Excuses, excuses

It's confession time: I like coffee better than beer. If you put out a pot of dark coffee (or even this new "smooth" Trader Joe's blend I've been drinking lately) and a pitcher of beer — and it could be any beer, Guinness, Samuel Smith, whatever — I would choose the coffee hands down. I could drink coffee in the morning, afternoon and evening. Beer's benefits are plenty: It calms me and makes me feel lovey-dovey; but coffee has never made me sick to my stomach. In fact, coffee keeps me alert and focused. "Hey, Rob, let's drink the hell out of some beer," is a proposition that I'll take nine times out of 10. But if you tempt me with coffee, I'll take it no matter what.

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Right, so it's obvious from the above paragraph that I had no proper lead for this entry, and I didn't want to start it off by writing, "So anyway, … "

So anyway, it's been a long week. "A long week of NOT POSTING ANYTHING," you might mutter under your breath, and it would be true. No, my dog didn't eat my iMac. That's a ridiculous notion, anyway: the dog lives in Florida and she's a vegetarian.

No, this all I ever do at my computer anymore:


Pose for pictures and drink coffee.

No, really, I look at photos, listen to music and compile dozens of playlists of music for Jenn that can't seem to say "I love you" as easily as I can say it over the phone. But there's something about that phrase that doesn't sound as good over the static of cell-phone signals as it does whispered in your ear. But anyway.

Why has it been a long week? Well, aside from a bout of homesickness that's come on, it's been long because I've been working like crazy. Because I'm the FNG, I had to put in seven days in a row. "And since you're the FNG, no one will miss you when you get blown away," my uncle told me, his head obviously in the jungles of Vietnam.

Aside from the long work week, the job has been going pretty well. I feel like I understand CCI, the horrendous pagination system the Globe uses. It's really the worst thing I've ever seen; almost as bad as the first version of DTI that the T-U used when I got there. Everyone seems to be happy with my work, but it's still going to be a challenge to reinvent the section like they want me to. The editors are entrenched in their collective mindset, and the notion of running only four (and not five) stories on the City & Region front still seems like a radical concept (Sunday is the exception). We'll see ... I just have to work hard to convince them to let me try new things, and I'm happy to take on that challenge.

I've been hanging out with my friend from high school, Tom, a lot lately.


He's the one on the left.

It's been great, and I'm happy that our friendship has picked up where we left off. Sadly, the virtual Bartlett's of Simpsons quotations we held in our minds has been replaced by practical knowledge. But we've just realized there are bigger and better things in life. Like The Venture Bros..

The weather has been awesome here. While my poor friends have been steaming in Florida, the temperature here hasn't cracked 70 degrees in the past few days. It's supposed to get up to the 80s tomorrow, but a rainstorm will push it back into the 70s. Paradise, right now. And believe it or not, I'm actually looking forward to the fall and the winter. I've never had a true winter, but I think I'm cut out for it. We'll see, right?

Because it's so nice I'm starting to wonder what the hell I'm doing in my apartment, sitting at this computer, writing in a blog that probably causes most people's eyes to glaze over.

I think I'm going to go for a walk.