[Create, and make it through the day]

A quickie or three:

• Kristin got the job at the AP Nashville bureau, which is awesome. She starts Monday. How weird is it that this time a month or two ago, she was interviewing for a reporting job down in Monroe, Louisiana, and had planned to drive down to the Times-Picayune to see about a position there, but came down with some random illness that night that kept her from going further south in pursuit of a job? I can't wait to see her byline come over the wire.

• If I hear the phrase "blame game" one more time, I'm going to start killing kittens. This is not a game. This is not trivial. Pinpointing exactly why this government can't do the one thing — the only thing — it has been telling us for years that it could do, needs to happen now. Not later. People do not need to stop asking questions or demanding answers from all tiers of the government. To do so would be disrespectful to the people affected by the administration's incompetence and all the people from this day forward who will be affected by how this administration performs: i.e. every single one of us. On the planet.

• My fingers are scabby and in pain from all the nail- and skin-gnawing I've done over the past week. It's gross, I know. A minor inconvenience in this fabled Grand Scheme of Things.