the navel times and observer

So work tonight was great, I walked in with all of the newspaper written and I had a leisurely time designing the front, jump and page 2, which even included a long dinner break and a lunch break in that time.

I mean the newspaper was essentially ready to go by 8 p.m. save for adding the pending Cardinals score and Powerball numbers.

At about 10:30 everything was finally put together and shipped over to the print plant. Well, almost.

I got a call about the same time to say that there was a problem in the machine which prints the images of the pages onto the aluminum plates. Part of the machine was broken and stacking up plates.

Two hours later we printed out the first good prints that weren't going to get gummed up by a chemical in the process.

Yeah, 2 hours spent in a small room with very little ventilation with lots of mind-altering chemicals.

That's right, a free high on the boss's dime. I hear there are places where you have to pay for that sort of fun.

I didn't actually realize just how high I was until I was in my weekly post-newspaper call with Caleb and was trying to relate what parts of the Cardinals game I got to see and the phone call I made to the biggest Detroit fan I know (to sympathise, naturally, since all teams are bound to choke at the series sometimes. sometimes they just have to wait longer to come back for another World Series. for some it's 2 years, for others, 38). In short, I hope they do the best they can. And I hope we win.

In any case in trying to explain all this I found myself giggling (yes, giggling) aimlessly and that's when I realized just how altered my mind was.

Unfortunately, over the course of that discussion I sobered up just enough to take the thrill of making phone calls to other friends while high.

But in the meanwhile I still have my key to the print plant. After all, if you're going to develop a habit, you might as well develop a free one.