Last week

It's Monday and I hope this week is a little slower than last week was.
We were decompressing from Morgan's commencement activities. I took her back to Bloomington Monday afternoon and worked with Maria at the newspaper Monday night.
Then, at 4:10 a.m. Tuesday, we were awakened by a call from Maria's publisher saying there was a major fire in the downtown business district. Maria got busy on the phone and deployed her staff and we went back to bed. That lasted about five minutes until we both came to the conclusion that there was no way in hell we could go back to sleep and miss what was likely the news event of the year.
We could see the red glow in the sky from 5 miles away as we drove to the scene.
Thanks to Maria's rapport with the police and fire fighters, we got closer to the fire than any other newsies and I came away with the best shots of the day - no mean feat, considering that we had something like seven people shooting that morning.
The result was a special eight-page fire section for Wednesday morning's paper.
Oh, and did I mention the primary for the municipal election was also on Tuesday? We had local election coverage to handle, which included the incumbent mayor losing the Democrat nomination to a challenger - a major news story all by itself.
We printed several thousand extra copies of Wednesday's paper, anticipating there would be brisk single-copy sales because of the fire. We guessed right, but aimed low. All of the single-copy sales sites - supermarkets, convenience stores, coin boxes, etc., were sold out by 9 a.m. and had to be resupplied until all but a few archival copies were sold about noon.
The decision was made to crank out a second fire souvenir section for Friday, drawing upon some of the hundreds of unused fire images and incorporating several stories about the fire, the investigation and the 24-year-old guy who died in the blaze. Like most Indiana downtown business districts, the upper floors were used for apartments and more than a dozen people were made homeless by Tuesday morning's fire. And there is a strong possibility it was arson.
So, by Friday afternoon we were ready to kick back and cruise into the weekend with an early close on Saturday's paper.
Until we heard reports on the police scanner of shots fired at a police officer.
Doug, the senior reporter, and I headed to the scene - a duplex on the near westside where police believed they had the shooter cornered.
That was about 6:30 p.m.
We stood vigil through the evening while the SWAT team fired teargas and concussion grenades into the house after the department's hostage negotiator tried unsuccessfully to talk the guy out with the aid of a bullhorn.
Once the sun went down and the area illumination was reduced to street lights, I gave up on my 80-200mm lens and went to the f/1.4 50mm. I also dialed up the ISO on mhy D200 to the highest possible setting - something like 6,400, I think - and turned on the high-ISO noise reduction.
I also turned off the little focus-assist light, since it would be definitely uncool to have my camera throwing a beam of light every time I pressed the shutter button. It goes without saying that this was not a place to use flash, hence the fast lens and high ISO setting for available-light shooting.
Counting myself, we had four staff members at the scene, plus Maria showed up for an hour or so because she just couldn't stay away. The lame opposition paper had one guy with a point-and-shoot digital camera. And one of the Indianapolis TV stations sent a reporter-photographer team who showed up about 10 p.m. The SWAT guys finally entered the house about 11:20 p.m., found the perp hiding under a stairway and hauled him outside.
We had been told to stay about a half-block away, but when I saw the perp being walked to a waiting police car, I bolted ahead of the rest of the press and got what I thought was a terrific series of shots of the perp being held face-down across the trunk of the patrol car. I used the pop-up on-board flash on the D200 and after the first flash, he turned his head toward me, shouting, "Don't take my picture! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" Unfortunately, the focus was soft because I hadn't had time to turn the autofocus assist light back on, so what could have been spectacular shots were compromised. Even so, when reproduced in a small size and with plenty of sharpening, they are pretty good.

So with all of the excitement and late-breaking news, we finally got home about 4 a.m. Saturday.
On the garage project front, we find ourselves a little off-balance. George, our construction guy, was supposed to be here at 11 a.m. Friday with the new set of plans that we are to present to the building commission at 6 p.m. today. He didn't show up, didn't call and hasn't returned any of my calls. Maria's son is working for him and reported George was at the roofing job they did on Saturday, so we know he's still alive. At this point, we assume he will show up here a little early this eveing to go over the plans with us before the meeting. At least, that's what he hope.
It appears that the alley behind our property was vacated in 1966 - at least that's waht the town council minutes from Dec. 30, 1966, indicate, but it was conditional upon the ownwers of our property and the one to the north granting a utility easement to the town. A search of the town utility's records and the county recorder's office failed to turn up any indication that that occurred in the wake of the 12/30/66 town council meeting, but there is a record of the owner of the property on the other side of the alley granting such an easement in 1959, so that may satisfy the requirement. We'll run it past the building committee. If they buy it, we can move the garage footprint 8 feet farther from the house. If not, we have the option of waiting and taking it to the present town council, which will probably deny it or drag it out. So my preference is to forget the alley abandonment issue and forge ahead with construction immediately. Maria seems to favor the latter, warming up to the idea of making an L-shaped extension of the deck to meet the west wall of the garage. We shall see.