You talkin' to me?

I'm sure this is going to sound terribly narcisistic, but I'm convinced Jim Tressel and our priest at church were talking to me. Or maybe their messages were aimed at people in my situation.

In the course of the last three days, I'm hearing the same message over and over: Fight the good fight. Stay the course. Good things in life aren't easy.

It was pretty strange hearing it in church, but I've always had a great deal of church sermons fitting well into my life. That's partly why I go. It's not just ages-old text, it's advice on what to do when you're frustrated with your life.

Then, today, at the Ohio State weekly press conference, the Buckeyes' coach, Jim Tressel, went off on a tangent when someone asked him about eliminating the year's wait before playing if an athlete changes schools. A portion of his point was this: Life has challenges. Sometimes you'll want to quit when things seem difficult. What you should learn is to keep pushing through the hard times so you can enjoy the good.

I'm trying to improve my attitude here. I understand there are things I can fix and things I can't. I'm just doing my best on the things I can fix and laughing off the rest of it. I'm putting more value on my free time. I'm willing to give a great deal of myself, but I still need to have something for me.

We'll see how it works. I certainly hope those messages were intended for me, or else I'm investing more of myself in a place that could ultimately bring me down.

Gas it up... before 9 p.m.

I made the foolish mistake tonight of needing to buy gas after 9 p.m.

As it turns out, this is some kind of no-no in Ohio, particularly in major metropolitan centers such as Kenton, Ohio. There must be an immensely high rate of crime there, as the note on the pump said, "Must prepay after 9. No drive-offs! Thanks. Magt."

I'm not certain who Magt is. But if the pump won't start after 9 p.m., I'd say your odds of a drive-off tumble considerably. I also think the odds of me ever stopping off at Magt's store would go up if they'd upgrade to pay-at-the-pump.

I walked in to the store to prepay and explained to the girl that I wanted to fill the tank. She looked at me blankly and said, "You'll have to prepay." I looked back at her blankly and explained that I didn't know how much it'd take to fill my tank. Her look became blanker as she said, "You'll have to prepay."

At this point, I felt like a contestant on "The Price Is Right." I wanted to hit the actual cost of filling up my tank without going over. I guessed $15. Given that the genius at the counter wouldn't let me keep filling it up past $15, I suppose I created my own destiny there.

The pump, for some reason, would not hold open. You kept having to squeeze and unsqueeze the handle to get your bit of gasoline out of it. Every 11 cents or two seconds, you had to release and resqueeze. Reminded me of the amount of use I'm getting out of my stressball at work, come to think of it.

I eventually did get my $15 worth of gas into my tank and went on with my voyage home from visiting family members. But I think the next time someone asks me a completely valid question that deserves a more thoughtful response, I'll just respond, "You'll have to prepay."

Wit's End

All I ever wanted to do in my life was work for a newspaper. My first experience came with starting the "Fourth Grade Journal," well, in fourth grade. Ever since then, it's all I've wanted to do.

Right now, at this instant, I don't want to work tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that... well, you get the idea.

I'm just so tired of it, and I'm just not convinced it matters, not in a good way at least.

I know I'm good at what I do. There are certainly enough people who tell me that and enough awards that say it. I'm just tired of working so hard and getting so little out of it. For the past three or four years, it feels like I've been doing all the giving and none of the taking.

I hope the feeling goes away, and soon. If I wasn't a journalist, I'm not sure what I'd be.

Corey Dillon

Corey Dillon always used to bother me. Now I understand him a little bit better.

For the non-sports folks out there, Corey Dillon was a running back with the Cincinnati Bengals for seven years. He often complained about having to play for Cincinnati, which was a genuinely horrible organization at the time.

I always thought he was just a whiner. He agreed to go there. He took their money. He should just up and do his job.

Now I understand him a little bit better.

I'm not working for the Bengals, but I end up feeling that way on a frightningly frequent basis. I caught someone copying and pasting a press release into a file and claiming it was a "staff reports" story. Twice. He still works there, but "we'll watch him more closely now."

I'm not claiming to be God's gift to journalism. But I do try to be as honest and straightforward as possible. And I actually write all of my own stories.

I'm not sure what my next step will be. I knew things here weren't great when I got here, but I felt like I was brought in to raise the level of professionalism in Sports. I'm not sure it's worth the effort it'd take, though.

This place might wear me out before I can make any substantial change. I've never thought so seriously about working at Wal-Mart in my life.

Corey Dillon went to New England in the offseason. He's rumored to be unbelievably happy to be part of a good organization, and his play has been better. Joining a winning team made him happy.

Stress at work

I had an issue at work yesterday that genuinely frustrated me. It also reminded me that some people just deal with stress better than others.

A couple things popped up with the guy I work with. Basically what set me off is he ran an AP version of an Ohio State story today that I was planning on writing for Friday. There had been a number of other things he'd done recently to frustrate me, so I needed to address them.

I went through the list and watched him slowly self-destruct. I tried being as nice as I could while sticking to the laundry list of things that needed improvement. He started shaking a little bit. He got really quiet about things. He eventually got up, flustered, and said he needed to take a break because he didn't like getting reamed out.

I ended up calming him down, which really isn't part of my job description. But it made me realize that, as flustered as I might get sometimes, at least I'm not flipping out just over a chat about how to do the job better.

The new me

I finally got around to taking a picture with the new haircut and new glasses.

I'm not sure why, but there's something about a new haircut and new glasses that makes me feel like a slightly different person. Between that and the recent move, I feel like I'm starting fresh with life.

I don't know why that is, really. I'm the same person. I've always told people the inside's what matters, not the shell. But maybe I've been wrong all along. Maybe it is the packaging.

Bathroom humor

I'm covering my first Ohio State football game today for the Brown News Service, a fancy name for me doing it for my paper and sharing it with a bunch of others.

This one's for the adults only... so youngsters under 13, you probably should go elsewhere for this blog entry.

I'm standing in the restroom here, doing what you do in a restroom, when former Buckeyes coach John Cooper walks into the room and stands a couple urinals past mine. He looks back over at the handicapped urinal to my right.

He grins and says to me, "I don't know if that one's for a really short guy or a guy with a really long dick."

I joked about standing there just to brag. He told me he coudln't pull it off himself -- he wasn't equipped for that.

Oddly enough, most Ohio State fans would disagree and say John Cooper was a big dick.

Interesting first meeting, and somewhat better than Virginia's Al Groh looking at me like I was an idiot for asking him anything.