A whole lot of nothing going on

Well, here I am.

A few hours before deadline and this column is the last thing I have to write for this issue of the newspaper.

I’m going to warn you before you read any further, the old saying, “Saving the best for last” isn’t going to apply here.

Putting out this weekly newspaper isn’t an easy job. There’s lots that happens behind the scenes that you don’t know about.

Our reporters may be ill, they may be dealing with personal family issues, they may have time off to compensate for unpaid overtime – and sometimes that means when it comes time to fill these pages we don’t always have all of the copy we need.

Such was the case on deadline day Monday when it felt like we had run out of copy at least three times.

Wait a minute. That really happened!

But a few shouts out to the newsroom: “We need more copy,” and the job got done.

Well, at least until I hit this space in the paper. Turns out I’m not really sure what I’m going to write about.

Great, you’re thinking to yourself, another one of those columns, where the writer laments about having writer’s block until he or she (in this case me) successfully writes enough words to file the space.

I could recap parts of my day, like how I drove out to Tusket today to get a photo of someone that I had taken a photo of last week when I drove out to Tusket. Her photo is on a memory card . . . somewhere.

The last time I saw the memory card it was sticking out of a card reader on my living room coffee table.

I suspect Smokey my cat carted it off somewhere but he’s not telling – not even when I was on my hands and knees this morning looking under the table and the couch to see if I could find it.

I’m guessing it became a play toy and got batted around here, there and everywhere – but just not anywhere that I can find it. Oh well.

At any given time today I probably had about 20 screens on the go on my computer desktop. I had to laugh out loud when I looked at my computer at one point and saw Argyle-Barrington MLA Chris d’Entremont (or at least, just his eyes) staring back at me as I was going about my work.

It was a photo of him underneath nine layers of word documents and server windows I had open on my desktop.

For a second it felt like I was being watched.

I have to admit, him watching me felt more reassuring than when I emailed someone at our production centre to recap what I had left to do to finish the paper.

The automatic response email I got back was, “Hi, I’m a little technologically challenged right now. I will get back to you.”

Oh dear, was my thought.

And also my second thought. Fortunately the person was indeed only a “little” technically challenged and did get back to me pretty quickly.

At least today I’m not technically challenged, Instead I’m just ‘nothing-really-interestingor- funny- happened- to- me- inthe- past- week- to- write- about’ challenged.

I hate when that happens. And apparently by now ( if you’re still reading this) so do you.

The good news is I’ve got a whole week to try to be more interesting.

Wish me luck! first