Pete Nickeas

I think that, because I’ve never had a real office job before earlier this year, I’m probably a bit too excited about having my own half cubicle.

Before this, I worked as a reporter in Springfield, IL, cut grass and did a bunch of other grounds-related-things at Illini Country Club, worked for Pace Setter Tree Service, did stringer work for a chain of weeklies in the south suburbs of Chicago, worked at a flower shop, owned a landscaping company, worked at a couple convenience stores, and worked at a baseball card shop.

See the workspace? I’m already making it my own. That’s a Dwight K. Schrute bobble-head over there, to the right of my fan.

And yes, that’s Outlook. Not a fan, personally, but what can you do.

Worked on a few stories today, and it was a lot faster-paced than I figured my third day to be. Good times though. OH! ALSO! I did my first blog post. The interface is kinda chunky - probably the only thing ever that doesn’t work in Firefox but works in Internet Explorer - but here it is.

As you can imagine, being three days into the new job, it’s a bit thin.

Check back Monday night for a post about how this job is different from the last one. I gotta get a flick of something hanging in the bathroom. Some of the differences between the jobs? Bathroom signage, the sum of personalities, importance of the internet, and compensation.

This weekend? Got some family stuff in the hopper I’ve been thinking about writing. Definitely a few photos from last weekends wild ass party.

We got goofy, and that’s the only way to say it.

More to come!

I’m gone from Springfield.

And, I thought the town was kind of dumpy when we arrived and moved in.

But after spending a year there, I’m convinced that it’s about as close to a good mix between urban and rural as you’re going to get. All the big city stores aren’t there, but we’re broke. So, that’s probably good. There’s a few nice bars downtown, and Floyd’s will always be near and dear to my heart. JP Kelly’s, too, if only for the few times we went there in the waning days of our (Public Affairs Reporting) careers.

The fact that it’s the hub of the immensely far-reaching Illinois political scene makes it all the more attractive. If it weren’t the state capitol, the metro area would probably be out around 20,000 state workers and their kids/families, and the town would shrivel up a bit. Springfield is nice.

The people I met there were great. As a rule, I generally don’t like people. But I met a lot of people here I like - in the PAR program mostly. It’s easy to “like” politicians but a lot of them are, well, I suppose politicians is the best way to describe them.

But in all seriousness, I’m geeked to have met so many cool people. I didn’t keep up with anyone from high school really and I don’t keep up with too many people from college but the people I’ve met here, I do think I will keep in contact with - be it mass email chains or random facebook activity. Good people.

So the only reason I can’t wait to leave Springfield is because I want my life with Erin to begin. And in Springfield, it can’t.

So it’s off to Wyoming we’re going. This may be the last blog for at least a week while we get situated but we will be checking in as soon as possible.

Until then … PEACE!

All I need now is a glass of single-malt, a notepad, and a nice pen.

Life would be so serene.

I totally forgot about this song, too, which is a shame in itself. I don’t know that I’ve … wait, I’ve listened to it at work. In fact, having the headphones on with Last.FM or Youtube in the background, listening to music while I wrote my articles up or for a few hours in the morning (or on the weekend as it were) while I just worked on stuff … turns out we’ve got a 5 gig a month transfer limit at work (who knew they still had these, anywhere?) so all that Youtubing and Last.FMing racked up our internet bill.

So, no more streaming audio at work - whether I’m here during business hours (9-6) or after/before work.

This edict came down from on high actually some time in February. A video here or song there doesn’t hurt anyone - we regularly watch stuff from a local political blog or from the Trib’s political blog - but streaming audio for three hours in the morning before everybody else gets here? Not happening, son.

Which brings me to my next point - working on the weekend.

The past month has been so wild - hell, even two months … ever since the lawmakers got back from their two-week break - it’s been RUN RUN RUN. No time to work on projects because we’ve been putting in 10-12 hour days with some regularity anyway, so anytime spent on projects is your own time.

Lucky for me, I spent a lot of free time and day-time working this project I’m trying to wrap up, just after the impeachment. I fed the machine with a bill-introduction story here and there, plus anything that broke throughout the day, but for a couple weeks, I spent nights and down-time at work doing project stuff.

So after months of this - and now that I have a free weekend … I find myself at work, bored out of my mind at home* and not having a real hobby other than reading. But since I packed all my books up, there’s nothing new for me to read (since I finished Generation Kill, an amazing book).

So I’m just going to deal with the fact that I’m far more used to reporting than relaxing, for now, and knock out this project in the next week and a half.

When I get to Wyoming, I’m hoping I can settle into a 40-45 hour work week. No more worrying about moving (or having to move after work), no more class, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Just work, and life.

And I’m geeked about that, for real.

* - Home right now is Apt. 1107 of Lincoln Towers, where my friend Eric has so humbly offered me floorspace where I’ve created a “home.” It’s a mirror image of the other half of the living room - so we have two futons, two tv’s, two coffee tables, all right next to each other.

Before 1107, though, over the past 5 years, “home” was at 1360 W. Byron in Addison, and 313 Ryan Hall at Lewis, then Pope Hall at Lewis, 660 Natalie in Byron, 307 Ryan Hall at Lewis, DeLaSalle Hall at Lewis, an attached-apartment to a flower shop I worked at in River Grove, a Ramada Inn in Addison, Founders Hall at Lewis, and 641 Willow Glen in Addison.

For real.

This is one of those times.

The sincerest of apologies are in order for the dust that’s begun to settle on this blog.

But let me tell you, it’s been one hell of a week.

It started Sunday night, staking out the leaders and seeing a capital plan being fleshed out.

The state Senate passed a construction plan Wednesday and the House passed it Thursday. The boss has been sick, though, so we’ve been on our own basically. We turned out eight stories between the two of us yesterday, half of them legislative and the other half about projects in our coverage areas.

In between that, I’ve been looking at donations, road projects, reform legislation, train maps, and other fun infrastructure things.

Needless to say, I’ve been feeling torn about how I feel about this whole thing all week. The hours suck but I love the job. Days like yesterday - when we were turning stories important to our coverage areas for numerous reasons - are perfect.

Other days, not so much.

Either way … it’s the end of the week, lawmakers canceled all of their planned weekend sessions, so that means nobody’s here til Tuesday. WE may be here this weekend but I dunno. See what the boss says I suppose.

And on that note … it’s 86 and sunny.

PEACE!

And right now I’m feeling pretty hateful.

First of all, I’m starting to feel like a bitch.

I mean, I run around all day following someone hoping they give me the opportunity to hear something substantive come from their mouth. Then, if they say something newsworthy, it makes my day.

I mean, shouldn’t they be saying those things anyway?

I’ve known for a long while that the budget and construction plans get negotiated behind closed doors. But I’ve never actually had the feeling of being blocked out of those negotiations because I’ve never had to try and cover them.

So the state’s going to spend $26 billion on roads and schools and the legislative leaders won’t say what, if anything, they disagree on. They won’t say when they’re going to do it. They won’t say why we need it.

But what they will do is foist the components of the plan on their members and expect a vote. They’ll fall in line. It’s a carefully choreographed presentation and everybody has a role to play. Including us.

And don’t give me the company line of “well that’s just the way it is.” I can see that. Save your breath.

Woo hoo!

I don’t feel like I have a master’s degree but it’s probably for a variety of reasons … mostly because there’s another month or so of work coming up.

What would be super-dope is, if the lawmakers get done a couple days early. Apparently, people that matter at the capitol have kids or grand kids graduating college or high school on the Saturday or Sunday before or on the budget deadline. There was a lot of “either ors” there but you get the point. They could bang out a budget on the 29th and leave everyone with the weekend … the weekend, we wouldn’t have off anyway but at least the budget would be done and maybe we could come in at 9 on Monday instead of the normal 7:30 or 8.

Anyway, out tonight to celebrate with some friends.

1. Getting sick.
This is one that I should’ve anticipated but didn’t. That’s on me. I should be more careful about taking vitamins.

2. Missing storms.
I missed the first thunderstorm of the season today and it distressed me greatly. Though there was another one later in the evening, chock full of lightning and mild downpours, I was bothered that I heard the thunder from inside the capitol without being near my balcony our outside working somewhere to witness it. Just a closed, floor level window that gives us a view of the parking lot from the mezzanine floor of the capitol. That was my glimpse outside (flick courtesy of Erin) my apartment, from the balcony.

3. Wrinkly suit pants!
So, Wednesday was a long day, like, 12-and-one-half hours long. And there was crinkles in my pants near the thigh area from sitting at the desk for hours on end making phone calls and typing. I like my suits a lot. I try to take care of them and keep them clean and well pressed. But man, it’s tough sometimes. The key to fixing this would be to buy more suits. This is a solution I wholly embrace but until I find a job, it’s not likely. Damnit!

The Lakers didn’t beat the Supersonics, but all in all, today was a good day.

Two stories at work, which is good. We don’t typically cover day-to-day stories of statewide importance unless there’s a local angle … so we left a lot of the Roland Burris coverage to the AP. Stuff like that, we tend to defer to the wire services.

And its even more rare that I turn two stories in a day because the boss expects us to focus on one story and make it good - call a dozen people about an issue and see what they say … and this is especially true for stories about proposed laws. There’s not a lot of spot news that we cover.

But today! Today, there was. My main story today - which we’ve planned on covering all week - changed from “Teacher union spends a ton of money on an ad campaign” to “Governor compromises on major budget proposal”. The shift from event coverage to a major news peg was actually really fun. Good times, Joe!

There was that, and there was, well, shoot. I went to grab the story from our website but it’s behind a paywall now (a totally different topic) so I can’t link to any Kankakee-specific stories anymore.

It was a story about how a couple parks in Kankakee County were given grant money to develop their open-space. A simple, eight or nine inch story with quotes from a mayor and a park district commissioner, the basics. A quick little story that will get tucked away somewhere on page three that’s extremely relevant to our community but not A1 material.

So, that’s what I did today. It’s one of those days where things were just working - the governor was answering questions if you stopped him between events, spokespersons were returning calls, and local sources were eager to talk.

Today was good. Just one of those days.

This never really happened when I worked outside, but in the past few months, the combination of long hours in close quarters with other people who are sick has led me … to get sick. Big shocker there I suppose.

So I’ m at home today, making a list of bills that passed out of the House and Senate, as well as a list of bills I’ve followed, so as they pass I have daily stories to turn to. Woo hoo!

I’ll also rest, since that’s the point of staying home. I’m not worried about getting a full week of work in, even with a day off.

In other news, I’m toying with the idea of giving up journalism to become a permanent fantasy baseball manager, though there’s the question of what to do during the off season.

Also, I could play Call of Duty for a living. It’s fun, serves a public good, there’s never a shortage of work, and requires a fair amount of training. There’s just that issue of finding a viable revenue stream.