How do they do it?

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

First, please check out our Reno sex survey. You can find it at the top of our website, www.newsreview.com/reno. It’s big … huge … and naughty.

Along other lines, I just saw a report on Good Morning, America that said today, the third Monday in January, is “Blue Monday,” the saddest day of the year. This year, Martin Luther King Day falls on Blue Monday. Some British researchers say a combination of Christmas debt, bad weather and failed New Year’s resolutions make today rock bottom, but I can see a lot of evidence to the contrary. I guess it just goes to show you that you can’t believe everything you see in the media.

It’d be pretty tough to tell Hunter and his friend Duncan that today’s supposed to be sad. They’re upstairs. It sounds like they’ve continued the Steel Cage Grudge Match that was going on last night.

It’s cool with me. I can do large parts of my job from home if I need to. But it puts me in mind of other single parents who aren’t as lucky to have employers and co-workers who understand that sometimes real life intrudes on the 9-to-5 thing. And since I’m a shared-custody parent, these things only hit me half as often as they do some single moms and dads. I simply can’t imagine how somebody who works in a casino or retail store or a restaurant could take the number of days off that the school district requires for teacher training, holidays or even late-starts because of weather. And then what happens when a child, or children, catch cold? I’m sure that many parents send their children to class. I can picture their viruses floating through the halls—landing on this young lady’s nose, stopping at that drinking fountain, heading to the cafeteria—flitting like a balloon on the wind—before it comes to my house.

But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and I can almost guarantee you that I’ll have more work done by noon, sitting here on my loveseat on Martin Luther King’s Day, than I ever get done on a typical Monday morning. And on the saddest day of the year, I don’t feel blue at all.