One ring-y ding-y...

Received via voicemail on Friday, February 10th:

"This is the Dallas Morning News. You may have received a message from us yesterday. This message was in error. Home delivery to your location is not being ended. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you."

HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life As We Know It...

...is coming to an end. Got a call yesterday from the folks at the Dallas Morning News saying that, effective April 1st, they will stop providing the Paris area with both home delivery and paper box delivery.

I cannot believe this. This is going to change our lives.

Every morning of my life, that's what I do first thing. I retrieve the paper from the driveway (and it's always there. Our paper carrier is wonderful.), and read from page 1 to the classifieds. Every morning. Rain or shine, ice or heat. Back in December, we had an ice storm. Schools were closed. Soup and K-C postponed their first shifts. The paper was in the driveway at 5:15 a.m. Every morning.

When we go out of town, first thing we do when we come home is put the papers in chronological order, then read through them. Of course, we can skim over some of the wire service stories and national/international news, because no matter where we've been, we've read the newspapers. The local papers, where they're available. USA Today for absolute sure.

But we gotta get back to the Morning News for all the other stuff. Steve Blow, James Ragland, Scott Burns. The never-ending travails of the Dallas Independent School District. Laura Miller and the Dallas City Council.

The COMICS, for cryin' out loud. These are our soap operas, our daily fixes. Will Ralph become Sally Forth's boss again? Will B.D. and Boopsie be able to deal with all his issues? Will Elly really sell the bookstore? Will Satchel ever tell Bucky to sit on it? Will those blasted crocodiles ever give up trying to eat their "zeeba neighbas?!?" Will I ever NOT laugh at the "The Boondocks"?

Will "Non Sequitur" EVER make sense or be funny? I never give up hoping.

We are newpaper people, Randy and I. From our earliest days together, first with the the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, to The Roanoke Times, The Charlotte Observer, and now the Morning News and the Paris News, practically the first thing we do when we move to a new city or a new house is to call the paper.

Sure, we can get the online version. But we already keep up with online news on CNN or MSNBC.

Or on TV. Can't wait to hear Gloria Campos say "you can find out more about it in today's edition of the Dallas Morning News." Um-m-m...no. We can't.

And, as the nice girl at the DMN customer service desk said yesterday, we can sign up for mail delivery. Yeah, boy...that's what I'm talkin' about...three to five days after it happens, we'll be able to read about it. Woo hoo. Let's hear it for current events.

There's just something about sitting at the kitchen table with my glass of iced tea and the morning newspaper. I know that, to some people, this sounds preposterous, but this is just heartbreaking news to us.

Too bad we won't be able to read about it in the newspaper.

Stately Reed Manor

We've been doing a little more work on the old homeplace this weekend. Randy started working on a landscaping project around the new deck, using some of the old slate stones he dug out of the ground around the old deck. Looks GREAT! He's always so good at that kind of stuff. I think I'll go out to the pond place this weekend and see about some water plants. And it's about time to make a trip up to Brannan's Bass Shop to rescue a few little goldfish from a prematurely shortened life as bait.

And he scraped all the cottage cheese junk off of the ceilings in the downstairs bath, laundry and entry from the garage, and I started painting the walls a lovely blue. I'll paint the ceilings once he's satisfied with their smoothness. Bumpy ceilings = yucky. Smooth ceilings = good.

I will never want to move from here.