On turning 40

Today I turned 40. Five years ago, I would have said I dreaded that thought. But then, three and a half years ago, something happened. I found a lump in my left breast. It was cancer.

There are cancer survivors who say getting cancer was a blessing. Not to belittle anyone's beliefs, but I think they're crazy. It was hell. And not just for me. My family, my friends, my co-workers all also carried a part of what I went through.

But I got through it. Hell, I kicked its ass.

This year, I've come to realize just how lucky I really was. Lucky I found it when I did, because I never did regular self-exams and didn't think I'd need to go for a mammogram for a few more years. Lucky I'm in a place with a great cancer center and doctors. And lucky I have so many great people around me. It is in, in part, because of them I am here, celebrating 40 years.

So to my family and friends, thank you. Even if you couldn't be here while I was going through my treatment, I felt your support and good thoughts and prayers. And your e-mails and cards got me through some tough days. And to my co-workers who stepped up when I couldn't quite keep up the normal work load or just gave me an ear or even a shoulder to cry on.

And of course, to Nipper, my buddy, who didn't understand what was going on, but was always ready to curl up with me and comfort me.

This year, I have felt better than I have in years -- even before the cancer. The fatigue is gone, the chemo brain is gone. And it's not just a physical difference. It just feels like there are a whole lot of possibilities out there within my reach and all I need to do is grab them. And I will.

Cancer was not a blessing. But it did open my eyes to a lot of things over the last few years. One of those is that there are a lot of great people in my life, and that no matter what I might face in the years ahead, they'll be there to support me. I hope I can be as much to them as they have been to me.

Thanks, all. Here's to the next 40!

Long live journalism?

The Detroit Media Partnership, which publishes the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, announced big changes are coming in how it publishes. Next spring, the newspapers will deliver print editions to homes only on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, their biggest advertising days. They will still print daily, but the remaining days of the week, the size of the print edition will be drastically reduced and will only be available at newsstands. The papers will push online delivery of the news over print.

I can't say that I'm shocked to see this coming, but it makes me pretty sad. However, I think it could well be the most workable business model for newspapers to come along. It certainly makes more sense than cutting your staffs to nothing and cutting budgets so that the reporters and photographers who remain can barely leave the building to cover the news.

Fact is, this writing has been on the wall for a long time; newspapers just refused to believe it. Or maybe averted their eyes. Yes, there is still an audience for print — and I think to some extent there always will be — but it is literally dying. I think that those who are in the early 20s and teens now are likely going to be the last generation to see print newspapers have much of a role in society. There will always be those small-town or neighborhood weeklies and specialty publications, I think, but the bigger papers (even ones like the small daily I work for) have to face that in order to survive, they've got to emphasize online. Home delivery of a print newspaper will, for them, become something "extra," an offering to those who can afford the luxury of sitting at home in their pjs reading the paper while the rest of us rush around with a job or two, or kids to rush to school, or whatever we do to get by while we hear the news on radio or browse on PDAs or cell phones or whatever we'll have in the future.

Our product has never been a piece of paper. It has been delivery of information, wether it be in advertising, articles or opinion. That can be done in many different media. Few papers took broadcasting seriously as competition, fewer still looked at the Internet that way. A very few did, and even embraced that competition. What the Freep is doing is quite likely the next step we have to take to keep delivering our true product.

Lights!

I've got the outdoor Christmas lights on finally. I put them up a week ago, I think, and just now got around to getting them plugged in. Because you know, you have to do it strategically ... what gets plugged into what outlet and so on. I didn't put up as much as I have in the past. I have enough lights to line the front of the roof and around the porch, but the lights I got a few years back, which I really REALLY loved, they, of course, do not make any more. So replacing them is the pits. And it's a lot of work to put them up.

But last year, on the after Christmas sale, I got some blue net lights for the shrubs next to the porch and a couple red rope lights. I debated about winding them up the porch poles, but hated to think about how to plug everything in. So I wound them around the split-rail fence next to the driveway, and I think it looks OK. I put up the cheap, plastic red ribbons on the fence posts. I have plenty of those so if the weather trashes them, I can replace them pretty easy. I might buy more of the rope lights after Christmas again this year and eventually wind it all the way down the fence ... which is actually quite a ways.

I might get to the tree later tonight. It's just a fake tree, and we'd always kept the lights on it when we put it away so every year we just had to straighten it out and put the decorations on it. But I also need to do some housecleaning and some laundry, so we'll see. Plus, I had a pretty busy day, so it'd be nice to just crash for a bit, too.

Talking to the future

Today I talked with a beginning newswriting class at the local university. It's taught by a professor I had when I was there, although I had that class before she started there. She has her class submit stories to the newspaper I work for as part of their assignments and I had edited some of their stories for us to use, so I offered to give them some feedback. I was able to take about an hour to talk to them -- all four of them.

A couple of the students were late, and so was the prof, so I chatted with one of the students while we waited. And when I did start talking to the class, I gave them he basic rundown of my job and offered some feedback to a couple of the students' stories, explaining why we made the kinds of changes we did.

They had some good questions, too, asking about the paper, the kinds of things I thought they should be learning considering the kinds of changes going on journalism, etc. It was kinda fun, really, and it's nice to know there are some younger people still interested in what makes journalism good and not just getting their name and their friends' names in the paper.

You were looking for what?

It always amuses me to check out my blog stats. Yes, I have a counter, and I like checking out how people find my blog. A lot are from friends and family, since I used it to keep people updated on how I was doing during my cancer treatment. But I also get a lot of hits from people who must just be ... weird.

It seems like the current most popular search terms people hit on my site with have to do with this entry, about finding out how I could easily finish my bachelor's degree after 21 years by taking two classes. People are seriously searching for "how to get a bachelor's degree in ..." two days, a week, a month, six months, you name it.

Then there's the recent hit on "how to buy a giant pink Serta sheep." You gotta earn one of those, pal. Buy a mattress in October and you'll get a small one.

I've recently seen searches for "Christina Applegate nude naked porn" lately. Get a life and get out of your parents' basement, OK?

Occasionally, I get hits from people searching for something about Mark Harmon's hairy chest. Only thing I can think of is that this entry about TV and this one — both from the same month — are drawing them in. I'm sure people have been quite disappointed it was my own hairy chest I was talking about.

There is a more serious side. This one, where I talk about the side effects of Novelbine, one of the chemo drugs I had, gets a lot of hits. That was a nasty time, and I'm glad it didn't have to last long. Hope that what I wrote in there might help someone else with their treatment.