Summer has arrived!

It's hot here. Like in the 90s every day, and probably will be until I leave. I'm sure it's nothing like Austin, but the heat is a welcome change from the gloom and doom that was early June.

Again, I'm sorry for the lack of updates/showcasing of my work. I keep meaning to ask the appropriate parties about it but always get wrapped up doing this, that or the other thing and then before I know it the editor is gone and it's 10:30 p.m. and we're rushing to finish up the paper. Arg.

I don't like this schedule. I don't have enough time in the morning to really get into anything great. I could go fishing, but in order for it to be worth the time I'd have to get up so early that I'd be too tired to enjoy it. So it goes...

Back in black, I hit the sack...

So I went to Missoula this weekend. Lots of driving, which started at 11:30 Friday night and ended at about 7 Saturday morning. Special thanks to Tonya for letting me sleep it off for a few hours before we headed out for breakfast.

Also, special thanks to Tonya for reminding me of this. It appeared in the Times-News, too, but I couldn't find the article on our site. Turns out it's an international story.

Anyway, I'm still trying to get onto a normal sleep schedule. I'll let you know when that happens.

S

Oh designer, oh designer, where for art thou designer?

They let me do the opinion pages last night. There's a style for everything. It's pretty insane.

Watched Elizabeth after work last night, thoroughly enjoyed it. Clive Owen continues to be a badass, and Cate Blanchet was stunning.

That's really the extent of my day yesterday. My car is fixed, but as always when you get work done on your car, the mechanic always feels the need to remind you of the 19 other things wrong with it. Arg.

More later, I swear. Haven't figured out the PDF issue, but soon I hope.

Sean

Breslin, Cribb have beers again!

TWIN FALLS- Sean Breslin and John Cribb took breaks from their summer internships to enjoy beers together at a sketchy Twin Falls bar. They then left sketchy bar and went to the hotel bar at the Red Lion Inn, which was less sketch and more leisure suit. Breslin did not have time to update his blog today because he has to drop off his car at the repair shop before meeting Cribb for breakfast.
--Staff report

A late one.

Sorry for the late update. The internet was being weird.

So I went on a long walk yesterday, like five miles or so. On about mile three, a guy pulled over in a minivan an asked if I needed a ride. Older gentleman, had Purple Heart plates on his car and a cowboy hat on his head. Looked at me strange when I said I was just out for a walk. I guess walking for recreation's sake wasn't something he ever did.

Last night went better. Spent most of the afternoon designing pages for the Gooding County Leader, a weekly paper that has some sort of relationship with the Times-News, though I'm not sure exactly what sort. I couldn't find a Web site for the paper, otherwise I would have linked it.

I also started playing with Photoshop last night, which seemed to go OK. I'll see if I can post some PDFs of my designed pages up here without running afoul of any copyright issues. Be warned: they look like newspaper pages, I'm not doing anything fancy.

That is all. Take care.

S

A dedication

This post is dedicated to Rachel Cook, Lizz Rauf, Matt Unrau, Letty Hingtgen, Ashley Klein and--of course--Eleena Fikhman. I started on the design desk last night, and wow do I suck at it. You all made it look so easy at the Kaimin. I am truly in awe.

At least the Times-News uses Quark, which I'm slightly familiar with. It's not so much the program that I'm getting thrown off with, it's remembering all the folders where all the files are saved. That and I still have no idea what's good design and what's bad design. I just pray that everything fits.

So because I'm not on the city desk anymore, there's not going to be a whole lot of stories being posted here. Sad, I think. But I get my mornings off, which is pretty awesome because that gives me time to screw around in Twin Falls when stuff is actually open. Woo-hoo!

I went on a long walk this morning, like six miles. I needed it. It was cold and windy, but sunny and the light on the canyon was incredible. I should've brought my camera.

Well, that's all for now. I've gotta schedule my car to get some work done. I don't think the suspension can take one more fishing trip down a dirt road. Boo to that.

Take care.
S

Monday mornings...

As promised, a morning story update.

A hospital in Jerome, Idaho, got a new CT Scanner. Those things are expensive.


Been working on a story about the Idaho Meth Project (hint: it's a lot like Montana's), and here it is!

And finally, a story on the local authorities getting software/hardware to give out E-Citations. They're writing out E-Citations. It's giving us excitations. (That was my editor's joke, not mine.)

That's all for now. Got to go study for a quiz. And by study, I mean cram. A lot.

Sean

Well, there's good news, and there's bad news...

The good news is my camera isn't broken, and I've got some pictures from my Boise-tastic Saturday. The bad news is my camera got dunked into Silver Creek on a Sunday fishing trip before I got to the caves, so that adventure has been postponed.

OK, Boise. I got into town at around 11, and was immediately struck by the fact that lil ol' Boise, Idaho, could figure how to do this:



And somehow avoid this. I dunno, just interesting.

Anyway, Boise is probably the biggest city I've been in all year. Well, that's not entirely true. I was in Atlanta for about one day this year, but still, at 211,000 people it's twice as big as Billings, Montana's largest city. Despite its large size, Boise's farmers' market still managed to have a pretty close-knit community feel:



After walking around the market for a while, I got pretty hungry, so I started scanning local eateries, I passed up a brewery (wow) and a Basque wine bar for something I haven't had in a while:



Note the flower-shaped dollops of wasabi!

I walked around for a while, when I came upon a couple noteworthy things...

1) Now that everyone's got cell phones, there's really no use for phone booths, right? "Wrong!" say the good people of Boise:



Two: I've found the perfect place for myself (and several of my friends):



The glare might throw you off, but you're reading that correctly. It's a bar. And it's called "Lush." Though I'm a little skeptical of the joint. I walked by at about 1 p.m., and it was still closed. Seriously, a bar called "Lush" shouldn't open any later than 10 a.m.

OK, that's about all for now. Haven't checked the paper's site for stories, I'll do a story update tomorrow, I swear. Hope all is well, miss you all.

S

One more time this week...

Hey all. So last night I covered a meeting on drug addiction in Idaho.

And Missoula might be getting the Hell's Angels, but Twin Falls is having a different sort of biker rally this weekend...

I also wrote a few briefs, but I don't think they'll be in the paper until this weekend. But I could be wrong.

I think I'm going to take a road trip to Boise this weekend. Also might check out some caves a little bit north of town. I promise there will be pictures, provided I can get my computer to let me upload them.

Other than that, life is good. Watching over the dogs, who remain fun and generally interesting companions. They don't complain when I play guitar too loudly. I don't ask for much in roommates.

Sean

Contamination sweeping the nation!

That was my suggested headline for this story. Apparently they thought of something better...

Watched some TV and went to bed. I lead such a rock star life out here.

Another difference between Twin Falls and Missoula: The Pita Pit here is only open until 10. I mean, I stopped by at around 6:30, but I asked about their hours and they said that's when they shut it down. How're sots supposed to get their post-bar pita fix???

Of course, the Pita Pit here is on Blue Lakes, which would be like having one on Reserve in Missoula, so I guess it's not that much of an issue.

More later. Hopefully fun. We shall see...

S

Today's story update

Hi all. Wrote a story on Habitat for Humanity and everything they're doing in the area. That's all for today, got a couple irons in the fire trying to track some stuff down for some more in-depth pieces.

I took Brad and Jodi, my Twin Falls innkeepers, to dinner last night, sort of a 'thank you' for putting me up/putting up with me. We went to this restaurant in Kimberly called "El Cazador" which is way better than restaurant of same name in Missoula. Difference #1: Full liquor license. We had a good time, talked about news and music and the like. Then home to watch Obama's quasi-victory speech. I haven't read this morning's news, so I don't know what's happened most recently. I'm excited!

That's all for now.

S

It's finally here!

That's right, it's PRIMARY DAY in Montana! Woo-hoo! What's more, it's the last primary in this horrific campaign. I say if the Democratic Party doesn't have a nominee by Wednesday morning, they clear the chairs and desks out of the Senate chamber and toss in Barack and Hillary. Give each of them a sword and a shield, maybe toss in a few tigers, and just let them duke it out Gladiator-style.

A quick word on the primaries, now that we're at the end of them. Hillary Clinton has some pretty legitimate complaints about the way some people have been treating her candidacy. That said, a lot of well-respected party members have been urging her to drop out for some time, and she claims she has no idea why.

Here's why: Democrats wanted a nominee quickly, they wanted to get the general election started as soon as possible. That's why Super Tuesday had some obscene number of states voting: to get this thing settled ASAP. Had Obama been a hundred delegates behind and kept pushing on, party leaders would have asked him to give it up, too.

Of course, the Democratic Party had a fatal flaw in their plan: they awarded delegates to the loser as well as the winner based on precinct or county (I'm not 100 percent sure which). While McCain claimed easy victory after winning winner-take-all primaries, Democrats decided they'd try to get a quick decision and at the same time make the process more democratic.

I'm all for more democratic. I firmly believe that the closer you put actual voters to the candidate, the better. But don't kid yourself and think it's going to get things done faster.

OK. I'm done. Stories!

I got to check out Shoshone Falls for this story on the Magic Valley's summer tourism season. And I wrote a brief on a Jerome County Commissioners meeting agenda item that they didn't take up. The life of the intern!

Take care.

Pictures, take two...

So, as promised, a picture of a rainbow over Camp Sean:



And here's Tonya and me on the way to Ketchum:



Tonya decided to pitch me over the edge, most likely due to the goofy look on my face in the last picture:



Luckily Senator Duganz was there to save me:



That's all there is. Oh, wait, I forgot the demon chainsaw bear:



OK, there we go. I think that brings us up to speed. More later. Like stories from today!

S

And we're back...

I've been informed by a few of my loyal readers...wait, let's start over...

I've been informed by my few loyal readers that I haven't been updating as often as they'd like. So I'll try to do at least one entry per day Monday through Friday. But the weekends I'm busy learning How to Fight Loneliness. Fishing seems to work.

Speaking of which, I went camping this weekend about an hour out of town on Silver Creek, which was incredible. I only caught two fish the whole weekend, but part of that was the weather's fault, and the other part was the fish's fault. The trout in Silver Creek were huge, but very smart and would see you coming a good 30 to 40 feet before you got there. It's not like Rock Creek near Missoula. Montana has dumb fish.

Anyway, the two fish I caught were 16 and 14 inches, which is pretty good for stream trout. They were pretty wild catches, too, jumping out of the water and fighting hard. Good times. John, you have to get out here and check this place out. A-Sak, you can come too if you promise to be quiet.

Saturday evening was rainy, which killed the fishing and the cooking over the fire. However, it did produce one wicked rainbow over Camp Sean:

...

OK, Blogger.com is being a jerk and not letting me upload pictures right now. I did get them off my camera and I was gonna post some of Tonya and me and a scary chainsaw bear we saw last weekend, but I guess the internet/my grandmother is punishing me for not updating my blog often enough.

For those of you who don't know, I'm sure my grandmother actually controls the internet. Seriously, I remember way back in 1995, before Al Gore invented the internet, my grandmother was asking me and my mom if we had e-mail addresses so she could send us messages. We both kind of stared at each other, no idea what she was talking about. Passing trend, we told each other...

I love you, Grammie. See you in a few weeks!