Saint Bridget

My lovely wife is celebrating a birthday today. I met her just a few weeks before her 21st birthday, and we started dating shortly after that.

This November we'll be married for twenty years.

She has put up with a lot in those twenty years (and the three years we dated before that). She put up with being a topic of conversation on four different radio shows. She put up with being the topic of the many columns I've written about her, including this one, this one, and this one. (She even wrote one for me, which she considered a horrible assignment.)

And of course, she's put up with me.

Don't know how she did it. She must be a saint.

Happy Birthday Saint Bridget!

Chicago Headline Club

A few months ago my editor at Shore Magazine and NWI Parent, Pat Colander, sent me an e-mail saying that she had nominated me for the awards that the Chicago Headline Club hands out to Chicago journalists every year. She said I would be in the category called "affiliated blogs," which basically means blogs that are affiliated with Chicago-area newspapers. (My Father Knows Nothing blog is affiliated with the NWI Times.)

To be honest, I didn't think anything of it. I just thought it was nice that she thought highly enough of me to submit my work. I didn't think I would be taken seriously by an organization of journalists. I didn't even know that she was referring to the Peter Lisagor Awards, which are pretty prestigious in the journalism community.

So, since I do follow the media pretty closely, I read all about the Lisagor awards this week. I even noticed that Roger Ebert won one in the affiliated blogs category. But I had no idea that I was in that same category, because I didn't know that these were the awards I was nominated for.

It turns out that not only was I nominated, I was named a finalist to Roger Ebert. (I found that out reading Pat's Shore Magazine blog about the event.)

I even e-mailed Pat to make sure I wasn't seeing things, or misinterpreting them, but holy crap, no--it's actually true. She said she would have invited me to the event, but didn't realize I was a finalist until she got there.

Now I'll grant you finishing second place to Roger Ebert is kind of like finishing second to UCLA back in the 1960s--you never really had a chance anyway, so don't get all high and mighty Mr. second rate pipsqueak--but still, I have to admit...this is pretty cool.

Thank you Chicago Headline Club, and thanks to my boys for being entertaining enough to write a column about every week.

Earth Day

My youngest son Sean pointed out to me that this year Earth Day and Good Friday are on the same day. He thinks that this is bad planning by God, who Sean points out, is in charge of both the Earth and Good Friday.

"He should spread these things out a little bit," Sean opined.

I'm sure God appreciates Sean's solid marketing advice.