Whine with toast

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I’ll tell you, 2005 ended with one of the worst months in my life. I was in pretty constant pain from a back injury, Kathleen had complications with an eye surgery, half the staff was gone on vacation, blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, whine.

But the back is much better, as is the eye, and the staff is resonating like a freshly tuned lawnmower. So, as is inevitable, I’ve been thinking lately of what I want 2006 to be like in my own personal reality. This year, I want to garden more, camp more, spend better time with my family. I want to build more stuff out of metal. I want to renew old friendships and start a few new ones. I want to improve my mind by taking a class in something I know nothing about (or maybe take a class that enhances something I know a little about). I want to get into shape and figure out a sustainable lifestyle/diet. I want to get out of the country at least once.

For the newspaper, I hope for growth. We went through a nearly complete turnover in the sales staff in the last few months, and that’s kept us a little smaller than we should be, but I think that has stabilized. With luck, we’ll increase in size, which will allow us writers and editors to provide you with even more independent, provocative news and commentary.

Politics is going to be a blood sport this year, and I’m looking forward to the election. You readers should know that you and your children’s civil liberties appear to be on the block this election. We’ll do our best to inform you.

For myself, I don’t necessarily want to write more, but I do want to get back to writing the stuff that I enjoyed writing best. I don’t think I’ll be writing any Christmas fiction in 2006, but I do hope to get to work on more document-based, enterprise journalism. We’ll see. A lot of my ability to do that depends on random factors aligning.

So anyway, here’s to a new year. I hope it will be a great one for all of us.