Second week of Advent

It's been in the mid-30s the past two nights here so my banana plants outside are definitely fading away and I wore my winter coat for the first time today. And we're lighting Advent candles; the second set during a pleasant visit by Estine Nwakwuo, a Catholic priest from Nigeria who began writing me nearly three decades ago when he and fellow seminarians discovered my "Purity Makes the Heart Grow Stronger" book. Estine and I had never met, so he happened to be in Oklahoma visiting another priest friend and the two of them drove 400 miles yesterday so Estine could see us. He had a lot of stories about what it's like to work out of a parish in Zamfara State, which is in the heavily Muslim northern part of the country. Amazingly, he's gotten through five years there alive! Then they drove back this morning - seven hours of driving on I-40.I've been thinking over what 2012 has been like and the second half of the year may have been the busiest in my life. There's never been such a time when I had so much to do that had to be done right away and when there seemed to be one crisis after another that had to be tended to. Or huge things to get done, ie moving a household and starting a new job, not to mention an entirely new career. One task I took on in all this madness was getting my "Quitting Church" republished as an e-book with a different publisher that was willing to pay me better royalties. So, amidst everything else that needed to be done, I wrote an 11th chapter, an update if you will, as to what's happened in the four years since "Quitting Church" came out. A lot of things, including the new cover, are still under wraps, but Bondfire Books, the publisher, just came out with this press release about me.Other than that, I've hung up Christmas lights in front of the house, made a batch of Christmas cookies containing eggnog (which weren't all that great, oddly) and gotten most of my shopping done. I attend a Christmas lunch on Thursdays at Veeka's school. Finals at UU are this week and I gave one today. Now I have to grade it. I and the school newspaper assistant adviser met with the editor and managing editor today to discuss staffing for next semester. And the days keep on getting shorter with the sunset at 4:30 at this point.Late-breaking newsAnd in case I ever yearn for the life back in my old newsroom, here are two posts from MediaBistro about impending layoffs again at the Washington Times. The first is about the mess that Tom McDevitt is making of the whole place and the second has to do with the black humor that reporters have adopted to cope. If anyone cares to read this post from my blog entry on New Year's Eve 2009 (aptly titled 'Surviving the Massacre') about 110 people getting laid off, you'll quickly pick up the zeitgeist from tons of reporters being shown the door during the Christmas season. Obviously the Times' management didn't learn any lesson from the horrible PR it received for cutting so many people lose three years ago this month, so they are playing Ebenezer Scrooge again. MediaBistro says they're monitoring peoples' emails, which was not done when I was there. (Not that I know of, that is). I vaguely remember security being ramped up but I knew my job was safe, so I was a lot more careless than most, even walking outside to have my photo defiantly snapped in front of the Times' building. And it sounds like the misery index this time is much, much higher. Because they've been through this how many times before? I remember in the spring of 2008 when a bunch of people - including my immediate boss - were let go and we were promised by John Solomon, the editor at the time, there'd be no layoffs, firings, what-have-you after that. Solomon only lasted another 18 months (although he was brought back this year as a consultant - no doubt a highly paid one) and all the editors since him have been sacked or pushed out in one form or another. As for the employees, I wish them well and hope they end up as well as I have, at a higher salary, mind you. And I wonder if the interior of the building is in as much disrepair as it was when I left. Hopefully they re-hired the exterminator to get rid of the snakes!