mitternacht

All posts tagged mitternacht

two years

Posted by EXIT265C on March 1, 2011
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This past weekend marked two things: Two years of living in Richmond and two years of having my car, Nicole Cobb. I also hit 50,000 miles in Nicole this weekend too. I’m OK with that because I used to drive 30,000 miles a year and most of them were from work. This 50,000 includes Louisiana and a couple trips to New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

I just realized I’ve shot my tags all to hell when it comes to marking benchmarks because there are so many different special dates now. On the 13th I celebrate five years in Central Virginia. On June 1, it’s seven years of having this blog. Aug. 1 starts year three of living in this house. Dec. 26 is roughly three years at my current job.

Speaking of that, I need to interview people to include my former publisher on Thursday. That should be interesting. I’m going to plan out really good questions between then and now. Also, tomorrow is going to be very awkward and I don’t have a reason to explain myself yet other than this is going to get pretty interesting.

I’ll explain that later.

In other news, I’ll know the results of the Virginia Press Association awards tomorrow but I can’t (and won’t) tell you until the conference occurs. I’m nervous as all get out about it because I need to win something to justify everything we’ve done so far. I need the validation since we don’t have any real journalism people with decades of experience to guide us. We only have people who freak the fuck out when we make a couple mistakes because it’s the end of the goddamn world when we accidentally truncate a story or a cutline is wrong. There are 156 issues a year with an average of 2,100 pages and who knows how many words and you’re certain that the paper’s going to pot because the wrong page three ran AND WE PUT IN A CORRECTION AND POSTED THE STORY TO THE INTERNET AND EXPLAINED WHAT HAPPENED ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER BEFORE THE PAPER EVEN HIT THE NEWSSTANDS?

I’m sorry. I’m just a little pissed because those mistakes shouldn’t have happened and one of the readers was a bit pissed off because someone apparently took an earlier call about the mistake and told the caller something along the lines of go fuck yourself. It’s not worth tracking that down. It was a day that our receptionist was out so it could have been anyone who was plopped on the main line for a few minutes. At least it wasn’t someone from the newsroom.

Just the whole smug satisfaction of being able to tell a newspaper it’s wrong irks me. Especially when it isn’t a factual error. I mentioned a few issues back that Virginia is the only state where all of the cities are independent of counties and of course I’m an idiot because Baltimore, Carson City and St. Louis are independent. They failed to realize things such as Frederick, Md., being categorized as a city as well but it’s within a county and that proves my statement as correct.

I’m getting to the point where I’m afraid that I can’t be polite with people on the phone much longer. That’s not good. But ranting on the Internet here helps.

I’ve completely forgotten what I was talking about here. I guess I could scroll up but I’ve already typed out this sentence.

Oh, I hope to get some awards so I have some sort of measure. I mean, if taking on trying to do something with this newspaper was in vain, forget it. I mean, if we can’t get an award for something we’ve done, they need someone else to do this job. I know I’ve done a lot of heavy lifting to get it to where it is now but, if I can’t get it all the way there, I’m wasting everyone else’s time.

If Katy were here, she’d tell me to shut up and I’d say that, although I think I’m awesome, I don’t think I’ve done enough awesome for my reunion this year. I would love to say something ridiculously kick ass about my job and say that I have a publishing deal by then.

Hopefully, I’ll have a better handle on that last bit after this weekend.

Est is nacht. Mitternacht.

right

Posted by EXIT265C on November 18, 2010
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Printing three days a week nowadays is still a little bumpy. We’re in an awkward period where we’re too small to do some things to sustain it but, at the same time, we can sustain it. We’re hiring an additional paginator soon and the reporting staff is getting bigger at some point. It’s my call and I don’t want to make the newsroom bigger just yet. We have other things that need to be done.

I really hope we get this period of adjustment over soon because I am sucking royally at my other responsibilities. When I come home, I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with them. I’ve been meaning to call someone all week but toady was the first day I was home at a decent hour and I instead cooked dinner for the first time in nearly a week and watched Discovery Channel for a couple hours.

I think I’ll get stuff done this weekend because I’m truly not going anywhere … although I think there are two things in the Tri-Cities I probably promised I’d attend, one of which was something I agreed to before knowing what it was. This is part of my problem: i don’t delegate things enough. Sometimes, something will come up that I think should be in the paper and I volunteer myself to do it because it’s trivial or barely newsworthy or unusually intensive and I don’t want to subject someone to it because I don’t want to. Perhaps, by this time next year, I’ll have enough of a staff where I don’t need to write anyway.

Actually, I have been writing less for several reasons but it’s because my workload in other aspects have gone up. At the same time, I feel like I’m not getting anything accomplished lately. I still blame it on having the additional print day. We increased the size of the paper as well and a couple other things have changed so it’s just this whole things we can’t ease into because this is one of those businesses where no one can ease into anything. It was amazing when I started out and it was put up or shut up from the start but this is getting old. I turn 28 in a little over six months and I kinda want a routine now.

But that’s the period of adjustment talking.

We’ll figure it out. We have been since I got there. We’ve been getting compliments and viable news tips lately. Additionally, the right people have been wary of us lately. We must be doing something right.

Anyway, I’m off to bed. this is one of the few days I can sleep in and I should take full advantage of that.

I’m going to deal with the hiatus in posts as of late by pretending they didn’t happen.

est ist mitternacht

layout and design secrets! or #4D5D53/R77, G93, B83

Posted by EXIT265C on August 18, 2010
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So he may yell at first but what’s he going to do: fire you for making the paper better?
&#8212 Samantha

Yes, I understand that posting this photo here makes it no longer a secret but I’m already keeping one awesome secret from the Internet and I can’t do two.

Before I get to that which you can probably already see if I don’t write an awful lot, There’s another little something you may have noticed already: est ist mitternacht. And I changed the favicon for this page to one that is mine. You have no idea what I’m talking about. Look at the address bar. Yep, that would be my new default icon/what would be my official logo if I were a business. I mean, the name of this journal in that specific font is my brand but I need something for beyond here. Especially if I plan on exit265c.com being more than just a mirror site for the blog. Also, I changed the sidebar/entry title font to Helvetica. I don’t exactly like it but I’ll let it stay for a couple days before I switch back to Century Gothic.

Anyway, my newspaper, which is really a publishing company, makes a couple products. This is one of our other publications. Katy and I have been working on redesigning our publications because they need to be dragged into … the 1990s. One of the problems is that we had a storied history of burning bridges with the community and, although I have invested a lot of time and effort into fixing that, we look like a crappy little community paper. Well, we are a little community paper but we don’t need to fucking look like one. So this is one of our phases. We are slowly changing the flagship paper and we’re going balls to the wall with this publication (which reminds me that I need to start working on one for my fraternity).

This paper has a tilde in its name for legal purposes (long story). Since one of our problems is marketing, I decided that emphasizing it is the best route. While playing around with fonts and things, I suggested that something needed to be orange. Katy went on a rant and made a roughly two column (on a five-column layout) cyan box and shoved the name in with a serif font. I added the oversized orange tilde and holy shit.

This is far from finished but it’s a start. Boy is it a start. Whenever anyone sees a tilde, I want them to think of our company. I’m not even joking. The publisher isn’t going to like this but, if we sit around being cautious and traditional all the time, we’re going to get left in the dust. We fucking broke news before TV and two larger newspapers several times last month. A publication in Hampton Roads picked up one of our stories recently. We have to strike while the iron is hot and we have the staff to do it.

Or he’s just going to have to fire me for making the paper better.

digging

Posted by EXIT265C on June 11, 2010
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The lovely house next door is for rent again and not much has been done to it since the people with the generator moved out. I don’t even feel like linking back to that right now. Long story short, they could have literally killed us all if that went up, the city finally noticed and the house was condemned.

Anyway, after we had to call the police at lease twice to get the door secured, no one had gone into that house for MONTHS. I’ll say about six months. It’s a 100 year old house and it’s somehow assessed at $207,000. Probably because the house I’m renting is assessed at well over $200,000. The owner of this house, without doing anything to the house is now sitting on a gold mine. He’d just have to get rid of it first. And $207,000 is pretty steep for a house one probably would have to tear down or do about $50,000 of work to just for it to be only worth $250,000. If the old wreck was renovated a few years ago, it would be worth just as much AND contribute to the block. Instead, we got this.

So I traced the number attached to the for rent sign. It comes back to an Arthur Lewis of Cardinal Enterprises, which is also connected to Prestige Mortgage Company. This business is either located in an office building off Belt Boulevard owned by Three’s Company LLC (no physical address, parcel searcher died tonight before I could see if it owns more properties) or in a townhouse off Walmsley Boulevard in Chesterfield County. A Justin Lewis is involved as well. Cardinal Enterprises apparently has over 25 years of experience in real estate and so on and so forth.

As for the house itself, it is owned by REO-Investors LLC on Second Avenue in Highland Park. This is also the alleged home of Future Investment (again, couldn’t see what property it owned because the city’s site crapped out on me). It looks like this house is just that: a house. So I decided to see who owned that. It’s owned by a David O. Thompson who lives in what sounds like an apartment on Marshall near 21st. Thompson apparently owns another house on Chimborazo Boulevard with some other people. The house Thompson is in is owned by Hartoak Properties out of a giant house that is for sale in Mechanicsville, apparently owned by a Teresa L. Duke. (WATERFRONT! FOUR BEDROOMS! FOUR-AND-A-HALF BATHROOMS! $499,000!)

Why is a person renting the back of a house in Church Hill from a person selling her house in Mechanicsville the owner of a house in Highland Park that is the home of an investment company that owns a house in Chimborazo that is being rented out by a company possibly behind Southside Plaza?

Why does the city think this rotting house next to me is fit for human habitation?

I don’t care if low-income people move next door. No one deserves to live in that house as it is. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rent is ludicrous.

In the next couple days, I’m calling the city (although I had to get the local CBS station out here before they listened to us the first time) and who knows what else. It should be fun. I’m so glad I live out of my coverage area so I can be a concerned neighbor who doesn’t want some literal poor person trapped in a shithole.

niRVAna

Posted by EXIT265C on October 3, 2009
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Est is nacht … mitternacht.

I love cities. I love the sights, the sounds, the walkability, the tall buildings, the cramped quarters, the chance that something awesome is going on somewhere.

I went out tonight.

I had no particular destination in mind. I just wanted to wander around because I knew I could. There would be a crowd somewhere to be lost in, things to see and maybe do. Besides, it was First Friday.

I haven’t done that in a while. I don’t like doing things by myself, which is funny because a lot of my random trips and things are things I do solo. That’s partially because most of my road trip buddies don’t live nearby or we have different schedules. Since the accident, I have retreated back into my bedroom. I mean, I go out nowadays but it’s always with people and it’s always to a bar or something. (Which, to be honest, I like alcohol as much as or probably more than the next guy but I want to do something else every once in a while. I know there really isn’t much to do at like 10 p.m. but shit.)

I went out tonight not expecting to see anyone. I wanted to just walk, look at some art, listen to some music and at least feel that I’m not squandering living in Richmond.

It’s an early fall night where it’s still a bit warm but it’s obvious that cooler days are ahead. A strong gust of wind blew at one point and the temperature fell. I walked across the VCU campus on my way to Broad Street. I saw a hipster with an eye patch. The art in the galleries was pretentious as usual and sometimes something that I swear looked less creative than some dumps I have taken. The music was varied and awesome. I eventually ran into some people. I saw a spontaneous dance party that turned into a break dance battle. I walked, I watched, I even took a little ride on my way home. It was awesome.

I also spent a lot of time texting because I’m kinda addicted to it. I chronicled part of the experience for someone with photos, texts and even a small video clip. This person had the potential to be there but decided not to. I realized as I went along that I wanted this person to be there with me. She’s in a bit of a rough spot but I have faith in her even if she might not in herself on some accords. I know I can’t do much to help but I want her to know that I’m here.

I don’t know what it is about her. Like how I’d rather not experience all there is in RVA alone, I don’t want her to feel that she has to go through things alone. I care for her that much, whether she thinks I’m bullshitting her or not, whether she feels I’m wasting my time with her or not. One day, she’s going to kick ass and take names and I know it’s up to her to see that. There’s nothing I can do or say but at the very least, I’m here. She has a cheering section, damn it.

But I digress.

RVA. Motherfucking Richmond, Va. Tonight reaffirmed why I’m here. I was only out three hours and I should have been in bed at 11 but this is the so-called prime of my life and I’m having the time of my life. Over the past five years, you’ve read about me struggling in college because I didn’t want to address my sister’s illness, the impending death of Grandma, how Hurricane Isabel turned our life upside down for a bit. I’ve dealt with unemployment, feeling overworked and unappreciated at work, getting to the brink and almost completely giving up. It’s almost a year since I partially threw in the towel and headed back to Hampton for a bit. Then everything happened at once. And now, here I am. This is what I get for hanging in there: a new job, five less teeth and RVA. Things aren’t perfect but I’m good. Much like this city. It’s hard to explain. I feel this entry said a lot and a whole lot of nothing. I don’t care.

It’s like I reached some sort of niRVAna.

I dreamt of manny ramirez last night

Posted by EXIT265C on July 5, 2009
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So, here’s an idea for next Independence Day, Richmond Police Department: Close the Boulevard Bridge to vehicular traffic and let people walk over to Byrd Park. You can keep one lane open for emergencies/Southside bound traffic. That would have saved you time an effort.

They closed the bridge to traffic, forced everyone to the sidewalks and didn’t allow anyone to go all the way across. Additionally, they let three cars go south in the middle of it and reopened the southbound lane almost immediately and didn’t let anyone the shoved onto the sidewalk across the street for a long time.

I guess they never had that volume when they had a choice of Dogwood Dell or the Diamond for fireworks but they couldn’t plan this out?

Anyway, Friday was Craig’s Third of July party. In Powhatan. In Powhatan. His parent’s house is only about 18 miles from my house but it takes about 45 minutes per Google Maps because there was really no reason for anyone to go from Richmond to Powhatan. It could have been worse: I still don’t get that there is no good way to get to Raleigh/Durham from Hampton Roads. I guess U.S. Route 58 to Emporia counts but still.

But I digress

So I got a ride out there by way of Glen Allen. There were grilled meats, a hot tub, another odd moment of hanging out with CNU people at very not CNU and it went downhill from playing flip cup and I wound up staying the night after not even having the coordination to play ping pong against someone who sucked at ping pong.

I passed out in a chair in front of a TV that had SportsCenter on all night long. As you know, SportsCenter repeats until more sports happens. The biggest story of all of last night was Manny Ramirez playing his first game after his suspension and he talked before and after the game. Since I’m a light sleeper when I don’t drink too much (versus when I don’t drink or drink heavily and can sleep through EMTs charging into the bedroom to work on someone in the next bed and haul them out … true story and I was sober), I basically heard this over and over until I had a dream that he was at the Ferguson Center giving his press conference with even more exaggerated dreadlocks. Then sunrise work me up and I drifted on and off to sleep till maybe 10. I was still too lazy to turn off the TV so it segued into Manny plus tennis and teasers for the hot dog eating contest.

I’m glad I didn’t have a Manny-Venus-Serena hot dog eating contest dream. I think I just gave myself a horrible mental image and I just shared it with you. You’re welcome.

Anyway, so I’ve been kinda in bed all day and only got up for fireworks. As I was leaving, I announced to JM that I’ve apparently become a vampire. I also found out that I’m apparently still sleepy so I’m going to go back to bed soon.

I have a lot of work to do tomorrow. My goal is not to wake up at 5 a.m. Monday to write my articles.

Est ist nacht. Mitternacht.

then it’s fun and games without depth perception

Posted by EXIT265C on April 26, 2009
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Yesterday was Fred and Amber’s wedding. I rushed yesterday morning because I got two phone calls in the middle of the night and I woke up far too early twice.

I forgot the directions to Ashie’s house and Ambers’ apartment.

I forgot my wedding gift.

I forgot to get new dress shoes so I washed my black leather casual shoes well and rubbed vegetable oil on them so they had a sheen. It could have been worse; at least I didn’t have sneakers on under my wedding dress like a certain close friend of mine who refuses to talk to me until I forget that she burned soap.

I found out Pat Kane and I got the same thing the same day so I can at least return it, get something else and give it to them after their honeymoon.

I headed up to what the post office has decided is Mechanicsville and then drive for eight years to the church in Prince George County. I was supposed to meet up with Pat Kane and others before the service but they were running late and we got inside the church in just enough time to not be determined late.

The wedding went well and, as I was seating people, a lot of them were like, &#8220so this was your fault.&#8221 It is true. I mentioned in an entry a long time ago that I care not to search for right now that Fred and I headed up to Pennsylvania to get brownies from some former coworkers because their brownies were amazing and we wanted to prove that we weren’t joking when we said were going to go up there to get them.

I’ve also mentioned before that, every time I’m in that state near Harrisburg, I feel obligated to stop and visit Kira because I usually have no reason to go into Pennsylvania and figured she’s hunt me down if she found out that I was there and didn’t see her. Fred was a bit mission-minded and didn’t want to make the side trip. I refused to budge and he met Amber, who was never, ever at home all of the other times I had stopped by. As we left for the second leg of our trip, Fred mentioned how attractive he thought she was and I thought nothing of it at the time. Next thing I knew, they were dating.

The reception was in the backyard of a house Fred’s parents are restoring. They’re living there for now and to be honest, I don’t understand how I spent months trying to find a funky place to live and I’m the one living in a Cape Cod in a nice part of Richmond. I know it’s an odd thing to complain about but I was really shooting to live over a shop or in a converted something or other.

But I digress.

The reception was rickrolled.

I got pepperoni rolls.

I still had hours of adventure to go.

At around 5 p.m., Ashie and I headed down to Newport News to get Ambers so we could see Blonde Redhead live at Old Dominion University. Although I like dressing up, being in a black tux in 90-degree weather was a bit extreme and I was in a great rush to get out of it.

Of course my right contact fell out as I’m dressing and we could not find it. I’ve never had a soft contact just fall out. I don’t have any more left and didn’t bring my glasses because my contacts haven’t fell out since I switched to soft. I also don’t have any more because I need to schedule an eye appointment soon because I slowly realized that the prescription for my left eye is wrong. So wrong that I discovered that I’ve been basically looking out of my right eye and my brain was just using info from my left eye to maintain depth perception. I was fine as long as the sun was out but I could not drive back in well-lit areas at night and Ashie had to take over after the concert.

The concert. THE concert. It was the greatest concert I’ve ever seen with one eye and I know right now that Blonde Redhead definitely is my favorite band. I only didn’t know one song they played and it was obviously from one of the two older albums I don’t have because I didn’t know it and because of its sound. I was a bit surprised that they pulled out a song from that far back but it was cool. The set was as follows:
&#8220Dr. Strangeluv&#8221 from 23
&#8220Spring and by Summer Fall&#8221 from 23
&#8220The Dress&#8221 from 23
&#8220Messenger&#8221 from Misery is a Butterfly
&#8220Equus&#8221 from Misery is a Butterfly
&#8220S.W.&#8221 [my favorite song on 23]
&#8220Anticipation&#8221 from Misery is a Butterfly
&#8220Falling Man&#8221 from Misery is a Butterfly
“23&#8221 from 23
[Older song I don't know from 1995 or 1997]
Encore:
&#8220Hated Because of Great Qualities&#8221 from Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons
&#8221Melody of Certain Three&#8221 from Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons

The only disappointing things about the concert was that the venue wasn’t good for lyrics and some people left after hearing their jams from 23. Then again, that was cool because we got closer.

Afterward was said ride home where I realized that I can’t see what the hell was going on with only one eye and streetlights so Ashie dropped Ambers off and drove us back to Richmond. On the last leg of my trip, I got to the Boulevard Bridge and dropped all of my change on the ground because of my lack of depth perception and had to toss 50 more cents in because I didn’t have 35 more.

Now it’s time for me to clean my crooked glasses, head down to Hopewell and work on stuff I hadn’t earlier because I was terminally tired all week. I think I have to back out of Mojo’s Wednesday and Philly this coming weekend. I need to sleep in more than just today and I need to get some work done. I think this was the ultimate busy weekend out of all the busy weekends for months and I definitely need to take a little break.

Many Combolations to Fred and Amber. May the In the Parking Lot of Food Lion be with you.

Oh, I almost forgot something. I enjoyed spending the entire day with you, Ashie. :-)

I almost forgot something else:
Est … Ist … MITTERNACHT!

Potpourri

Posted by EXIT265C on May 22, 2008
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Oh, I just had to answer this one. ‘Tis quite the long story.

So, growing up, essentially all of my friends got nicknames but there was no love for my sister and me. My sister’s nickname was her first and last name … which was funny because there weren’t any other girls named Theresa. There was no reason to tack on her last name at all. I mean, they could have at least called her Resa or something. I was Tyrone. That was it. When I was very little, I was Peanut and then Ty-Ty and then Ty but, by like first grade or so, I had no nickname. By the time I got to high school, I was annoyed at the fact that I didn’t have a nickname at all.

Then, on that fateful day, I took an online personality test and it called me perky. I don’t do perky. So I pulled out The Synonym Finder and discovered that a synonym for perky is zesty. And, henceforth, I have been known to Falyn, Leah and everyone I’ve met through them as Zesty.

Later, in 2003, I became known as Shaft for my leather trench coat because Samuel L. Jackson wears one in the 2000 remake of the movie.

My niece and nephews started calling me Uncle Ty.

After that, I come here and pick up The Lawyer from the Rev. Dr. Curtis W. Harris Sr. and also Pookie from my fake relationship with Patrick. Currently, my old first name is a nickname of sorts since my first name is now Elliott and my sister’s kids call me Uncle El/Uncle El-El.

And, of course, no one has thought of anything to call me other than Elliott right now. Maybe I should be flattered that people take the time to pronounce all three syllables when we once called a friend by her grunt of a last name to save ourselves from saying Rebekah.

Then again, I sorta wish that I changed my last name to like Rodríguez so my nickname could be like &#8220El Rodríguez&#8221 or something.

Or maybe someone can say, when introducing me, that I am the biggest Mexican ever and &#8220They call me ‘El’ … as in ‘The.’ &#8221

In short, in the past eight years, I went from not having a nickname at all to having more than I can count. And people keep asking me want I want to be called. I DON’T KNOW. My nickname cup runneth over.

* * *

Garamond (not so) Forever

I did something I never thought I would ever do: other than the menu fonts and the Windows fonts it’s not worth screwing around with stuff to change, everything on my computer is now in Century Gothic.

I’m not sure what happened exactly … I just went on a sans-serif kick. I’ve liked Century Gothic for a while now but I thought I would never just get rid of my use of Garamond. I guess that the only reason why I liked Garamond was because I enjoyed the shape of its capital T and, since my name now starts with an E, I wasn’t bound by it in any way.

What’s stranger is that I never envisioned myself as a sans-serif sort of person. But, here I am with a journal with nary a serif in sight.

* * *

Speaking of Changes …

I also have the background of my desktop in not black for the first time in I don’t know when. I guess this is all a part of wanting to completely change my outlook on life and brightening things up. I now have one of my FrameWorthy photos as a background. When I get around to it, I’m printing out my FrameWorthy photos in various sizes and decorating my abode with them. I’ll post my selections of photos I’ve taken one day. Or you can just come visit me and wait till the screen saver comes up on LSW4.

Along with this whole bright thing, I’ve had two lovely days at work. Seriously. Since I’ve decided to stop stressing out about my job, everything has been peachy keen. I can even talk about all the logical reasons why I hate my job without getting angry. This has worked out a lot. I can actually go to sleep at night and I’m not dead tired when I come home.

I think the best part was that I actually got excited with that Board of Supervisors article on Tuesday. I mean, I felt charged by that like I used to when I realized that I wanted to be a journalist. I think I got the passion back. It is interesting that this coincides with a week without the Man in the Glass Box being at work. Maybe this will be all for naught come next Tuesday.

For now, I’m enjoying it whilst I can.

Perhaps I can carry my newfound positive perspective to an interview of some sort. I guess I’ll need to find somewhere to apply first. I’ve actually seen something I could do in our coverage area that isn’t exactly related to journalism or writing but I’m slightly wary about applying for it because it is in my beat and my boss would be one of my current sources. Advice would be nice.

* * *

Est … Ist … MITTERNACHT!

0 days till March 13

Posted by EXIT265C on March 13, 2008
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Hrm … yet another userpic rendered useless. I now need to see what cities in the US are named Elliott … or I can travel to Ellicott City, Md., with a Sharpie and erase the c.

As some of you know, I had been counting down the days to March 13 for quite a while. It’s my two-year anniversary at my newspaper, my youngest nephew’s birthday and the day I expected to be the first day of a different world.

I had no idea how different March 13 would turn out to be.

Grandma’s funeral is in 11 hours. After the repast, I’m packing up food and such and heading back to Hopewell because I apparently have a full weekend and week of work.

March 13. The only reason why I marked it two years ago was because it was a Monday and I pushed my first day of work back to it so I could go to Florida in a Lincoln Town Car. I believe in symmetry; I wanted things to end on March 13 as well. In a way, they still did. Friday is Elliott’s first day at my newspaper.

I’m thinking that, this weekend, I’m going to take a hard look at where I am, where I want to go and when because, in a way, Tyrone died this week as well.

Bill and I both liken our lives to sitcoms. To me, it seems like this past week was a special final episode of my post college life and a running gag has been that I’m playing a similar character named Elliott in another series and people are confused. That probably means the plot needs to change.

Indeed, March 13 is the start of something different. And, much like March 13, 2006, I have to hit the ground running.

Other than Michael’s birthday, March 13 from this day forward will be just another day but I must remember this one. I don’t think I need to tell myself that.

The change is just beginning.

Mitternacht

Posted by EXIT265C on February 11, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , . 3 comments

&#8220One More Day&#8221 by No B.S. literally just stopped playing. I literally just pressed save. At 47,658 words, my novel is finished.

I need to read through it one more time and then it goes out to some of my peers 14 months after its inception.

My only wish is that it were longer but so be it.