July 05, 2008
Cuts at work
Now that my paper's top editor has written about it, I finally feel comfortable sharing something that's been on my mind for the past couple of weeks. My newspaper, like nearly every other daily newspaper in an urban or suburban area in the United States, is struggling, and more people are going to lose their jobs.
We cut 30 jobs in February, 19 through layoffs and 11 through attrition. Three of these people were in the newsroom, the rest were spread across the company. The bosses told us in late June that we will have to cut more, but they haven't yet been specific. My uninformed guess is that 8 to 10 people in our 50-some person newsroom will go, and another 20 or so jobs across the paper will also be cut. This is pure speculation.
Nationwide, newspapers have cut more than 6,000 jobs since Jan. 1, 2008. Layoffs are accelerating as the year progresses, with more than 900 jobs cut in the last week of June alone.
A newsroom mentor and other talented hard-working people went on unemployment following the last round of my paper's layoffs. Talented reporters from other papers, people I know through my participation in the Society for Professional Journalists, have been laid off or demoted. Half the names that made me want to get into this business in the first place took buyouts at the Washington Post in May. Thinking about it all makes me choke up.
Here's a map showing many of the cuts, though I know of layoffs that aren't included.
So how am I coping? I'm in mourning for my industry, I'm scared about the long-term prospects for my career. I'm also oddly calm about my immediate future.
At first I was so scared I could barely do my job. Then I went camping in Yosemite with Ben and his family. I talked about it too much there, made dark jokes, speculated about a thousand possible new careers. We came back home, and nightmares ruined my sleep for several days.
I'm not equipped for prolonged emotional turmoil, however.
I love my job, and if I lose it I'll be heartbroken. In the meantime, I'm going to keep loving it. I'm going to keep striving every day to transform myself into the best reporter that I can become. I'm taking a class on databases, because I think that it will help me with that goal. I'm working hard. I can't fix all that's broken about newspapers, but maybe I can make my small contribution to the industry a little bit more vital.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:24 AM | Comments (2)
July 04, 2008
Three days of pizza
This is day three of Pizza Week, my seven-day pizza eating challenge. So far I'm doing fine and not feeling gross or anything. To recap, I've challenged myself to eat pizza every day for a week as a test of my belief that I can do just that.
On day one, I had gross mall pizza for lunch and really great Stark Naked cheese pizza for dinner. Yesterday, day two, I had a lunch of left-over Stark Naked cheese. Today I had more Stark Naked for lunch, but this time I needed a break from cheese so I got a weird pineapple and jalapeno slice and then picked off all the jalapenos because it was too hot for me.
Tomorrow I think I need a break from my three day Stark Naked streak. Maybe I'll have a slice of Pizza Schmizza. If Ben's not sick of being my Pizza Week sidekick, I may even try to convince him to head to BJ's for dinner for some deep dish Chicago style pies.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2008
I hurt so bad
In my neck, my upper back, my lower back, my shoulders, my right wrist and at least one of my ankles. And I don't know why.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2008
Pizza
Last night I was up past midnight, which is to say I was up way past my bedtime, when I developed a craving for pizza. I knew I couldn't have any, as there was none in the house and it was time for bed.
So I typed a crazed and sleep deprived scream and posted it to an online community associated with my college:
I WANT PIZZA! ALL DAY EVERY DAY! I CAN'T REMEMBER A DAY IN MY RECENT LIFE (PAST 10 YEARS) WHEN I DIDN'T CRAVE PIZZA DURING ANY GIVEN 24-HOUR PERIOD. YET SOMEHOW I EAT IT LESS THAN ONCE A WEEK. IS THIS A GOOD THING, A TESTAMENT TO MY SELF CONTROL AND HEALTHY EATING HABITS? IS THIS A BAD THING, THAT SUCH A PRIMAL URGE GOES UNFULFILLED? IS THIS A LIE, CONSIDERING THE NUMBER OF BREAD-SPAGHETTI SAUCE-MOZZARELLA OR (MEXICAN VERSION) BREAD-SALSA-CHEDDAR COMBOS I EAT EVERY WEEK? HOW STRICT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF PIZZA?
(Ben also likes pizza, as has been chronicled, but his love of the food is perhaps more moderate than mine.
)
By this morning, many people had responded to my crazed appreciation for pizza, most of them expressing their own feelings of deep appreciation for it. One person said she had taken this love of pizza too far: "(My husband)and I also blithely assumed that we could 'eat pizza every day.' So we made a bet with one another, which we called Pizza Week. We had to eat pizza every single day for a week, and twice on Sunday. We barely made it, and didn't have pizza at all for probably 2 months after that experience."
Rather than accept the lesson of another's painful experience, I have chosen to take that anecdote as a challenge. This woman and her husband could not survive Pizza Week. That leaves to me the task of proving that it can be done.
As soon as I realized my mission, my stomach began to grumble. It was nearly lunch time, so I headed to the mom-and-pop slice shop at a decaying mall near my office and ordered a slice of cheese.
It was bad. Not completely bad - this was moderately palatable pizza - but there wasn't much flavor or texture and it was a disappointing slice.
That's when I knew I'd have to have more pizza for dinner. A fresh slice of quality pie to blot out the memory of the afternoon's disappointments.
After work, I headed to Stark Naked Pizza and ordered three slices. One for me, one for Ben, one for lunch tomorrow.
I'm not saying I could - or would want to - eat pizza for every meal of every day. But a slice a day for a week seems doable, enjoyable even, at least today, Wednesday, day one of the challenge.
Pizza Week will be over in six days. Until then, one question remains: Will I conquer the pizza, or will it conquer me?
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2008
My first encounter with databases.
My first encounter with databases came in about 1990, when my parents bought an exciting computer, a new-to-us operating system called Windows and a huge hard drive – 30 megs! My dad wanted all the bells and whistles, so he bought a text-based database program along with a lot of other software. We had about 200 VHS tapes of various shows and movies my parents had recorded off of TV.
My dad gave a number, 1 to 200, to each tape, then spent many hours over several weeks popping them into the VCR and fast forwarding at high speed to see what the tape contained. He created a database that contained the tape number, what TV shows or movies were on that tape, and under which category it fell (category examples included “miniseries,” “kids TV,” “kids movie” “romance movie,” etc.). It was an extremely useful tool for several years, because we could get on the computer and quickly find out where a particular movie was stored, or we could just search by category when we didn’t know what we wanted to watch, and pick and choose that way.
Eventually we got a new computer, and the software didn’t work on it. For years, we continued to refer to decaying reams of paper that contained the printed index of our movie library. Then gradually the VHS tapes lost their magnetism, the world moved on to DVDs, and the first database I encountered became obsolete.
(Cut and paste from the "introduce yourself" section of my database class' first assignment, which I stayed up late tonight to complete.)
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:33 PM | Comments (1)
June 30, 2008
Things I will not do tonight.
These are some of the things I will not do tonight:
* Put away the iron and ironing board, shred old bills and file new ones, round up the recycling and put it in the bin where it belongs.
* Empty the dishwasher and fill it again, wash the dishes that are too big to fit, dig in the fridge for whatever is making that smell.
* Search the Web for database facts, type my homework, submit it the day before it's due.
* Eat vegetables or anything else I deem unnecessarily healthy.
* Consider the environmental effects of my decisions when I crank up the dial on our window-unit air conditioner.
* Upload the photos from my vacation.
* Finish the project I brought home from work.
* Vacuum.
* Water the tomatoes.
* Brew beer.
* Respond to e-mails, answer the phone, correspond with friends.
Instead, I will stay cool, drink beer, eat carbohydrates drenched in butter.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)
California
A sign of what's to come?
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:38 AM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2008
What would I be if I weren't a reporter?
Ben and I have put off buying new windows for at least a year, in part because of the bleak outlook for newspaper employment and possibly my career. A growing number of people I actually know has been laid off, demoted, bought out or encouraged to retire. I think - I hope - my job is safe. But I'm not fully confident of it. Here are the details of almost 1,000 newspaper jobs eliminated in the past week across the country. So we're saving money, not spending it, and I'm going through a lot of unpleasant what ifs.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)
The return
Ben and I are back in Portland. The cats are alive and well, the tomato plants are thriving, the house is as messy as ever, and we have bills to pay, deadlines looming, obligations left and right. Soon I hope to upload the photos I took with my cell phone in Yosemite, but first I have to play some catch-up with the life that's been on hold for most of the past week.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2008
Going Yosemite way
Back Sunday. Until then, expect no blogging from me. And no comment approval. Internet access will be limited. Yee haw.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:09 PM | Comments (2)
June 23, 2008
Cross your eyes
I recently picked up the manuscript I wrote in 30 days in November. I thought I'd start to revise it. It's the story of a young man who abandons San Francisco after September 11, 2001, filled with bleak despair, and who decides to build a life for himself in a central Iowa town when his car breaks down there. Then wild bears attack, wreaking havoc on the town and wrenching Neil Harmonica out of his malaise. The townspeople fight off the bears, and Neil finds meaning in life and falls in love along the way. I've come to the conclusion that it may not be worth revision.
On Sunday, Dan suggested I consider a different approach to writing. Perhaps a thinly fictionalized memoir exaggerated to comic effect, in the vein of David Sedaris. I rejected the idea, because my life has always been pretty boring. The more I think about it, though, the more I think that Dan's suggestion may be a better use of my writerly impulses.
Chapter One will start before my birth, when my protagonist's mom starts moving furniture and then crosses her eyes at the command of her Thai nurse. Because that's how it really happened, or close enough.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:22 PM | Comments (4)
June 20, 2008
Going to bed
I'm up too late just for the sake of staying up, and it's making me tired. It feels too hot to sleep, but when I go to bed it won't be too hot, because there's a portable window unit blowing cold air into the closed-door bedroom right now. I should go to bed. Or at least shut off the computer.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2008
Community college and Yosemite camping
Today I signed up for an intro-level class on data modeling in SQL through the community college. Might as well learn something new, right? I e-mailed the professor to see if it would be OK to miss the first class. If it's not, I'll drop the class and try again in the fall. No way am I missing out on the upcoming camping trip to Yosemite.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2008
Short-sighted, compulsive and in love with what I do
What would you do if you found yourself in a dying industry? Would you leave? Would you stick it out to the bitter end? What if you loved it even as it died? Would you take a class here and there, "How to build lifeboats" outside the 9-to-5 obligations of your job as a deckhand on the Titanic? Or would you instead work un-clocked overtime, bailing water as the ocean rose?
I'm in a profoundly sick industry, and I don't know what to do. I know what I am doing, what I think I will continue to do for as long as I have a job. I've decided to stick with ink and paper for as long as ink and paper sticks with me. But I don't know how long that's going to be, or whether I'm making the right decision.
In my time as a business reporter, I've met folks who saw the warning signs as they headed to the mill, the smelter, the assembly line. They kept making paper, aluminum, trucks, whatever, until the money ran out and their livelihoods evaporated. Then they had to choose between spartan early retirements, entry-level crap wages in low-skill jobs, or a return to school for training as something completely new.
Maybe whatever happens next for me will help me have even greater empathy for America's manufacturing workers who have already suffered so much because of the bottom line.
News has become untethered from the things that once paid its way. Subscriptions once covered the costs of distributing a newspaper, the number of papers sold justified the price of advertising, and the advertising dollars covered the costs of gathering the news. Now fewer people are buying news, advertisers are paying less or just not coming to us at all, and newspapers across America are in financial shock.
Revenues have been falling for years, but the decline seems to have escalated in recent months as help wanteds and real estate ads have evaporated with the down economy. Who's hiring, after all? Who's buying houses?
My newspaper laid people off this year. Folks I know from the Society for Professional Journalists also got the ax. Dozens of Oregonian employees have accepted buy outs since late last year. More than 100 journalists, half of the people who made me fall in love with newspapers, took early retirements from the Washington Post in May.
The bad news about the newspaper business is concrete and relentless.
Yet when I dream about the future, I dream about digging deep to find the meaning behind the surface, writing well-told and illuminating tales, finding new stories and new ways to tell them.
When I think about continuing education, I think about taking accounting to improve as a business reporter, Web development classes to learn better ways to present my work online, writing workshops to hold the words together better. If I take an economics class, it's so I can better interpret economics for my readers, not so I can become an economist some day.
Should I be thinking about this differently? Hedging my bets more thoroughly now, while I still have a paycheck? I'm not worried that my job is in any immediate risk, I don't mean to imply that it is. If I start now, though, I could theoretically work my way towards a new career so that I'm ready if the day ever comes that I do need to seek a new job. Maybe I should be volunteering somewhere, earning a master's degree, something.
Unless I find a "something" that moves me as much as what I'm already doing every day, though, I think I'll keep showing up to mop the deck of my sinking ship. I love it too much to do anything else.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:40 PM | Comments (4)
June 17, 2008
Back in the day
When the day was Sunday, Susan was in Portland. She and I went to Music Millennium, where one of my favorite bands happened to be playing free live music in a big glass cage:
Then we went back to my place and a bunch of people started knocking on the door, and the lot of us stirred and and chopped, boiled and broiled and simmered and fried, until we had assembled the complex meal known as "Casual Dinner With Friends."Garlic bruschetta, roasted tomatoes, linguine with saffron cauliflower sauce. Rice pudding for dessert. It was a massive undertaking.
And then we ate.
Those were good times, as I look back. Good times, back in the day, when the day was Sunday.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2008
Poor Susan
She learned the hard way that staying in the Lincoln-Sherwood household involves sleeping on a hard floor in a dander-filled room, wearing glasses when the cat hair clouds your contacts, and applying Neosporin to fresh wounds when over-protective felines swipe at and gouge your bared legs on a warm, dry, sunny Portland day. She learned the easy way, I hope, that we do have a lot of good beer, good people and good food in this city, and occasionally some good weather. And then she headed to the airport, where she still is now, to await a red eye plane to Houston, where she'll disembark sleepily and head to the office.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2008
Iowa
A couple I went to college bought a house in Iowa City two weeks ago. They bought flood insurance, but it takes 30 days to kick in. This is their house:
Click to see the neighborhood where another Grinnell alumn lives. He's lucky. He's in the area in the upper right, dry still, though evacuated. Who knows how long before he'll be able to return home.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:22 AM | Comments (1)
June 12, 2008
Friend
I've known Susan for close to 16 years. We were high school freshmen when we met, we're 30-year-old professionals now. I don't think we've changed much with the passing of the years. We've just become truer, better versions of ourselves.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2008
Susan!
Susan's in town. I haven't seen her yet. She's at a swank hotel after working at her company's Portland office all afternoon, and I just got home from a pre-existing commitment. Tomorrow, though! Tomorrow and beyond!
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:16 PM | Comments (1)
June 10, 2008
ADD drugs
So I have these ADD drugs that help me focus and remember things, now. I mostly remember to take them.
For a long time, I kept forgetting to refill my prescription. I'd remember, and then I'd get distracted.
Finally, I remembered for real. Then I couldn't find the prescription slip.
I tore the house apart to find the slip, and went to Safeway to fill the prescription and get some cat litter. I left with the prescription and a jar of applesauce.
As I was depositing the applesauce in the car, I noticed a coupon for cat litter on the back of my Safeway receipt. Headed back to the store for what I'd forgotten.
I'm not always this flaky. I've written everything that's due for the next week and a half. I've never been ahead on anything in my life until now. Today I started doing research on something that's not due until July. I'm a productive woman.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2008
Weather paranoia
Why isn't "Weather is crazy all across America" the top headline on every news site right now? I mean, tornadoes are destroying towns in Iowa, homes in Illinois. Dams are bursting and washing away houses and forcing evacuations in Wisconsin. Entire communities in Indiana are cut off from the outside world because of flooding. In D.C. and environs, high winds and tornadoes knocked in roofs, killed a person, and thousands of people are now with out power - or air conditioning - as 100-degree-plus humidity-filled days descend.
On days of paranoia such as this one, I'm glad there is weather.com to inform me.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:20 PM | Comments (3)
June 08, 2008
The price of getting where you need to be
The New York Times reports:
I was a little shocked, after reading this, to do the math and realize that more than 7 percent of my take-home pay is going to gasoline, though I get around half of that back each month through work-specific mileage reimbursements. A car is a mandatory on-the-job accessory in my career, but maybe not when I'm off the clock.
So when does it make sense for me to leave my car at the office and find another way to get to and from the job?
At current fuel prices I'm paying $12.50 each week for gasoline to get to and from work - that doesn't include gas to run errands or for work-related travel. Add 6 cents per mile for maintenance and oil changes (AAA's estimated cost of driving a small sedan), and it's actually costing me about $16.15 per week to drive to work.
A Tri-Met annual bus pass costs $836, or about $16.08 per week. It would be cheaper now for me to stop driving. The trip would take 45 minutes to an hour each way, instead of the 20 to 25 minutes I'm now behind the wheel, so in a best-case scenario I'd lose 40 minutes out of every day. But I could spend that time reading or on the phone or sleeping, which I can't do now.
I couldn't leave the car at work all the time. Ben needs it to get to band at least once a week, and other times we both want to travel beyond the easy reach of Portland's public transit system. I'm not ready yet to leave the car so far from home.
But at $5 a gallon? I'd have to think about it. Maybe it's even worth a test run soon.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2008
June 7, 2008
Today Ben and I went swimming. It had been a year for me, and after 50 laps - 25 freestyle, 25 breaststroke - I am feeling sore. Ben hadn't been swimming in the time I'd known him, so it had been more than six years. That's a LONG time to be out of the water.
Later we had an in-depth conversation. Really got some stuff out in the air. I don't like Frosted Mini-Wheats, because it makes my throat itch. Ben thinks ginger is too weird of a granola flavor. Now we're both eating Rice Krispies.
There was a parade through the middle of Portland, and it took us nearly two hours to go about three miles because of the massive detour required. That was annoying. The same thing happened last year. We should have learned.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2008
When does your disability expire?
Our next door neighbor was hit by a bus earlier this year and when she came out of the hospital she only had one leg. Now she hangs a tag from the rear view mirror of her car that allows her to park extra close to stores and other businesses. It expires in 2012. Every time I see it, I wonder if the Department of Motor Vehicles expects her leg to grow back by then.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:40 PM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2008
A little bit taboo and way too neurotic
At work we have four stalls.
The end stall against the wall has one of those tall toilets for handicapped people. (What kind of handicap necessitates the use of a tall toilet, anyways?) I don't like this stall because the toilet is uncomfortable. That stall is ruled out except in extreme emergencies.
That leaves two middle stalls and an end stall near the sinks.
Ever since moving into this building in January I've chosen the stall nearest the sinks whenever it has been available. It's an end stall, which means I won't be surrounded on both sides. Being surrounded makes me uncomfortable.
I've noticed something about my stall choice. When I go into the bathroom, the end stall near the sinks is the stall most likely to already be occupied. If a toilet is clogged, it's going to be this toilet. Toilet paper often runs out in this stall. In other words, my favorite stall is everybody's favorite stall.
The more I think about this, the less I want to use that stall. The germs don't bother me much, I'm not one of those people who uses the weird paper shields when she goes to pee. But I hate being assaulted by unpleasant odors when I enter the bathroom. There are a lot of people who eat too much meat and cheese at my office, if my nose does not deceive me. There are also a few women who go so overboard on perfume that I want to sneeze as I sit down in the cloud of over-sweet molecules that stay behind, trapped in the stall, when they leave. Worst is when the excessive perfume was sprayed to cover up the after-effects of too much cheese and meat. The end stall near the sinks, by virtue of its popularity, is the most likely site of a nasal assault in the entire building.
So lately I've been re-evaluating my stall choice. I've been observing the two middle stalls.
The middle stall nearest the tall toilet is also a fairly popular choice, I have observed. It's generally the place people head when the stall next to the sinks is in use, because this leaves an empty stall between the new arrival and her predecessor, but still allows the new arrival to use a normal toilet. When a third person arrives, she inevitably heads to the tall toilet, to avoid being surrounded on both sides.
The other middle stall, the middle stall nearest the sinks, is practically shunned. On either side are the two most popular stalls, so entering this one multiplies the odds that you'll be next to someone else. It's the place where a woman is most likely to find herself surrounded, which nobody wants. The other day I went in to the bathroom at noon, and this stall's toilet seat was still up from the cleaning the night before. Five hours after the first early birds arrived at work, this stall was still pristine.
It's risky, but this week I finally decided to change my stall allegiance. The odorous risks associated with the stall nearest the sink outweigh the advantages of privacy and toilet size. I'm now going one stall over, to the middle stall closer to the sinks. I haven't been surrounded yet, although I imagine it's only a matter of time. Until then, I will rejoice in the abundance of toilet paper, the lack of wet spots on the seat, the absence of lingering stink bombs, the fact that I am the first person to lower the toilet seat most days.
It will take many repeat visits to fully evaluate my choice, but so far I think I made the right decision.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:08 PM | Comments (2)
