Peek inside the apartment, Part II

You remember the previous part, where your friendly blogger took you on a trip through the bookshelf near the computer. In this post, we venture out to the living room to a pair of Target-bought shelves that hold random pictures, collectibles, artifacts and, well, books.

So, here's the rundown of what's out there. Like before x- denotes one of my books; the rest are my wife's.

Third Shelf
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
x-The F Word, ed. by Jesse Sheidlower
x-Chicken Soup for the Sports Fan's Soul, Canfield, Hansen, M. Donnelly, C. Donnelly, Tunney
x-Football Shorts, Glenn Leibman
A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom, Hess, Rotherham, Walsh
Serving Our Children, Kevin Chavous
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations
The New Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
x-Jarhead, Anthony Swofford
Little Children, Tom Perrotta
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, James Finn Garner
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
Talking Dirty with the Queen of Clean, Linda Cobb
God Save the Sweet Potato Queens, Jill Conner Browne
Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love, Jill Conner Browne
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells
Little Altars Everywhere, Rebecca Wells

Fourth Shelf
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
x-The Art of the Interview, Lawrence Grobel
x-The Majors, John Feinstein
An Unfinished Season, Ward Just
Ya-Yas in Bloom, Rebecca Wells
Senate Procedure and Practice, Martin B. Gold
Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett
When Harry Hit the Hamptons, Mara Goodman-Davies
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
The Silver Slate, James W. Hulse
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
I Am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe

Fifth Shelf
x-Lehighton Area High School yearbooks, 1990-93
x-Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
x-War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
x-The Open Bible
x-The Last Amateurs, John Feinstein
x-The Franchise, Michael MacCambridge
A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn
Three Complete Novels, Jane Austen (Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Emma)
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulgham
Complete Guide to Needlework, Reader's Digest
Mountain View High School yearbook, 1994
The Wine Bible, Karen MacNeil

There's another shelf with random cookbooks, but they're too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say Rachael Ray and grilling are well-represented on said shelf.

Covering training camp...

Obviously, we've gone through the whole cool-jobs thing. But what does amaze me is some of the other people in the room. Folks who have covered training camps for years and years.

My colleague, Byron, and I discussed this the other day. How do you keep it fresh?

Sure, there's news on some days that simply must be written - players get hurt or demoted or into a skirmish - but on other days, there's not that must-have news element. A team goes out and practices and, well, that's that.

Sure, there are players and coaches with an interesting story. But profiling them is like lighting a match; once you use it, it's gone. I can't profile the same guy twice in one camp. And while there are a lot of folks on the team now that won't be when the regular season kicks off, not all of them make for great stories. (It's been my philosophy that I'll get those guys while they're around, because a feature on them won't do much good after they're cut.)

Now, we're entering the second week at camp. We've burned some of the better stories we could come up with (Australian punter, DC native trying out for the Redskins, two undrafted offensive line rookies on the same NFL team - on the opposite coast).

Now, what do we do when there's no appreciable news and the best stories have been told?

I suppose that's the job of a reporter but honestly, not one that I've ever considered. In the world of covering high school sports, there's a lot more people and a wider range of teams - and stories - to choose from. It's easier to find a fish in a lake than in a small pond.

I do have some ideas that we didn't get to in the first week, but the pool is nowhere near as deep as it was seven days ago.

So, we'll see what happens. There's something to be said for recycling ideas, but there's a limit to that. And it takes a few years' experience to be able to find ideas to recycle in the first place - years of experience I don't really have.

But I guess it's my job to find it. So that's what I'll do.

Continuing that discussion

It was a discussion for another time - why not now?

You'll remember in the previous post I made reference to just how different my life is from growing up until now.

My youth was spent entirely in a small town in Pa. - Lehighton - which has 5,000 people or so. In the photo to the right (courtesy of the Lehighton Chamber of Commerce website), you'll see a fountain in a park in the middle of town.

It's one of those typical, small towns in the state. A good chunk of my extended family lived nearby; and with my mom's job in one of the local banks, there weren't many people in the town that we had no connection to. The town wouldn't completely shut down on Friday nights, but there were more than just parents and girlfriends at our football games.

(Though Lehighton's conference affiliation has changed a few times since I graduated, during my time there we played in a league of large and small schools alike. The smallest school of the bunch, Notre Dame, was a Catholic school near Easton and is notable as the school of IRL driver Marco Andretti. Anyway, I happened to go to college with ND's quarterback, who was a year younger than me. While reminiscing about our high school days, he paid us the highest compliment: "You guys were fast," he said, "and you hit like a son of a bitch.")

It was your normal small-town life, not different than any of the towns in our county - Lansford, Jim Thorpe, Palmerton. I used to enjoy taking trips to my aunt and uncle's house in the northern suburbs of Baltimore. They had a supermarket across the street! And a couple of restaurants a block away! Suburban living, what a concept! I still remember thinking how cool it would be to live in such a place.

Of course, back then I wasn't so concerned with cost of living and traffic nightmares, which can be a source of daily frustration in life these days. Because now, I'm as suburban as it gets (though our nearest supermarket is two blocks away).

The building to our right (found on a Yahoo image search) is the dominant structure in our little corner of Alexandria: the Hilton. Clearly, that's not something you'd find in Lehighton.

My daily commute takes me through one of the zaniest corridors of highway imaginable, the Mixing Bowl in Springfield (another shot here), while traveling a portion of one of the most important highways in the east, I-95.

I spent four days last week at Redskin Park. That an NFL team's headquarters is a short drive away is another unfathomable aspect of life today.

My wonderful wife works for a United States Senator (following up on the cool jobs discussion, she pulled an 18-hour day on Thursday as the Senate wrapped up business before its August recess) who I've had the chance to meet. There's a photo of us with him during a constituent breakfast; Harry Reid is there as well, but this was back when he was assistant minority leader.

I know more about politics than a sportswriter should - and knew a little bit before I met my wife. Since then, though, my knowledge has jumped exponentially.

When I drive to softball games on Thursday, tourists can sometimes be a source of frustration. Lehighton doesn't exactly have a tourism industry (though Jim Thorpe certainly does).

But it's been a fun ride. Contrasting the past and the present is an interesting exercise, and one that I find rather humbling.

The Yuengling effect

Ah yes. My beer of choice.

My east-coast folks know of the wonders of Yuengling. My west-coast folks are relegated to drinking DeSchutes (which ain't a bad choice at all). Either way, they have ties to me, so it's all good. I've even promised my brother-in-law I would sneak him some Yuengling in time for his wedding next month.

Hopefully TSA won't mind the six-pack. I doubt they will, since it'll be in checked luggage anyway.

Anyway, I digress...shocker, I know.

Why Yuengling and, specifically, why Yuengling Lager? Obviously, it's a damn good beer. It goes down fresh with a smooth aftertaste, one that becomes more pronounced the closer you get to Pottsville, Pa., where the beer is fresher than here in DC.

And yes, I'll come clean: A year ahead of me in college was this pretty, personable girl who I dreamed of marrying. In fact, I guarantee pretty much every man worth his salt on that campus dreamed of marrying her. Her name was Debbie Yuengling. In addition to the previous positive qualities, she was rich and could had access to free beer forever. I do very much love my current wife, however, and I'm certain I've told her this story before. Thankfully, she understands.

But I digress. Again. Shocker.

There is, for me, a cultural significance to Yuengling. Growing up an hour east of the brewery, Yuengling has been something I've always known, whether I was allowed to drink or not.

It was a refreshing way for my blue-collar ancestors to finish off a hard day in the nearby coal mines or in the field, farming their land. There's not much I share with them anymore, with my white-collar job and big-city living. My beer is about the only way I know to re-connect with my area's past.

Yuengling is America's oldest brewery, too. It's not often our little section of Pennsylvania can say it has a superlative in much of anything; and those things that can elicit a lot of pride from the locals. (The brewery was founded in 1829, making it 30 full years older than the state of Oregon and 159 years older than DeSchutes.)

It's impossible to compare DeSchutes and Yuengling; they're in two vastly different regions and, generally speaking, serve two vastly different audiences. But for my folks out west, DeSchutes' Mirror Pond Ale comes fairly close to approximating Yuengling's flagship, Lager.

But, as I've told others, it is my dream that a case of Yuengling and a case of DeSchutes will one day meet in a cold warehouse in Chicago or St. Louis. As for now, they only serve the coasts; but one day, I'm convinced, it will happen.

I don't plan on spending any appreciable time in the Midwest until then. No Yuengling and no DeSchutes? Forget about it.

If your final destination is Washington...

Over the course of my travels and day-to-day life, I see a lot of planes flying in and out.

During our softball games, particularly when we're playing close to the Potomac River, a steady stream of aircraft fly past on the sometimes-harrowing approach to Reagan National. For much of this week, I've spent a good chunk of my day at Redskins Park in Ashburn, which is on the descent/takeoff path to Dulles.

I know it probably makes me look like a dork, but I usually look up to see them fly by. (Truth is, I have a little air transit geek in me anyway.)

When I see those planes (especially the ones arriving at National), I always wonder how many DC newbies are on the plane. Given Washington as a tourist destination, I figure there are at least some on every flight that lands there. Maybe it's a family taking a summer vacation from Wisconsin.

Mom and son, sitting on the right side of the plane, catch a fleeting glimpse of Arlington National Cemetery. Dad and daughter, on the left side, get an even better view. They're pointing out the window, remarking about the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

Departing planes are equally fascinating. I always wonder where they're going and if it's someplace I've ever been. Like the fictional family on the inbound plane, I wonder about the stories of those on board the outgoing plane too. (I wonder similar things when I'm driving, like if I'm at some spot on I-395 and could somehow stop the next 50 cars passing me in the other direction; where are they going, and why are they going there? What an interesting portal into the lives of others. But that's for another discussion.)

Maybe there's a vacationing family returning home with fond memories of their trip to the nation's capital; the chances of that increase dramatically if they weren't mugged on the Mall.

This area has some cool stuff, like the Capitol and all the monuments and memorials. But it's stuff that anyone who's been here any amount of time is used to. I drive past the Jefferson Memorial on the way to softball, where we (sometimes literally) play in the shadow of the Washington Monument and within an Ichiro throw of the Capitol. No biggie.

Perhaps that all plays into just how different my life is now compared to how I grew up.

But that too is a discussion for another time.