I've been thinking of writing an update on my job, but I never seem to get around to it. But it's been three months since I started full-time, and yesterday marked the end of a very full week of whirlwind adventures, so I decided I had to write about some of it.

Life has been moving along in the very swift way it tends to move when you're the police and courts reporter who is ready to drop everything and run if you hear something on the police scanner. On the other end of the spectrum, you can also spend most of a day in court, watching as a guy one month younger than you sits in prison clothing and shackles, accused of murder. He mouths "I love you" to his girlfriend, and it really makes you stop and think. But I'll back up now and start at the beginning of this week.

On Sunday, I went rushing to a house fire that consumed the whole thing, and then went along with my busy Sunday. On Monday, I went to court for the preliminary hearing of the above-mentioned man. While there, I learned that another guy had suddenly decided to plead guilty to manslaughter in the death of his father, so there was another story.

Tuesday rolled around, and I was filling in for the reporter who covers City Council, as she was on vacation. At 8 a.m., I was waiting outside a closed session of the Council, waiting for a city salary review that has caused a big flurry of excitement lately. That story actually required that I do math, and I found myself thinking, "Hey, I think there was an equation that would have worked for this." But I certainly didn't remember it, so I just did the math manually.

And then there was Wednesday. Our chief photographer and I have decided that we'll just leave Wednesdays open, because things just tend to happen then. I started my day at the police station, getting information on a huge car accident that happened the night before. Two 18-year-olds were racing at triple-digit speeds down a road with a posted speed limit of 40 miles per hour, and one lost control, slamming into a tree. The debris was spread out over a block, the two remaining chunks of the car weren't near one another, and the two kids in the car somehow managed to survive, though they were taken to the hospital with pretty bad injuries. We knew that was going to be our big centerpiece feature on the front page.

At 10:09 a.m., I heard something on the police scanner, and a photographer and I were soon racing out to what had become a stand-off at the Women's Center. (They offer things like free domestic violence counseling.) It's not every day that you see SWAT team members with huge guns, helmets, bullet-proof vests, and big shields sneaking around a bush. Half an hour later, the man walked out and into the waiting arms of police. No weapon was found, and all was well again. Now we had two big stories for the front page.

I got back to the office, got a few paragraphs ready to go online, and then the editor wanted to talk to me in his office. He proceeded to give me a raise. I was planning on asking for one within the next couple of weeks, but it was nicer to have someone offer it. But that wasn't all. He then proceeded to dump a huge story on me. It's a saga of groundwater contamination that began in about 60 years ago and is now a federal lawsuit. The city has already spent $20 million suing 15 local businesses, and the really tricky part is that the business at which I work is one of companies named in the suit. To add to matters, I was told there was a hearing on the lawsuit in federal court the next day, and I'd need to go to that. I was already working on huge stories for that day, so I had no time in which to even attempt to make sense of this lawsuit.

I left for court yesterday at the bright hour of 8 a.m., got there at 9 a.m., and there I was, sitting in a courtroom full of attorneys in expensive suits. I sat there all day. But, since non-boring things seem to just happen when I'm around, the federal courthouse was no exception. The judge told us that at some point during the day, we might have an emergency drill. Sure enough, the alarm began sounding at 10 a.m. We had to walk downstairs -- all 14 flights of them -- and then stand outside in the wind for about half an hour while fire trucks hung out for a while. We broke for lunch after that, and court adjourned again at 1 p.m.

That's about the time when the defense attorney for one of the businesses laid out her whole presentation and concluded that the Lodi News-Sentinel (the place where I work) was the main source of the groundwater contamination. A million thoughts raced through my mind, and it didn't help that the publisher was sitting there in the courtroom, too. It was a weird feeling to realize that I was going to be writing a story about the very place at which I work.

Rush-hour traffic was rather brutal, but I finally made it back to the office, where I attempted to assemble some sort of story. I called the publisher, since his business was part of the story, and he gave me a few quotes on the record. When that was done and we were off the record, he said he felt really bad for me, because I had been thrown into the story and had absolutely no time to prepare. Hint: When the ultimate big boss feels really bad for you, it means you're in over your head. But I managed to write the story, and I got two and a half hours of overtime because of it. I guess I'll find out on Monday what people think of the story.

I suppose I should come to some sort of conclusion, rather than just clicking the "Post Message" button. The conclusion is that I still love my job, and I'm actually getting something for working my tail off. I'm still not sure about this groundwater contamination story, but I have yet to get a story I can't handle, so I'm determined to figure this one out, too.

Ell"Never, ever bored"myruh