Came in to work this morning and while waiting for my computer to boot up I checked my voicemail and was met with this nastygram:

Paul Anderson I assume. Hey, I looked at the front page of the pilot yesterday and saw a picture of you and Paul Hahn there. I’m surprised he didn’t call security when you showed up. You’ve got to have a little more respect for the game. You showed up looking like a fugitive from a goodwill store, obviously more comfortable in a trailer park than on a golf course. But, geez guy, this is an important event for the community and you’re just not the man. Too bad.

I assume he was talking about this column.

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I wrote my column for Thursday’s paper on my first golf lesson, and in it I talk about how I used to argue with my old friend Brian Robin, who’s handling media for the Toshiba Classic tournament this week, about whether golf is a sport or a game.

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Ever have one of those days you feel like you’re losing your mind. No wait, let me rephrase that. You wish you’d lose your mind so you wouldn’t have to deal with the reality of all the work sitting in front of you. We’re down a couple of editors and a reporter so I’m pitching in a lot more than usual. It didn’t help I stayed out too late on a school night to go bowling Monday (and posted miserable scores on top of that).

When I got to work today I scrambled to put our game plan of stories for the next day’s paper together then rushed over to Costa Mesa City Hall for a long-ago scheduled meeting with the city’s various public information officers (Thank God for those Outlook reminders). They invited me and a couple of journalists from the OC Register. We had a really constructive conversation about how we can better work together. It was a terrific idea. While on the one hand, since reporters are meant to be government’s watchdogs, there’s a bit of an adversarial relationship there, but on the other hand I think of us all as public servants trying to give you as much information as possible. I look forward to more of these meetings.

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