In the middle of the night, there are few things more paralyzing than having an unfamiliar noise stir you from your sleep. If you are like me, from time to time, you hear something out of the ordinary, and that noise not only forces you to abandon a good night’s rest, but it also can lead you to wonder what exactly is happening away from the covers, fluffy pillows, and shams.

I can never resist. Each year, the first week in December, sports coverage takes me to Minden, and each year, no matter how many times I have traveled to Nebraska’s Christmas City in the lead up to the holidays, the lights on the downtown square draw me in.

If you’re like me, you probably have tuned in the latest, excellent documentary by Ken Burns, “The American Revolution.” If there was only one reason to donate to public television, it would be to help Burns produce more historical documentaries like “The American Revolution,” and those on the Civil War, baseball, and country music. There is nothing more interesting on television, if you ask me.

I like to drive, and Nebraska gives you plenty of opportunities. The state’s best road trip might be up the old Oregon Trail, past Chimney Rock to Scotts Bluff.

If you are curious about how many local journalists it takes to change a lightbulb, the answer might surprise you. Let’s just say, if you happened to find a typo in this week’s newspaper, the reason is simple: We were reading the pages in the dark.

There’s an old saying about government: “It’s not that ‘what is said isn’t so,’ it’s ‘what is so isn’t said.’” So that means that someone—maybe a state auditor, maybe a whistleblower, but often a news reporter—needs to dig in and find out what is really happening with our tax dollars and state policies.

If you have ever spent an extended amount of time hospitalized, or really any time in a hospital at all, there is one thing that you can quickly become an expert on. Jell- O.

As I sit down to write this column, my tomatoes have finally met with a hard freeze and the cannas we plant in the local park are giving up their red-topped glory. It was one, long fall in my section of southeast Nebraska, with lots of warm days and, only recently, a couple of cold snaps.

There’s a game of musical chairs going on at the state capitol, and who gets a chair is in question. Last week, former State Senator Tom Briese of Albion announced his resignation as state treasurer.

I recently heard some rumblings that there were some new residents spotted in my neighborhood. No, neither new neighbors who moved in and took up a new address, nor those cows that I encountered grazing along my driveway while heading to work on Friday morning, but rather, new neighbors of the most exciting kind.