Yesterday was a 3K day. That is, I wrote 3,000 words, plus a few more. For purposes of perspective: For my newspaper friends, that’s about 100 inches of copy by most measures. Ambitious novelists strive for 1,000 words a day. Graham Greene used to write something like 487, no more and no less, and knock off for the day even if he had more in him. (Warning: I may be thinking of someone else, but I’m pretty sure it’s Graham Greene.)

And for James Lileks, 3,000 words allows him to barely scratch the surface of his latest strawman takedown.

For a freelancer, 3,000 words is a lot, but not so many when you consider you’re being paid by the word, which gives you the strength to get it done: “Faster! Faster! Our house has been reassessed and we have taxes to pay!” I do recommend light carbs for lunch, however.

While I was smearing my keyboard with my own blood, a kid came to the door. Selling magazines, for some outfit with a name that immediately makes sensible people suspicious — two capital letters separated by an ampersand, plus Enterprises. J&B Enterprises, something like that.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Are you in a crew, traveling around the country by van, sleeping on top of one another in motels? You’re not from around here, are you?”

He nodded. He was from Little Rock, Arkansas. Dressed reasonably well, but a little sour-smelling up close.

“I won’t buy any magazines, because I can’t support the people you’re working for,” I said. “But let me tell you this: If you want to go home, there are numbers you can call. The folks you’re working for are not good people, most likely. You’re not in a safe environment, but you’re an adult, and I guess you can decide for yourself. But just know that if you want out, people can help you.” (Of course, I don’t actually speak in permalinks.)

“How do you know this?” he asked.

“I’m a journalist,” he said. “There have been many stories about these outfits. A bunch of kids were killed in Wisconsin a few years ago, when their van overturned on the freeway.” His eyes widened.

“Are you sure you won’t buy any magazines?” he whined. “I can win a trip.”

“Don’t bet on it,” I said. “Remember, there’s help. Stop back if you want to, and I’ll find you the phone number. And wear your seat belt in that van.”

He didn’t come back. But it’s not often that I get to say, “I’m a journalist” the same way others say “I’m a doctor” or “I’m an FBI agent.” That was amusing.

Do I have bloggage? I have bloggage:

In the Department of the Obvious, Don’t use your cellphone outside in a thunderstorm. Experts agree!

A late-arriving commenter to the thread in which we discussed the sale of my old paper to Ogden Newspapers left a note that most will likely miss, so here it is, front and center:

Ogden owns both of the newspapers in Wheeling, so there’s no real competition. There used to be some competitiveness between the news departments, though. There was pride in writing well and putting out a quality product, especially by the afternoon paper. But when Ogden hired a new general manager – a former advertising guy with no editorial experience whatsoever – all that mattered was the bottom line. Formerly free obits now cost $$$. The two newsroom staffs were, for all practical purposes, merged. No longer was there a separate city editor for each newspaper. Then Ogden bought a few more local papers and was able to eliminate reporters by just taking stories filed for the Steubenville or Martins Ferry newspapers and using them in the Wheeling paper. I left because the pay was so bad and it became evident that management didn’t care one bit about putting out a quality newspaper. I didn’t want my name associated with it.

I repeat: They’ll feel right at home.

As a rule, I’m not a big observer of the Hallmark holidays, and that includes Mother’s Day. I happily accept the homemade cards and macaroni necklaces, but hold the presents and even the brunch and corsage. In this, I hope I’m in alignment with how we treat Father’s Day already.

Poor dad — his holiday arrives after school is dismissed for the year, so no art project. He doesn’t wear corsages, and does any man need another tie or pair of socks? Nope. So last night we opted to take Alan out. Then we made him pick up the check. Fatherhood in a nutshell.

I regret the restaurant, which I recall as scene of several pleasant lunches last summer, was having a bad night. An approaching thunderstorm was snarling the outdoor seating, and the hostesses didn’t seem to know how to handle it. I had to revert to my Big Bitch mode, which I thought was reasonable under the circumstances, and was certainly rewarded, in the sense that the Big Bitch got us seated, finally. Although things didn’t improve from there.

But I won’t bore you. The day was a cavalcade of small irritations, beginning with the sandwich guy at the shop where I bought lunch for our Sunday sail/picnic. I was wearing one of Zach Klein’s clever T-shirts — this one, in fact. It expresses the opinion that Nascar races are boring. The sandwich guy, not a fan, approved.

“A risky sentiment for the Motor City,” I allowed.

“Well, in some parts of the Motor City, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about,” he said, and switching to a mild African American voice, said, “Um, does that have anything to do with basketball?”

The casual racism I hear in this place simply amazes me. (Along with the stupidity. I mean, here I am — a total stranger and a customer, and this maroon assumes I’m down with his program. No wonder he’s making sandwiches.) To my great relief, his fellow sandwich-makers called him on it. Sorta.

“You can’t say that if you’re not from Detroit,” one said. “If you’re from the suburbs you have to shut up.”

“My family owns property in Detroit,” he said, which is not exactly being from the city, is it. The debate went on in somewhat casual fashion, although you could tell his fellow sandwich-ites didn’t have their hearts in it. He was the guy they had to put up with. Even in a sandwich shop, there are guys you have to put up with. It is the Way of the American Workplace, the way of workplaces worldwide. Go to college, kids! The annoying co-workers only get more well-groomed! They still say the same stupid things, however.

Some years ago, I did a bit of moonlighting at a well-known Fort Wayne radio station. (As opposed to the less well-known one I also worked for.) The office bulletin board was a cavalcade of amusements, including whatever 25th-generation photocopied joke was circulation via fax machine at the moment. Many were about President Clinton; one in particular was about the don’t ask/don’t tell policy regarding gays in the military, then in early discussions. It was a crude cartoon showing the “new uniforms for Clinton’s military” — a limp-wristed pansy in a dress with epaulets. We had a gay editor at the newspaper at the time, but even without him, posting something like that on our newsroom bulletin board — yes, even in Fort Wayne — would have gotten you frog-marched to re-education camp so swiftly your little webbed feet would barely touch the ground.

“Do customers and advertisers ever come up here?” I asked the program director. Sure, he said. “Do you ever think that maybe you don’t want stuff like that in public view?” He was agog. What was the problem? It’s like I was objecting to the “Hang in there, baby” poster with the kitty dangling from a branch.

Progress comes slowly, oh so slowly. But it comes.

The day’s final irritation? We planned to go sailing with Kate and one of her friends, and so the wind blew … at 30 knots. Too windy for young children in a small boat. We had our picnic aboard and then went to the pool to watch the lounge chairs blow over. I had a front-row seat for the day’s brightest spot — a floater alert in the shallow end. Good lord, it was funny. They actually roped the area off with yellow police tape while the head lifeguard retrieved the offending Baby Ruth with a long-handled net and another guard emptied it into what looked like a biohazard bag, but probably wasn’t. Still another sprinkled chlorine pellets around the crime scene and the whole area was left to disinfect for an hour or so while the kids ran around shrieking and saying ewwwwwww.

No word on whether the offender was brought to justice.

So, then. Bloggage:

Ah, the peace, quiet and neighborliness of country life.

Finally saw “Good Night, and Good Luck” over the weekend. I was going to write something about it, but it turns out Lance Mannion already did, and echoes my thoughts pretty much exactly, so why bother?

That should keep you occupied for a while.

What a story:

For the fifth time in a week, a stash of drugs was found in a cabinet purchased at a Home Depot store in Massachusetts.

Key word there is “fifth.” And they’re still turning up. Mike Royko Memorial Quote of the Year goes to a local police official, who went waaaaaay out on a limb and pronounced it “a smuggling operation.” Thanks, Chief Wiggum.

The mayor of Fort Wayne is not a career politician, but a career consultant. (Pause to let snickers build.) Yes, and whoever said a consultant is a man who knows 150 ways to make love but can’t find a partner? Got that right. Fort Wayne Observed posts an interview with the mayor, who reveals he’s writing a book. A memoir? No. A crime novel featuring a ruggedly handsome Midwestern mayor who solves mysteries while riding astraddle half the fillies in town and ferreting out corruption in the police union? No. You ready?

“It’s a handbook on how mayors and county executives can use Lean Six Sigma to improve city government.�?

Try to contain your excitement.

I was in town when this guy was elected, and he was all Six Sigma-ing then. I did my research, and honestly, could never understand precisely what Six Sigma was other than some sort of management cult of excellence that boils down to “do the best job you can, and everything will work out.” The more research I do, the more confused I become. Just a random example: The “5 Laws of Lean Six Sigma” starts with zero and ends with four. Huh. It seems to sorta explain this with Law Zero:

Law 0: The Law of the Market – Customer Critical to Quality defines quality and is the highest priority for improvement, followed by ROIC (Return On Invested Capital) and Net Present value. It is called the Zeroth law as it is the base on which others are built.

No, I don’t know how this guy got elected, either, except that the first time out he ran against a scary Republican sheriff who had based his prior career on loudly proclaiming what a mess the city was, in comparison to the Eden of the surrounding county. Astonishingly, this didn’t play well with city residents when he finally rented an apartment within the city limits and declared his candidacy. After that, it was all about the incumbency. People in Fort Wayne like to find a rut and stick with it. A few might even understand Six Sigma.

Bloggage:

I’m declaring today Joke Quote Day. Did someone claim June 15 for funnin’ and not tell me? How else to explain Britney Spears, following her long tradition of imitating celebrities bigger than herself, announcing she’s taking her pregnancy to Namibia? And this can’t be a real, verifiable statement, can it?

“Kevin has always been a fan of African-American culture, I’m sure he’ll feel at home there, rapping with all the natives. Besides, there’s lots of quiet unpaved roads where Sean Preston and I can go driving.”

Or this?

“(Namibia is) on the ocean and there’s lots of sand. So if Sean Preston fell off his swing and landed on his head, there’s less chance he would be hurt and we’d have those snoops from child welfare up our butts all the time.”

And certainly not this?

“I heard that Namibia has laws that let celebrities say whether or not journalists are allowed in the country. That’s so important, even more important than getting the same villa that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt had.”

Even the Free Press is in on the fun. A bit local story here is about a 16-year-old from some upstate burg who disappeared a few days ago and turned up…in Amman, Jordan. She headed there to marry a man she met via MySpace. Guy calls himself Abdullah Psycho. She was stopped short of this willful entry into white slavery, and is now described as “in seclusion.” Fortunately for us, though, Abdullah Psycho’s mom speaks English and is giving interviews:

“She was going to sign a marriage contract as soon as she got here,” she told the Associated Press, adding that she told Lester to “bring a pink dress for the engagement party and a white dress for the wedding. She wanted to convert to Islam and wear the head covering and live with us and adopt our culture,” she said.

I ask you: How is a book about Six Sigma and better government going to sell in a media environment like this?

Finally, not a joke, but recommended: Emily Yoffe’s affectionate tribute to parenthood, in Slate: In our society parents do a wonderful job of portraying the difficulties of having children: the financial burdens, the time drain, the guilt, the exhaustion. But we do a lousy job of getting across something else about parenthood: It’s fun! When you are experiencing parenthood from the inside, there is an overwhelming pleasure in the funny, fascinating things your children do. When my daughter was 2, she put her arms around me as I was kissing her goodnight and said to me, “Mommy, you’re a wonderful husband.” That was better than any of the movies I hadn’t been to since she was born.

Yep. The other day I dropped an aggravated F-bomb — that is, the F was an intensfier for another obscenity — while talking of the day’s events with my husband, unaware Kate was not upstairs, but reading quietly in the next room. “Mo-om,” she said, disapprovingly. And yet still, I’m expecting a good report card. The little buggers are more resilient than we think — more good news!

A Lovely Week in June continues for the forseeable future, but I still have work to do. And the new cell phone arrived yesterday and I realized I have no idea how to use it. So I’m off for a bike ride and a briefing session at the Cingular store before school lets out for summer in…two hours. Best get moving.

Join me in progress later today. It’s just too nice a morning to spend another unpaid second of it at a keyboard. After the bike ride, maybe.

I’ve been meaning to post this thing forever; it ran two weeks ago in the NYT’s sports magazine, Play.

It’s a story about a 12-year-old pitcher — “arguably as close to being a professional baseball player as a 12-year-old can be” — on an elite travel team in Florida. The story’s quite long, but equally readable, and is about lots of things — the blurring boundaries between child’s play and adult expectations, the care and feeding of a promising young athlete, etc. To say it pressed every button I had would be an understatement, starting with the opening paragraph:

Jarrod Petree has spent his whole life throwing. The first things he threw, according to his mother, were assorted toys and a fair amount of food from the highchair. Before long, he moved on to throwing balls. Some babies, of course, are throwers. But from the very start, Jarrod had an especially determined arm. At least this is the view taken by his father, Tim, who played Division II baseball at the Florida Institute of Technology in the late 80’s, graduating only a few years before his son was born: the kid basically arrived on earth wanting to throw.

The kid’s parents don’t come across as drooling villains, but it’s hard not to notice the rationalization, the Earl “Training a Tiger” Woods School of Self-Justification, isn’t it? “We had no choice in this! He threw toys and food from his highchair! Clearly he was born to be a pitcher! It’s our job to guide him to his goals!” Uh-huh. I had a baby who vigorously threw food from her highchair, too, and I never mistook the impulse for a burning desire to play major-league baseball, but then, she was a girl and I wasn’t a college baseball player, either. So there you go.

Again, these parents don’t strike me as bad people. It’s my devout wish that they read this story and saw themselves whole for the first time — well-meaning parents who have nevertheless set in motion a program designed to chew up their son and spit him out before he’s old enough to buy a beer:

Because of his arm, and because of his team, Jarrod has a list of things that he won’t do, or can’t do, by decree of his parents, who are usually thinking ahead to the next baseball game. He will not, for example, jump on a trampoline. When his friends from school hold their birthday parties at a rock-climbing facility, Jarrod does not go. He does not play pickup basketball at school, and if it is the week before a tournament, he sits out of gym class. If he goes swimming in the backyard pool, he’s careful not to get sunburned or tired out. He is not allowed to skateboard or ride a scooter.

“He rides his bike,” Lori interjected. “Just not a lot.” Then she sighed, adding, “I know we sound psycho, but we’re not.”

Keeping a 12-year-old off a bicycle? Who would find that psycho, mom?

I know there are children out there who are preternaturally talented in many things — music, art, sports. I’m sure it’s a struggle, as a parent, to find the balance between supportive encouragement and just plain pushiness. As adults, we know what these talents can mean in one person’s life — the riches, both monetary and otherwise, they can bestow. If you could choose a life of wealth, fame and world travel for your child, vs. one of being a crime-lab specialist or phys-ed teacher (Jarrod’s backup career choice), who wouldn’t go with Door No. 1? How do you find the right path there?

Of course there’s a dark side, alas:

Overuse injuries — particularly in the elbows and shoulders of young pitchers — are indeed becoming epidemic. Orthopedists often blame coaches and parents for failing to monitor how many pitches kids are throwing and for not giving them time to rest their arms. They also view breaking balls — particularly the curveball — as placing undue stress on the soft growth plates in the arm, which do not harden until a child reaches puberty. Glenn Fleisig, the research director of the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., has studied pitching mechanics for more than 10 years. He and his colleagues have come up with two basic recommendations, both of which are widely ignored across travel baseball: young players should take at least four months off per year, and nobody should throw a curveball before he’s old enough to shave.

Dr. Timothy Kremchek, the medical director for the Cincinnati Reds, specializes in an elbow-ligament reconstruction procedure commonly known as Tommy John surgery, named for the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher who first underwent it, in 1974. There was a time when the surgery was reserved for aging professional pitchers, says Kremchek, but today, with young players pitching more games over extended seasons, the average age of his patients is quickly lowering. “I’m seeing 15 to 30 kids a year who are younger than 11 years old and in need of surgery,” he says. “It’s unheard of.” He maintains that there is currently a shortage of skilled pitchers in Major League Baseball because too many promising young players have self-destructed “trying to get to the Hall of Fame when they were 10 or 11.”

By the way, Jarrod throws curveballs. Is there parental rationalization at work? Why, of course: Tim insists that Jarrod, who has been honing his curve since he was 10, throws a less taxing form of the pitch in which the curve originates from his wrist and not his elbow.

Ohhhh-kay.

I wish the kid luck. Lots of it. He’s going to need it all.

While we’re on a sports-bloggage theme, I liked this Michael Miner column in the Chicago Reader, about how lame-ass American newspapers cover soccer:

As the World Cup gets under way in Germany, American journalists are talking to their readers as if they were unbaptized children. We have Hundley going on about war-torn Angola “carrying the pride of an entire continent,�? the “joyful samba�? that’s the Brazilian style of play, and even the “sons of immigrants and the sons of suburban soccer moms�? who form the up-and-coming American squad. We have Steven Stark and Harry Stark explaining in the Inquirer that one can see in the Italian team “some of the attributes that gave birth to the Renaissance�? and in the English team “what helped give rise to the industrial revolution and the wasted cities it left behind.�? If soccer’s not the church you worship at, all this is ecstatic gibberish. Or hilarious overwriting.

Note well: Every person I know who follows soccer does so by reading an overseas newspaper or watching satellite television. And the country gets more soccer-fied every year. While American sportswriters yammer about the Renaissance.

So how was your weekend? Mine was lovely. I bought a Swiffer. It was thrilling to use on my new wood floor, and restored my faith in Swifferdom. (To recap: The dusters work beyond your wildest dreams, but the WetJet is a waste of money.) Is there a cleaning product I’m not a sucker for? Yes. The battery-operated toilet brush. Show me a person too squeamish to scrub out a toilet with the old-fashioned long-handled brush and I’ll show you someone who has some Germ Issues. I don’t have germ issues. I expect bacteria to bloom everywhere, and it doesn’t bother me. I make war on gunk, dust and dog hair. If it’s visible, it’s my enemy. I don’t have time to worry about the invisible stuff.

We also saw “Cars.” Loved it. Every year, Pixar shows the rest of the animated moviemaking world how it’s done. Every year, the rest of that world fails to learn the lesson. One of these days, maybe.

And so the week begins. Last one of the school year. Ah, me.

The iPod shuffled and dealt a particularly amusing set for today’s bike ride, ranging from the Amboy Dukes to Judy Garland. But the highlight was Peggy Lee singing “Fever.” Everybody knows that one, but I’d forgotten this middle verse:

Romeo loved Juliet, Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her, he said “Julie baby you’re my flame”
Thou givest fever, when we kisseth, fever with thy flaming youth
Fever – I’m afire, fever yea I burn forsooth.

They just don’t write ’em like that anymore.

The other day — this was something I did during the Wood Chipper Symphony — I finally bit the bullet and set about upgrading my cell phone. The battery on my old Nokia candy bar has started to fail and it sometimes rings spontaneously (Phonesheimer’s disease), so what the hell. I swiftly discovered the problem with the upgrade, which is that you can’t just upgrade your phone, you also have to upgrade your plan.

Screw that. I don’t use the pathetic, 2003-era rock-bottom allotment of minutes I buy now. Why pay $10 more a month for more unused minutes? My local Cingular retailer suggested that while he couldn’t approve such un-American frugality, surely it could be grandfathered in via telephone. And he was right, it could. It took 40 minutes on the phone. I explained three times what I wanted. Each time I was told sure, no problem, we can do that, and then, after a consultation with “a supervisor,” alas it was no longer possible. I insisted, and approval would be passed further up the line. I believe it was finally resolved in my favor just short of the CEO’s office.

I got the pink Razr. Or will, eventually. They picked up shipping and handling, I agreed to another two-year service contract. I paid more than the website offered, far less than full retail. It was a classic give-a-little-get-a-little compromise.

Two things I discovered: After all these years, it turns out my old phone could send and receive text messages; and my new phone will play Warren Zevon’s “A Certain Girl” as a ringtone. Or, for that matter, Mahalia Jackson, singing “Go Tell it on the Mountain.” Someone told me the other day that ringtones were a $600 million yearly business, and I scoffed. I think I owe someone an apology.

OK, then: After the Plan B fiasco, I can hardly believe the FDA didn’t cave again on the cervical-cancer vaccine, but cave they didn’t, and so we have ourselves a happy day. The next big fight will be over mandatory vaccination, but for now, can we relax and congratulate ourselves for being adults, for a change? I plan to.

Few of us will live a life like Lula Hardaway, better known as Stevie Wonder’s mother. But I suspect we can all take some inspiration from it. Noted: She was known for her barbecue sauce and peach cobbler.

Have a good weekend. Like good Detroiters, we’re off to see “Cars.”

Why does lawn care have to be so noisy?

Yesterday: A crew was taking down a tree about half a block away, probably yet another standing-dead casualty of the emerald ash borer. Chain saws and chippers were my afternoon’s soundtrack. Today, moments ago, the lawn-service crew arrived next door. Two mowers and two weed whippers sing as one. Next will be the blower.

I’m choosing not to be bugged by this. (It took me years to figure out that you could do that.) Although they’d better be done in the next 20 minutes.

(One minute later) And just like that, they’re done. Is that a chickadee I hear outside? Ah, sweet summer.

Really. The ghost of Possible Full-Time Employment is starting to haunt this address again, and once again, timing is all. If the damn thing would show up in January, that would be one thing, but there’s sure something sweet about freelancing in June. I’m writing this in a tank top that shows my bra straps, gym shorts and bare feet. The chickadee was just joined by a cardinal. Soon my daughter will be home from school, and maybe I’ll take her to the pool, and maybe I’ll keep working. An office isn’t much of a lure on a day like this. But for some reason I rarely get job feelers when I’m feeling lonely and poor and stuck inside my little home-office cage.

I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve spent too much time today writing, rewriting and throwing away a few notes about the sale of my old paper. The throwing away always comes after I tell myself it’s time to move on and I don’t care about the place anymore (not entirely true). Thankfully, late in the day I was saved by a reader:

I feel really bad for your old colleagues in Fort Wayne. Grit is the least of Ogden Newspapers’ problems.

This is a sad day for Fort Wayne, I think. The only positive is that Ogden does know how to operate in two-newspaper towns (Wheeling, W.Va., for instance), so it probably has every intention of keeping the N-S alive. The downside is that it’s liable to be a shell of a newspaper.

P.S. It’s already a shell of a newspaper, compared to what it was. They’ll feel right at home.

A brief breather in yet another Busy Period, which means I will have to fit blogging into a schedule of actual paying work, as opposed to the make-work work I do for myself in the name of research. Like? Like flying, via Google Earth, over the coastline of Grosse Pointe Shores, to see the accretion.

The what? The accretion, the silt and vegetation buildup along the western Lake St. Clair shoreline. Not long after we moved here, someone told me the lake would make a lot more sense if I didn’t think of it as a lake at all, but rather a river delta, a very wide spot in a watery road between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. We have a map of the entire Great Lakes watershed in our living room now, and there’s a diagram showing the lakes in cutaway. Superior, Huron, Michigan area all deep trenches in the earth. Lake St. Clair is a dinner plate. It holds less water, so water moves through it faster. It’s also smack in the middle of a densely populated area, which means lots of recreational boaters, which means lots of docks. Some years ago, one of the Grosse Pointe municipal parks expanded their marina and blocked off their existing flow-throughs.

Well. If you’ve visited the water-play feature at a children’s science museum, you know what happens when you block moving water. It backs up. Gunk in the water settles. Thus, accretion. It’s the result of some natural phenomena — low water levels being the most obvious — but mostly that of the man-made sort. In fact, the longer it goes on, the more people look at it and say hmm, the more fingers point to a couple of specific construction projects in years past that started the problem and continue to aggravate it.

But here’s the thing. The accretion is happening in front of some of the area’s most expensive homes, in Grosse Pointe Shores. And so the local weekly is covering it and covering it and covering it, and printing letters from angry homeowners saying their property values are eroding (even as their property is, technically, expanding, which is sort of an interesting irony when you think about it) and they want it all dredged out. This will, of course, cost millions of dollars, and if the government won’t pay, then everyone in the community should pay (some say), because declining property values are everyone’s problem, etc. etc.

This creates more problems too boring for non-residents to give a fig about, so I’ll spare you. But another irony of this problem is that because this stretch of waterfront is entirely blocked from view by the expensive homes, if you don’t live there, you can’t even see it. (This could all be an elaborate plot to get ordinary taxpayers to finance what is, in actuality, a private waterfront theme park.) The chances of some plutocrat giving me a walking tour of his front lawn is unlikely, so I figured I’d fly in via Google Earth.

Google Earth is very cool. Download it today.

Because I’ve been wasting time on things other than web-surfing, only a single item of bloggage today, and that is A Thing I Will Regret On My Deathbed: That I didn’t spend 6/6/06 in Hell, Michigan.

Enjoy the heavenly day.

The thing about freelancing is, I told a fellow freelancer (translation, not journalism) yesterday, it has the predictability of rain. You can usually see what’s coming three days out, maybe, but you can never discount the possibility of a random cloudburst. All you can do is pack an umbrella and train your family to get their own damn dinner once in a while.

Which is my own lame excuse for not posting anything yesterday. I drove, for a story, to a suburb not considered particularly exurban, by Detroit standards. The core of the village was distinctly rural-gone-upmarket, which is to say, a strip of storefronts that once held dry goods and hardware and other needs of a farming populace, but now feature boutique fashions and a bar where you can get a salad featuring dried cherries.

(Dried cherries are the quintessential Michigan goes-with-anything ingredient. They’re always turning up in salads and stuffed into chicken breasts or swimming around in a white sauce. Good think I like them. I believe California went through a phase like this with jicama.)

Anyway, this town, thoroughly suburbanized, not considered all that far out? Was, from my front door, 50 miles away. I guess Los Angeles sprawls that much, and a few other cities. But I couldn’t help but think that if I’d left my house in Indiana and driven 50 miles north or south, I’d either be a) halfway to Indianapolis; or b) at the Michigan border.

By the time I got home I was behind on the rest of the day’s activities, so I elected to be productive rather than bloggy. I’m trying to limit my online time, with some success, but not enough. I’ve subscribed to all my fave blogs’ RSS feeds, which helps a lot, even though the updating is a bit…slow. But really, does one need to haunt Romenesko like a stalker? I don’t think so, even as I tell myself I’m only doing it to see if my ex-employer has been sold yet. Eventually I will get another job, and won’t be able to read the entire internet before lunch and call it “research.” Time to start weaning.

One other thing that happened this week: I saw Bob Seger’s boat, or one of them. Entirely unremarkable to the untrained eye, by the way. Kid Rock would be disappointed, as it doesn’t even remotely match his fantasy to buy a yacht with a flag saying, “Chillin’ the most,” and rock that bitch up and down the coast. Bob’s a serious, serious competitive sailor, which means when he’s rocking this bitch up and down the coast, he’s flying Kevlar sails and no cocktail flags. “He’s hardcore,” said my guide. “Always the last to come out of the water in the fall. If he can, he goes sailing on Thanksgiving morning.” In Detroit. Respect.

So, bloggage:

I’ve been to an Ikea store before. It was OK, but didn’t seem like the sort of place you’d need a traffic cop for, just to manage the teeming millions. But what do I know? Not bloody much, evidently: In Staughton, Mass., the 2003 opening of an Ikea store created such massive traffic jams on local freeways that extra police were brought in to keep the situation from getting out of hand. In Dallas, customers camped in the store’s parking lot awaiting the opening of a new Ikea; resulting traffic jams lasted most of the week.

Swedish modern — the new crack.

My current congressman — congresswoman — is a jerk. My last congressman — congressweasel — is worse.

Are all law professors/bloggers fatuous twits? Lance Mannion dissects Ann Althouse.

And that’s it for me, for now.