Your ace (idiot) reporter, FarmerJ

Soooooo, I'm covering a game tonight with a lot of stuff on my mind. Dad's having complications from surgery, Dr.J's grandma's in the hospital, mega storm up here -- so on and so forth.

It was easily the best game I've covered all season, made better by the fact we're in the playoffs.

So what do I do? I forget the notebook at the high school. There is no way I'm going back out to get it. Hell, a town up north got three feet of snow yesterday and it's not looking good here.

Now the coach lives around the corner, so if I got a hold of him in time I could just walk over to his house and grab it, but I haven't heard back from him yet.

In the meantime I still got a 15-20 inch (okay, a little vague) story out of it.

Is this good or bad?

 

Have some personal pride. Get drunk, then go get the fuckin' notebook.

 

I can't. Well, I can get drunk and drive in the storm, but I just heard from the coach and the notebook isn't at the school. And it's not in my car, so god only knows where it is.

I'm peeved. It was a nice leather binder with a calculator built in. All it had was all my notes and the other team's roster in it -- nothing I needed tonight. :

 

Oh crap ... I can't begin to count the number of times I lost my notebook. I feel your pain, J.

 

Just make em up.

...but really, sorry to hear it. Good luck finding it. I was/am terrible with losing things.

 

I did it with a soccer game once, only I left my laptop charger in the press box -- and it didn't have a cord with it. Luckily, for me, it was a scoreless game and I remembered a few of the plays because I took detailed notes on the computer. I think the story turned out pretty well, but I'll never make that mistake again.

 

Knowing the storm of which you speak, yea, this is not good driving weather at all. It sucks even worse that now you're not even sure where it is.

 

I'm sure I'll find it when I run up to the high school on Thursday. I had a pretty short walk to the car so if it's outside it shouldn't be hard to find.

Maybe it's bad luck. Honest to god, a black cat ran across an intersection I was crossing.

 

rookies

 

I seem to always forget my damn laptop power cord in press boxes or at press tables. I left mine at a high school gym one time and no one knew where it was. Two weeks later I go back to the same gym and a girls basketball assistant randomly found the cord and gave it back to me.

 

I had to make a few calls, but I got it the next day -- on my day off, of course.

 

The only recent story that comes to mind is when I went to a conference back in January. I was freaking out because my digital recorder wasn't in my coat pocket, where I'd put it. I panicked, trying every pocket I could without being arrested and charged with some kind of lewd conduct crime.

I was certain I had a notebook with me, or that the conference would provide notepads in their folders. I was wrong on both counts. I go to the thing and end up having to write on the backs of my copies of presentation papers. Thank God I had pens or I'd have been fucked.

The whole time I was sitting there, I spent more time wrestling with mental images of having to buy a new digital recorder with extremely limited funds mocking me in the background. When I got to my car, I saw my recorder sitting in the driver's seat. It fell out of my coat as I was getting out of the car.

Man was I pissed.