Around my office there is a bit of a running joke that, at this point, nothing surprises us. We will write stories that we think will turn heads, and all we hear are crickets.

Labels in politics are a tricky thing, particularly in Nebraska. If you’re a “Republican,” do you align with the wing of the party that identifies with former governor and United States Senator Pete Ricketts? Or do you roll with the new GOP, the group that tossed out Ricketts’ loyalists? (You might also be a “moderate” Republican, though they are harder to find than a twenty-five-cent cup of coffee.) Same holds true for the Democrats.

In early October, I made one of several trips this fall to Palmer High School to catch my hometown Tigers in action on the volleyball court. Rarely is there a time that I don’t enjoy making the trip back to my alma mater, and that day was no different.

I was driving home from a fishing trip the other day when I heard the news: Pete Rose, probably the best hitter in the history of baseball, had died. When I played in high school, I used a “Pete Rose” Louisville Slugger bat.

In the middle of the MLB Playoffs, I figured it was probably an appropriate time to provide our readers with a little “inside baseball.” Bad jokes and poor puns aside, if you have been starving for a fun fact or two about the publisher of your local newspaper, it is likely that, if there is an ideal environment for this wordsmith to get things done, it is amid complete silence. If you have ever seen a newsroom on television or in the movies, there is a good chance that it is portrayed as being a bustling place, filled with people scrambling about getting the scoop and others shouting things like “stop the presses.” However, reality is much different.

There are few moments in life where I feel more like an adult than when I accomplish the type of task that only a real “grown-up” would undertake, or even remember to attempt. Last week, knowing that the weather will only continue to get colder and seeing that central Nebraska was in the throngs of early fall, I decided that it would be a good idea to check my furnace filter and get it changed before I had to fire the thing up for the winter months.

Hard to imagine, but in our deep-red state we now have a competitive race for the United States Senate. It’s been a while since a Republican had to break a sweat to get re-elected to the Senate in Nebraska.

Last Thursday, while sitting in the stands at the St. Paul softball diamond, I was starting to get a little irked.

Nebraska doesn’t get many national headlines about politics, but a recent, last-minute push by major Republicans to get the state to ditch its unique system of awarding electoral votes for president did just that.

Back in the day, our high school basketball team used to employ a full-court press when we’d fallen behind. It was mostly a desperation measure toward the end of a game, a frantic effort in hopes that we could suddenly trip up our opponent, and turn a defeat into a victory.