dear diary

as the end of december nears, i open my journal to write my resolutions for the coming year. i've done it for the better part of 15 years or so. this year will be no different.

but unlike the past, the space between my first entry of the year will be astonishingly close to the last. and i have my blogs to thank for it.

a friend passed along some advice to me that to be a good writer, one should write half an hour every day.

i never made it to 30 minutes on a daily basis, but i was fairly faithful, remarking when whole weeks passed between entries.

now months pass between moments -- hours, actually -- putting pen to paper. but for some reason, i keep writing out here in the ether.

i sometimes wonder, though, if keeping an electronic collection of thoughts and observations will have permanence, given the nature of all things cyber and server and silicon, where a crash can lose years of work with nary a byte to show for it.

but i figure a collection of journals can be lost in flood or fire just as easily, along with one's life if one is not careful.

at least this way, i suppose, once i'm gone, there's the chance that there may be a footprint of me out on the information superhighway that others might come across and consider before moving on.

i guess it's a new time in a new world. still, i hope i stay better at being old-fashioned.

on the w.va. christmas caravan

here's kris and me at the alleged 37th annual beckley fil-am christmas party last saturday the 22nd.

we went to beckley to attend the annual big event at the w.va. turnpike authority's sinkhole, a.k.a. the tamarack arts and crafts conference center.

it was a high-falutin' catered affair, with about 300 in attendance, all hyper-planned and timed to the minute -- a far cry from the leisurely potluck supper attended by a handful of young immigrant families in a cinderblock community center back in the early '70s.

this year's bash ran out of the ethnic food about halfway through serving, but the program was on schedule, by gosh. it's going to take another few generations to breed out the filipino culture's chronic tardiness, but that didn't stop this group from trying to make it start right now.

(yeah, good luck with that. on the other hand, we're going to have to work on retaining the having more than enough food thing. you're never supposed to run out of good eats. seriously, if filipinos aren't generous hosts and ravenous eaters, then we're nothing. i'd rather be late, full and happy than punctual and disappointed wondering where all the pancit and lumpia went.)

after a day to rest, we worked christmas eve, headed out to parkersburg for the wise family christmas, back to charleston to put out today's paper, church, then beckley for dinner with mom, dad and joy.

i showed mom our china and flatware patterns online, which she liked, and ate about three desserts. mom's cooking more food for tomorrow. yeah. we've got to be gaining weight.

that should be it for now before kris and mom kill me for not helping with the dinner dishes. i'm suddenly very sleepy.

happy christmas, everyone.

it was like someone had died

on friday, kris, a couple of daily mailers and i were having some beers at sam's downtown after the office christmas party.

about an hour in, we started seeing on the big screen television a crawl saying west virginia university coach rich rodriguez was in talks with the university of michigan for their football head coaching job.

"bullshit," i said. "he just wants more money."

but i knew the state and all the boosters had maxed out on what they could pay -- and i'm sure rodriguez knew it, too. this had to be a courtesy interview, right?

but the rumor persisted all day saturday and all day sunday until i got a call from our managing editor, around 2.

"rodriguez is leaving."

"holy shit."

a few other choice profanities came out when i heard he'd contacted the nation's no. 1 college recruit about his departure before he told his own team.

then i busied myself with typing out a two-paragraph story for the web based on metronews reports before the associated press moved a story. then i saw that our sister paper, the detroit news, moved a much more comprehensive piece with great quotes and ran that instead with an ap blurb and a homepage photo.

i stayed busy for the better part of an hour, so i couldn't feel too much more shocked or saddened as i concerned myself more with getting us the best story possible online.

all the while i felt like i was the one responsible for making funeral arrangements after a loved one had died. i was too busy to grieve.

had to read at mass at 5 and still had to take a shower. then came dinner and early bed since i was scheduled to be wire editor this week.

but at 2:45, my sleep ended early with a strong sense of mourning, and i had to capture what probably a lot of wvu fans were feeling today.

so in about 45 minutes, i wrote the bulk of the column that appeared in today's paper.

the rest was filled with fodder i'd written last weekend, which, oddly, still held true. but this time, i know the disappointment was going to be a lot more permanent.

i feel like my hopes have been abandoned, yet i can't say i'm entirely angry at the man for going.

one has to follow one's ambitions, and on sunday i learned that rodriguez's were more about himself and less about his home being the best in the country.

i think there's a life lesson in all this weekend's drama. it's all about priorities and what is your no. 1.

listening to him at his press conference today was like running into an ex-girlfriend with her new man. and it hurt about as much as a sudden breakup.

he used to be ours. and now he's not.

tied in knots

kris says it's nice that i'm involved with our wedding plans. i wish i could be blithe about the whole deal, but i think we need to hold each other's hands through it all.

besides moms and sisters, i'm kind of embarrassed to say i've also employed the services of the wedding web site, the knot, to provide a guide to our big day.

finally got up their do-it-yourself wedding web page the way i'd like it. (they'd had problems with drop-down menus and site linkages to registries for about a week. looks like they finally fixed them today.) it's nothing fancy, but i think it should give all the information our guests should need.

i like the wedding countdown and the checklist, which kind of give urgency, but also an orderly way through. i hope we can finally get caught up to where we need to be before the month is out.

it's coming together slowly, but surely.

met with the church organist and florist, and got the wedding cake topper this week. we have officially passed the threshold of our budget outlay.

we are now accepting of the fact that we will be hemorrhaging some money for unforeseen little things for the rest of the way.

kinda feels like a boxing match at this point. we'll be bloody, but still standing by the the end.

public enemy

there's a reason i don't attend too many performances for public radio broadcasts these days.

not to put too fine a point on it, it's because of the public.

kris and i attended the taping of pianist bob thompson's "joy to the world" at the cultural center thursday and were treated to a wonderful evening of christmas standards performed with a real jazz swing. their guest vocalist, catherine russell, from new york, was a powerhouse with terrific range.

there's kind of an understood manner in which audiences listen to live performances, especially jazz.

once the melody is established, various players get to solo and improvise on the tune. after the solo, if the audience is so moved, they make their appreciation known with a small round of applause for the musician.

i notice, though, whether it's for special concerts like thursday's or regular gigs, like the tapings for the "mountain stage" music variety show, there's a certain kind of audience member that just grates on my nerves.

they hoot. they holler. they shout their appreciation to the performer.

and it sounds enthusiastic and supportive enough. except for one thing: all the noise seems less about the artist and more about the shouter.

"get a load of me!" "see how smart/sophisticated/cool i am?!" "aren't i special?"

i see lots of regular joes there, folks who want to see their favorite musician, catch something new and different or just see a good show.

it's the idiots with the noisome air about them who drive me batty.

they strike me as so many overly eager, pseudo-intellectual, knee-jerk, quasi-liberal elitists there to make the scene, as if it's needed to prove their culturally sensitive bona fides. (i say this as a pseudo-intellectual, quasi-liberal elitist myself -- but a restrained one.)

dumb thing is it only takes one from an audience of hundreds to attune my ear, like the one mosquito against a backdrop of crickets on a summer night.

too bad you can't shoo them away from these gatherings. or swat them with a rolled-up magazine to make them pipe down.

i have today off

kris and i are taking today and tomorrow off to try and corral wedding things and holiday things.

looking out the front door, it seems a glorious day for a jaunt in the cold, crisp of early december.

the back porch thermometer says 23 -- kinda conducive to maintaining movement, wouldn't you say? i just hope we can get some things done.

and for mornings like this, i have three words: fleece lounge pants.

i wore them in the hour before dawn to take out the trash and felt nary a chill.

they're perfect for comfortware after work, that quick trip to the mailbox or driveway and, indeed, lounging around the house during the cool months.

these are from old navy.

it was 30 years ago today

i stepped in front of a speeding station wagon full of kids, wound up in traction for a month, then a body cast for about three more.

my mom had to make her way through the traffic that backed up from the accident that afternoon to find a small crowd surrounding her firstborn lying unconscious on the road.

i was told she asked "is this my son?" over and over as she approached my still form.

i was 13 when the accident occurred. i was an altar boy and on the school safety patrol. (i actually had my orange patrol boy's badge and belt in my windbreaker pocket when i was hit. irony is funny like that.)

i'm 43 now and have watched my siblings bring these amazing little people into the world. i worry and pray for them every day. none of them are over 5.

looking at my nieces and nephews, i get this hare-brained idea that once they start school, i can worry a little less about them.

i was in 8th grade. i hadn't kissed a girl yet, couldn't drive a car, wasn't living on my own in another city -- all things i've gone on to do in the years since -- and i'm fairly certain my mom still worries about her son.

really, she wasn't yet 40 when she had to deal with one of her children suffering an injury that involved paramedics, a hospital and orthopedic surgery.

and i'm still older than my dad was when he spent that first night in my hospital room to make sure i was tended to.

i'm still befuddled every time one of my nieces pukes on me. i can only imagine the stress it placed on my parents having to watch their boy drifting in and out of consciousness for 24 hours.

i think i've since managed to give them many more sleepless nights from things more consequential -- school, job, life choices, to name a few -- but i'm sure they hope i set a benchmark for drama that they'll never have to approach again.

the day after

West Virginia's Pat White, left, and Steve Slaton, right, sit on the bench late in the second half during a 13-9 loss to Pittsburgh in a college football game Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007 in Morgantown, W.Va. (AP Photo/Jeff Gentner)

the day after the dream died its second death, the sun did indeed come up -- it just didn't come out.

the morning dawned gray and cool and damp, like my mood.

i'm on sports media blackout: no espn, no sports illustrated, no sporting news. the wound is too fresh to risk re-opening it with the cuts from analysis and comment.

before the game, i professed detachment and professed caution, as all wizened mountaineer fans use to innoculate themselves from disappointment, but i still feel sick.

ucla did it to usc last year. and so did stanford this year. why couldn't hapless, crippled pitt do it to us?

everything we needed for a second chance went better than we dared to hope.

we were one game away from playing for the national championship and we couldn't do it. one game.

if we have any such aspirations for next year, we're going to have to win 12 all over again. twelve.

who knows when we'll ever get that close? we were 60 minutes away.

(mom likened it to having the last bite of a savory meal on your fork, then watching it fall to the ground.)

every loss hurts. but when you have top-shelf dreams, the fall from the climb hurts a little more.

these days, the stakes go up with each "big game." i guess that's good because i guess that means our expectations are going up.

aspirations to greatness don't come without pain and sacrifice -- consider this part of our growing pain.

coach rich rodriguez hasn't had a loss like this before -- a painful one from some failure he probably feels responsible for.

but if he's a smart man, he should learn from his mistakes. file this one under "building character," how to face up to crushed expectaions.