Just one of the guys

One of the benefits of the "newspaper of the future," which I now work for, is that I have Sundays and Mondays off. Which means that I'm working Tuesday nights now, so I'm invited to the Tuesday night poker game that the copy desk guys put together every week after work. And, since I'm the only woman who works on Tuesday nights, I get to hang out with the guys, pounding back beers and gossiping about co-workers (Yes, I was surpised to discover that guys do this, too.)

Given the fact that I haven't played poker since my sophomore year of college, when we used to gather in the Crawford social room for rousing rounds of seven-card stud, I've actually done pretty well at the weekly gathering. I raked in about $5 last week after winning a substantial pot with a straight flush.

The only downside is we don't get done working until about 1 a.m., which means the poker game usually runs well into the wee hours of the morning. Last week, I'm pretty sure I saw light breaking through the sky on my drive home – at about 5:15 a.m. That's late, even by a copy editor's standards. Or early, by old people's standards.

Doing some recruiting

I have been recruited to recruit for Drake – at least for a few hours. Somehow, with its all-knowing superbrain, the university knows where I live. So they sent me an e-mail begging me to go to a college fair in town and talk to high schoolers about the "many benefits of a Drake education."

It happened to coincide with my day off, so I figured, I might as well. It's not like I have anything better to do on a Monday afternoon. I also figured there would probably be someone else there from Drake, so I could meet some other alum who lives in the area. Wrong! Turns out I'll be flying solo at this event, which is a little bit frightening given that I know virtually nothing about things such as tuition, financial aid, scholarships and academic programs other than journalism. My areas of expertise are more like which off-campus slumlords to avoid, which on-campus spots have the best food (hint: not Hubbell) and which are the best bars in Des Moines.

But they're sending me an entire box of reading materials for me to round out my Drake knowledge. Sounds like fun.