Columns

After a 12-hour day spent making bone grafts in October 2009, I was in a small locker room changing out of a pair of sweat-soaked long-sleeve scrubs. The day, exhausting, had been routine until I sat down on a stainless-steel bench to check the single message on my phone left by the man who is now my editor, Doug Bell.
Since no one was around to enforce my self-congratulatory inhibitions, I jumped up and did a little dance, a moment to which I happily confess but remain glad no one else had to witness.

More than 23 years ago, my husband and I were house hunting in Evergreen. We spent one day looking at six homes. I walked in the front door of house No. 2, stood there a moment and said quite matter-of-factly, “This is my house.”
After wandering through the entire place, Bob agreed.
I love the warm, rust-colored beetle-kill pine, the large moss-rock fireplace, the cathedral ceiling that allows us to have really tall trees at Christmas. I love my kitchen, my laundry room, my pantry.
I love my house.

Yes, I understand. Peyton Manning is a four-time MVP, a Super Bowl winner, and a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer. He commands a game like nobody else. Even when he’s just at 75 percent, he’s still better than everybody else. And by all accounts, he’s an even better man off the field than on it. It’s great to have him in Denver.
But I’m still going to miss Tim Tebow.

Every election cycle, candidates come along with slick new ideas for reforming government. But one of the best ideas has been around for centuries: “Govern a great nation,” wrote the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, “as you would cook a small fish — do not overdo it.”