Among the litany of household chores that I find myself being less than apt at accomplishing is grocery shopping. In case you were curious, that is the main reason why, on multiple nights each week, I find myself standing over my kitchen sink eating my dinner from the peanut butter jar.

Like a comet that swings by the earth every few years, there’s been talk now and then about placing some huge development between Omaha and Lincoln along the Platte River. Between the state’s two largest cities would be an ideal location for a new football stadium for the Cornhuskers, the reasoning goes.

When I was a senior in high school, something major happened at Palmer Public Schools. For the first time in that district’s history, and in a move that, at the time, was relatively uncommon, the Palmer school district decided to put laptop computers in the hands of every high school student.

Over the years, I’ve covered a few elections— probably more than I’d like to remember. Back in the day, we didn’t get the wallto- wall commercials slinging mud or the daily update on what the polls say.

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.