The Late Shift

The life of a journalist includes some late nights. I'm currently being trained on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, so I've been working late quite a bit. Every night at 12 a.m., a whole bunch of stuff has to be loaded on the Deseret News Web site, so here I am blogging!

There's always some free time, because there's not much else you can do on the night shift that you usually can during the day - like interviews, phone calls, etc.


I wish I had some pictures to put up or something, but I don't. But maybe I could go get some off of Facebook, that magical wonderful place.

By the way, did I mention how creepy downtown is at midnight? Especially when you have to walk down a dark alleyway and into a big scary parking structure, which, by that time, is completely and eerily empty. Why do things seem so different in the dark?

Here's cowboy Ben and cowgirl Maddie from last summer.

Adios Estudiantes

I wrote my last article for USU. Boo-hoo, boo-hoo. Here's the link in case anyone is bored or suffering from insomnia. It could be the answer to all your sleepless nights!

http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/opinion/042208_college.html

Hello world!

Conference Sunday - we had Ben's brother Paul over for dinner, and this is the masterpiece we had for dessert!

My tribute to President Hinckley

I have been writing about 1 article a week for the Hard News Cafe (www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu). It's an online newspaper for USU. This week I took on the assignemnt to write a column about what I learned from President Hinckley. It was an enjoyable and special privelige (?spell) for me.

The exact address for the article is: http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/opinion/020508_appreciation.html

If that doesn't work, you can go to www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu, look under the Opinion section and click on the headline "Tears at first, yes, but now a glow of gratitude for President Hinckley" if you would like to read it.

It's colder outside than in our freezer

It should be illegal for people to live in Logan during the winter! It was -16 yesterday morning, negative whatever today and is barely getting above 0 at the warmest time of the day. I don't think it got THIS cold last year in Logan. It seriously HURTS to go outside. Your ears, your lips, any part of skin that is not covered up. Whenever you step out and take your first breath, you automatically cough because it takes your breath away. I've been watching people up on campus coming out of buildings, and it happens to everyone.

It's almost 10 p.m. and Ben just went outside to take a picture of the ridiculous snow, and I'm afraid he'll be stuck frozen out there until it starts to thaw, which I think will be about late June.

What makes it so bad?? Our furnace STINKS! As in the smell. Pee-you. Our apartment complex was built in the 1960s and some of its features are a little scary.

Well, Ben made it back inside, but not with a picture. I think our camera got eaten by the horrific, snarling, teeth-clenching monster of frigidity sitting right outside our door, ready to devour us the second our toes land on the door sill.

I'm not going to make it. I would cry, but the monster outside would just freeze my tears, causing my eyes to be stuck closed forever. I don't even care if I spell words wrong! @#%**!J?? If anyone does care, I'd like to see you come and tell that to my face. Good luck getting past the darkness and abyss of the torturous cold that is Logan.

A walk down memory lane

Here's the lowdown: it's the second day of my last semester of school, and I don't know what to do with myself. Even though this is my fourth first week of school, I still haven't figured out how to handle this first week. I feel guilty. I keep thinking, "Okay, Maddie, school is back in session. I should be head over heels in homework right now." But I'm not. And even though I do not want to be head over heels in homework, it drives me crazy that I'm not. Because of this fear I've had throughout my entire college career, but has grown 100 times bigger because this is my last semester. I'm so afraid I'm going to bomb a class--flat-out fail. And if I did that this semester, it would ruin everything. I wouldn't be able to graduate. So I should be starting NOW--on all my papers, assignments, readings for the whole semester, right? Just get EVERYTHING done, before my professors even teach me how.

I'm driving myself insane. Hopefully one of these nights I will be able to stop thinking about bombing and calm down enough to get some somewhat sufficient sleep.

One thing that has helped me snap out of it a little was finding this picture of me and Ben. This was our second date, in October of 2005. We went to Ben's extended family's Halloween party. Yep, I met all of Ben's extended family for the first time dressed in my Auntie Chris's dress and my mother's vest from the '70s. You can't really tell in the picture, but Ben's pants were REALLY tight. Mostly in the back. OW-OW!

I changed the blog without permission

Well this is the first time I am writing on our blog. I just got kind of bored at work so I decided to change some of the settings and see if I could figure out more tricks to making the blog look better. I did this without permission and so it may change back shortly.

Ben