originally the doctors thought she might have appendicitis. They prepped her for a colonoscopy on Wednesday (a real treat) and then made a diagnosis without needing the procedure.
Doctor: "Um, on second thought, we won't have to shove a camera up your butt, but thanks so much for spending an excrutiating day on the toilet getting ready for it anyway. N'kay?"
Okay, I shouldn't make jokes about her illness. It sucked. Because it's really contagious, Nicholas couldn't even visit her in the hospital until today. Anyway, both of us are glad she's finally out. She'll be on the mend for several weeks, so please pray for her.

Drew Marshall

I never heard of this talk radio host before, but he appeared on one of those banal Christian TV talk shows and pretty much set the place on fire. You've got to watch it, especially if you come from the same fake-fake-fake-fake (Elaine's voice) churches that I grew up in. 'Cause he's right on the money. I think I found my new favorite Canadian talk show.

Drew Marshall, Part II

Tune in for more. It's even better. Especially the part about Ken and Barbie.

Brouhaha

On Saturday night, after our rib fest, we went to an IceHogs game. I haven't been to one in years and I'm not a hockey fan. But the tickets were free from work and they were playing their rivals, the Quad City Mallards, so I knew it would be entertaining. That was an understatement. Within the first six seconds of regulation, three slugfests -- gloves off, helmets pitched. Then there was slashing 10 seconds later. And before a minute was up, one of the 'Hogs skated by the unwitting Mallard goalie and tripped him with his stick. He got ten minutes for that one. It was just plain brutal. But it was fun.

p.s. That photo is not from the match. But it captures the spirit of the night.

Lip smackin'

Tonight I discovered the greatest barbecue joint in Rockford, Smokehouse Authentic Barbecue, thanks to my friend Jason. It's a hole in the wall, located on the back side of a gas station, but man oh man. They have the best ribs I have had in years. And the best part was the atmosphere.
The cook/proprietor was a big, fat apron-wearing black man with beads of sweat on his forehead. We ate on a folding table covered with a PVC-coated print tablecloth. My grandma had the exact same kind; you can wipe them off with a sponge. There was a 13-inch TV playing American Idol at the end of our table.
When the woman brought out our rib boats, she dropped a three-inch thick stack of napkins with it.
Then, the cook announced he needed to lower his blood pressure a little and turned on his CD player: The Rev. Al Green, my all-time favorite, with "I'm Still In Love With You."
Yes.

Need some skills

I am sitting here, looking at this blog, wishing I knew how to edit HTML code so I could make it look cool.
Dang.

Inspired by Miss Tricky

It is the simple things in life that make you happy. So here's some of my favorites:
• A jar of Smuckers chocolate fudge.
• That perfectly vertical edge that a snowblower cuts through the snow.
• Lying in a warm bed with the covers at your chin.
• When Nicholas runs to the door shouting "Daddy, daddy!"
• The smell of oil-rich exhaust when the car starts in the cold.
• An excellent cup of coffee.
• My Ford Explorer.
• A brand new, blank notebook. Especially those fancy kinds they sell at Barnes&Noble.
• People who want to know who I am.

'Snow picnic

This week, about 10 inches of snow got dumped on us over two days. I don't have a snowblower. And I live on a corner lot with three times the lineal sidewalk space of my neighbors. %!$%@#^&$ Euclidean geometry!!!
After the first major snowfall this winter, I huffed and heaved and shoveled off my driveway, which is large enough to taxi a 737 on. I petered out when it came to the sidewalks, but thankfully my neighbor took pity on my and let me borrow her snowblower. Since my back-breaking effort, I've been kind of lackadaisical in my attitude toward snow-covered walkways. Why fight it? Must we force our repressive cultural expectations of dry feet and clear, straight paths onto the free-ranging, uninhibited whirlwind of frosty bliss? I didn't even shovel the driveway a few snowfalls ago either. I've got 4WD now, so who cares? Snowdrifts can't stop me. After a few days, the driveway looked like a windswept Himalayan landscape, with deep troughs and miniature mountain ranges. Of course, when I finally did try to move the compacted snow and ice, it was more like a surface mining operation.
Anyway, when it snowed a few days ago my neighbors on either side took pity on me again and did my sidewalks with their respective snowblowers. But after the 4 or 5 inches we got the next night, I think they were tired of carrying the neighborhood's dead weight. So I knew I had to shovel. I whined about it to anyone who would listen. I even contemplated using my birthday money to run out an buy my own snowblower at the last minute, but the home improvement stores shut down before I ever mustered the effort.
Then a friend, probably tired of listening to me gripe, let me borrow his snowblower. I did my driveway, my walks, my neighbors' sidewalks all the way up the block. I got out the shovel and cut passages through the chunky, plow-pushed piles at the street corner. I even fixed the snowblower's loose handle. I was invigorated. Snow blowing is so easy. No more shoveling every last inch of walk.
Then I realized that if I went and bought a snowblower myself, by next winter I would be griping about how hard it is to go out and push it.
Go figure.

Crazy drivers!

I had to take a two-hour driving class at work this week, probably so the company can get a break on its insurance rates. The instructor handed out a list of actual excerpts from crash reports submitted to insurance companies. They were pretty funny. Here's some of the best ones:
• Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.
• I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.
• A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.
• In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.
• I approached the intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
• An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished.
• I told police I was not injured, but on removing my hat found that I had a fractured skull.
• The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.

Raw deal

Several months ago I decided to get a decent life insurance policy. Even though I had group coverage through work, I realized that if I kicked off and left a check in the amount of my annual salary, it would pay for a nice funeral, a sweet casket and for somebody to take a great vacation. So in other words, diddley squat.
So being the responsible father I am, I signed up for a 20-year term policy from Prudential with a $300,000 death benefit. That way, Nicholas would be well taken care of -- far better than if I lived from a purely monetary standpoint, which seems funny in a dark and morbid way. All for the low-low price of $260 a year, because I'm such an upstanding (and nonsmoking) citizen.
But that was just the preliminary quote. First some adjuster from a call center in west Texas must ask me 8,000 questions about whether or not my great aunt Nellie suffered from gout, if I ever ate dirt as a kid and what were my scores on sixth-grade multiplication tests. I'm taking an antidepressant so they asked a whole barrage of questions about that too, questions that I answered honestly. Guess what honesty gets you? More suspicion. The insurance company wanted paperwork vouching for my sanity from my primary doctor, counselor, financial advisor, shaman, proctologist and pizza delivery driver. (Okay, I'm exaggerating. A little.)
And guess what else? Even though I quit smoking last summer, I still occasionally use nicotine gum. So it showed up in my urine test (yeah, I had to do one of those too). Which meant the Rock is unconvinced that I'm a nonsmoker.
Final annual premium? More than $1,200. Guess I won't be buying that policy.
Moral of the story? If you want to get insurance, be prepared for a full strip search. And if you want to afford it, better pretend you're a lot better person than you actually are.

Da Bears

Can we please trade Rex Grossman now?

Cold as a witch's ...

The thermometer in my house says it is -3 degrees outside. It is so cold that the batteries in the thermometer's outdoor sensor conked out earlier today. It is so cold that Nicholas and I cranked the heat up and stayed in our pajamas until 3 p.m. Expected low tonight? -11. Tomorrow's high? Zero.
Too bad the Bears have to play the Super Bowl in Miami...