First post:

It's hard to be almost 50 and a woman reporter in the newsroom.Reporters are young and can still burn the candle at both ends. They absorb technology using some bizarre form of osmosis.Most people my age are editors by this time.It's hard to be an old hippie, at least people identify me as such. I think it's the hair. I just don't brush it. My daughter, age 22, says almost daily "What's nesting in there today? Do you know there are hair products that can help you?"I can't seem to move on beyond maybe, 1975. I still haul out old records and stare at album covers. Thank God there are people at work, a few, I can play "what three albums would you take to a desert island with you" to stay sane.Then there are the theme "days," that make no sense, like "Beatle/Apple Day" but more about that later.I have 31 ticket stubs to Neil Young concerts. What I don't understand is why he hasn't noticed me yet, sitting there in the crowd. I swear that our eyes lock, but people tell me I have an "overactive imagination" and also "overeact" all the time. I don't see this, but if I disagree, then I'm "overeacting again."Anyway,as you can see, I have not become a world-famous rock and roll journalist like Cameron Crowe in "Almost Famous."I'm still here covering school board meetings and writing this blog, and I have no clue what I am doing.Literally, at this age, I mean.Talk to me.

Extreme Makoever: Home Edition took over little Dundee, Wisconsin, last week, an Irish-settled berg nestled at the end of Long Lake in the Northern Kettle Moraine State Forest. And it took over a big chunk of my life, some 12 to 13 hours days reporting, in part, on what editors called the "Ty Pennington" sightings.

By Sunday I was so drained I was talking gibberish. The sad part was no one noticed. They said that was normal for me.



Talk about beautiful people - they were, the EXTREME stars, coiffured, tan in a California sense of tan, even and bronze, the sparkle of their teeth blinding, their clothing, albeit Ty's faded jeans with the knees out, still looking in some way like they came straight from a designer.

His presence sent crowds into a frenzy, girls screaming his name, some near tears, others dropping to their knees. Men in the newsroom wondered why women would like his crazy, tousled hair, carefully askew.

You tell me? I don't know, I haven't cried at the sight a man, since, maybe 1975. OK I'm lying.
Neil Young singing with his buds, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young "Find the Cost of Freedom." It was Sept. 6 at the Marcus Amphitheater in Milwaukee on the Lakefront. Full moon was rising.

Photos of all the U.S. dead since the Iraq war started flashed on screen, in rows like a checkerboard.

It's over two thousand now, and you couldn't help but be moved at all their young faces.