“It’s like this — your family, your wife, won’t let you go out and pick up girls. But you went out and did it anyway,” Mr. Guan said. “Secret flying is like secret love. You do it, you don’t tell people about it.”

China’s Rich Try to Fly Around Red Tape – New York Times, May 19, 2011

EAAAAAGH. I’m sipping on something resembling the unholy union of motor oil and maple syrup.

This is espresso. Or that’s what I ordered. I’ve given up on coffee; too acidic and just too… caffeinated. Yes, espresso has less caffeine in an average serving than a small cup of drip coffee.

Due to the convenient walk from my apartment, Starbucks is where I intake this concoction. I don’t usually mess with the burnt roasts of their classic coffees, but I’ve found no fault with their espresso. Until now.

My mind is being pulled like taffy, Gumby tortured on a rack, then left rotting in a Dali painting. I’m at Copper River Coffee & Tea in Peoria and this espresso is decidedly different. Thick crema and surprisingly little water pours from a La Marzocco beast, with an aftertaste that mows through nerves on the back of my tongue. What the hell have I been mucking around with until now? Watered-down Bud Light?

This is shocking and will require adjustments. I’m not alone. Have you had a similar experience?

It’s official: I’m not laid off.

The Journal Star is a rare newsroom governed by seniority when cuts are made, as stipulated in our Newspaper Guild contract. I’ve been there almost 6 years – an eternity in print time – but have been left at the bottom of the heap by the departures of younger coworkers.

I was saved on Good Friday in 2010. Today, I was saved on Friday the 13th. Each time, numerous senior colleagues stepped forward to voluntarily face the guillotine. These rolling heads have saved my own.

We’re all acutely aware of reality, that the blood runs freely at every newspaper. Mine is not unique. Each time the ax swings through our newsroom, I duck; I’m a tall man, after all. That swift execution can come on any day of any week of any year. I no longer know the meaning of future plans.

And yet I stay! I persist, much like this infamous cat. I’m not masochistic, but could I convince you otherwise? I will admit that there’s less celebration this second time around. I don’t want to become “good” at this. While my love for newspapers is eternal, we need to hug this out before someone gets hurt.

– No 30 –

I made the desolate trek across Iowa to spend Turkey Day with friends in Nebraska. We know nothing about birds.

So much has been written already, but I still feel the urge to add to the pile.

Sunday night, fresh from emergency grocery shopping with my neighbor/friend/coworker, I noticed several tweets by prominent WH network correspondents in my timeline. Each emphasizing the unusualness of Obama calling a presser at 11pm eastern on a Sunday.

I checked NYTimes.com and found zilch. And yet here was Twitter, sputtering to life with accounts of large media organizations calling their hotshots to the White House – “just come in” and “get to work” were common refrains.

I’m a dude without cable TV, so I texted my neighbor to ask if I could hop downstairs to watch the presser. A flurry of texts flew from my phone to alert friends and family, and the great Internet machine ramped into high gear. Read midway through this AP story for some fascinating traffic statistics.

Despite knowing that the announcement would be related to national security, I distinctly remember being anxious. And that I was munching on a bowl of cereal – my dinner for the night. I looked at my neighbor, and she seemed unnerved, too. Here we are, newspaper people, worried about the unknown.

I’m not even sure what we were worried about. But “national security” is a big umbrella, one that can hold “aliens have landed” as easily as it can fit “we’ve started another war.”

So we watched her television, smartphones in hand, and nervously laughed at CNN’s desperate attempt to hold our attention for lengthy periods of pure speculation. Twitter was desperate with attempts at snarky humor, while Facebook was a bit more measured. Both were unrelenting. I decided drinks were in order, so I ran back upstairs to my apartment and looked for something to toast with – anything, really – and settled on an almost empty bottle of Captain Morgan and two tiny espresso cups.

By this point, crowds began celebrating outside the White House in a way normally reserved for Super Bowl victories. An important realization was reached: neither of us own American flags.

Obama finally spoke, confirmed the news and we quietly clinked cups.

____

Fast-forward to Monday morning at 6 a.m.: I did not get enough sleep. I needed espresso and newspapers. The first is successful, but the second fails unnecessarily. Starbucks had the New York Times, alright, but it was an early national edition sans any bin Laden mention.

I was able to find both a Tribune and Sun-Times later in the day. The Trib chose to hold presses for 2 hours after 1st edition, with editors saying “skip the deadline.”

At work, I immediately set about pushing updated wire reports onto our homepage and packaging it in a way that looked clean and pretty. It’s a difficult task with our Zope CMS system, seemingly developed to tie our hands behind our backs at every turn. I resorted to CSS trickery with negative values and other non-kosher remedies.

Our print edition was striking, one of the few Journal Star fronts that made me want to smash the glass in the single-copy box out of news hunger. Cutting the typical skybox promos let the nameplate float to the very top, leaving plenty of room for a nice, fat 1.75″ screaming head across 6 columns. Kudos to Shannon Countryman, who had to blow up A1 that night like hundreds of other copy editors around the country. Our 11:50 p.m. off-the-floor deadline was delayed until after 12:30 a.m.

Tuesday’s budget had 7 local stories by 6 reporters slated, not including countless wire reports. One of our copy editors said she was in “folo hell.”