My story, while not as cool as Obama’s or Sotomayor’s — or even Bill O’Reilly’s! — is sort of interesting, particularly after I got to college. I decided to study journalism, but by the time I got to the college paper, the only spot left was on the copy desk.

A glimpse at the interior of my new career... the old newsroom has no windows! But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I didn’t even know what a copy editor did, but soon I was in charge of the thing, overseeing a revolving staff of 0-2 people in the proofreading of stories. I did a stint as opinion editor, where I really crafted my writing style, but soon took a part-time job at the town’s actual newspaper, the Bowling Green Daily News.

A few months later, part-time became full-time; a few months after that, I got promoted to weekend editor: basically, the guy who runs the show when no one else wants to because they have lives outside the office. Here I added to my knowledge, learning page design and news judgment and some management skills.

A couple years later, burnt out from all that jazz, I bought a coffeeshop. (Note, I had not — and still have not — returned to college). Which I still have, and which is cool, but it doesn’t quite “pay the bills” for a married dad of two kiddos, one of whom is special-needs. So I headed back to the newspaper, got my old job back, and kept the coffeeshop… thus making me a “beancounting journalist,” to paraphrase my friend Nathan’s astute observation, which links back to a Kurt Vonnegut quote.

Well, late last night the beancounting journalist made yet another stark departure: I accepted an offer to become the Creative Director of Earnhart+Friends, a boutique (read: small but good) marketing firm based here in Bowling Green.

It’s truly a blessing, for a number of reasons. The schedule is more flexible (this helps my family and my business), the job is more creative and less cyclical (new projects every day, few if any “rules” that have to be followed), and — let’s face it — journalism isn’t the field anyone wants to find him/herself stuck in these days. (It’s not a terrible gig, but an escape plan is a must.) A close friend of mine is the Art Director, which means he and I will essentially be the firm’s top-tier tag team (underneath the owner, of course). And to find a job like this in a town like this is a dream come true… I am certain it is the only one of its kind in a 90-mile radius, at least.

In the previous few months I’ve taken part in writing TV scripts, rebranding a widely available retail milk, conceptualizing a new restaurant, crafting a new direction for the company itself — and all freelance, while keeping the other flaming clubs of my life going up and down in this juggling routine. Come July, however, my days as a muckraker are over — at least for now. What the future holds, I can’t tell. But the present is looking pretty good.

Oh! And the millions of you reading this will be glad to know that I’ll probably be able to get a bit more blogging done too.

Today, about 2 p.m.

I met a guy tonight who was drunk. Also, he was wearing just one sock.

I asked my friend Mercad, “Why’s he only wearing one sock?” Mercad said he has to wear a sock on that leg all the time, something to do with diabetes.

Question: If you had an arm with leprosy, and were going to cover that arm, would you do it (even in summer) by wearing a one-sleeved shirt? Why in the world doesn’t the guy just wear both socks?

Sometimes people just don’t make sense to me.

This is the scene from the shop tonight. Pretty… but boring.

PS: Some kids were throwing snowballs into the windows. I went outside — partly to tell them to stop, partly to bring in my snow-covered bike — and they didn’t like what I had to say! Moreover, they didn’t believe that I owned the shop: “If you own this place, why do you ride a stupid bike?!” Humor is everywhere…

An interesting read today on the New York Times’ opinion blog… historian Jean Edward Smith looks back at FDR and his ultimate openness with the press.

President Obama stubbed his toe his first week in office when he paid a surprise visit to the White House press room. He wanted to introduce himself informally to the press corps, and was taken aback when reporters began to ask substantive questions. “I can’t end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I’m going to get grilled every time I come down here,” said the president.

The press, for its part, took offense that President Obama dodged their queries. They also bridled at being excluded from the swearing-in redo with Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as the president’s first interview (an exclusive given to ABC). …

Franklin Roosevelt, however, adopted a hands-on approach. Rather than meet the press at a formal session in the East Room (as his predecessors had occasionally done), F.D.R. invited them into the Oval Office. Twice a week the White House press corps gathered around the president’s desk and fired away. …

In his first term, Roosevelt held 337 press conferences. That is no misprint. Three hundred and thirty-seven. Normally the conferences were held at 10 o’clock on Wednesday mornings for benefit of the afternoon press, and 4 o’clock on Fridays for the morning editions. When the war came, the conferences became less frequent, but altogether F.D.R. held 998 press conferences as president. [bolds mine-R]

When candidate Obama declared that he wished to restore openness to the White House, this is what I (and many of my press colleagues) had hoped for: A president who would answer questions, answer them himself and — most importantly — just answer them. Hence my dismay in his pre-inaugural “I’m going to let the justice system run its course” cop-outs to questions on the Blago scandal, even when it was pretty apparent Obama had done nothing wrong. I hope he is a great president, and I think he will be a much better one than his predecessor (who gave far fewer press conferences than any other president in the last century… I’ve been googling for a specific number, but can’t find it). Still, the bloom may be off the rose if by “openness” Obama means that everyone who signs up for email updates will get periodic spin bulletins from the White House press office. (more…)

My wife woke me about 45 minutes ago in a panic: Our foyer, where I have my desk and computer station set up, has a slight dripping leak about 1 in 5 times it rains. Today, however, our foyer was soaked — and along with it, my brand new aluminum Macbook, purchased just days ago.

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So I had an old metal filling. It cracked my tooth. I went to the dentist to get it fixed.

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After more than a week of technical difficulties and a lot of second-guessing, In 3rds is online and ready to rock! My old posts (from Slowly Drifting/Part-Time Pundit era) are below, but in the switch I lost all the images. There are a few new features, and I plan to unveil more over the coming months/years/decades (will blogs even exist in 2041, when I’ll be hitting my golden years?).

Today, however, it’s time to watch football, eat pizza and pretend all my other struggles simply don’t exist.

So, I just got done sending out a Spencer’s-related spam on Facebook (VOTE FOR SPENCER’S IN THE BEST OF BOWLING GREEN CONTEST, TAKES JUST A SECOND AND COULD MAKE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE FOR A CHILD IN NEED!), when I saw this at the top of my “news feed”:

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Exhibit A: Five days ago, this little guy was a virtual unknown. The facts were, it was a “he,” it was kicking around in my wife Shelley’s belly, and it was to be released at a to-be-determined date.

Now, he’s Owen Andrew Shepherd, a 7-some-pound healthy baby boy, spending his time sleeping and eating and occasionally crying, here in my own house.

We got little sleep last night, as Owen couldn’t decide if he’d had enough to eat. He’d cry, we’d get up and try to feed him, and he’d fall back asleep. We did this a few times over, before he finally decided to give up and submit to slumber… at 5 in the morning.

I want him to have everything: A happy childhood, an intelligent mind, a fit and coordinated body, a high-school sweetheart and college education and six-figure job and a house with granite countertops and an undermount sink. And I fear he’ll miss out on at least some of it, due to some unforeseen error on my part.

And, of course, I want him to know the Lord… but if fathers are children’s primary examples of God, I feel very sorry for the little guy.

Exhibit B: Two years ago this Saturday, I was feeling a little of the same for this guy, Lewis Christian. He had a traumatic entry into the world, marked by 10 days of only supervised parental interaction due to a blood infection. It was traumatic, too, for us, as we wondered how God could mar such a beautiful moment with such a stupid circumstance.

Two years later, I still love this boy with all my heart, and yet he frustrates me as few other things do. He’s yet to say a single word, and this causes all kinds of problems for Shelley and me. His only ways to communicate are to cry/yell/moan, and to grab your hand and drag you around. The big problem with this is that he doesn’t understand (or pretends not to understand?) any attempt to tell him no, or to divert him to a different activity. Still groggy from last night, I was met with a Lewis who, after waking and watching “Elmo’s World,” wanted immediately to go outside and walk around the block in already stifling heat. If I tell him no, he cries and whines and is generally not fun to be around, so I’m more or less forced to give way to his will.

I want everything for him, too, but more than anything my concerns for him are in the here and now: God, why won’t you give this child a voice? Why won’t you give him the will to use a spoon on his own? Why is his mind so quick and his manipulative instinct so sharp, and yet his communicative skills nearly nonexistent?

There are no answers here, at least not yet. And that makes me—God forgive me—hopeless. Hopeless. Hopeless in the face of these two miracles, these two God-breathed lives that are so utterly connected to me. My own dreams seem shattered to a million pieces, and that would be OK… if only my vicarious dreams for Lewis and Owen would show themselves on a march of progress. But Owen’s too young, and Lewis too frustrating. I’m being honest here, not righteous.

I’ve suffered little, I suppose, and Shelley probably feels these things far worse than I. Maybe you feel them, too, whether you’re childless or fruitful, married or single. Maybe we all feel it, somewhere, at some time. But it’s rather new to me… My only real hope, for now, is that this is simply God’s inoculation against something far worse. But the needle is thick and the sting is real, and I’m left reeling in both bone and blood.