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It began in the early morning hours, shortly after I got home from the radio station. My wife fixed me a large salad and an even bigger plate of ‘nitro’ chicken wings.

It took me about an hour to eat everything and wash it down with a couple of bottles of my favorite sports drink. By the time I’d finished – I was feeling uncomfortable.

And even though I had taken an antacid and even waited before laying down, by the time my head hit the pillow I was still feeling uncomfortable. It took me a couple of hours to finally fall asleep.

Hey, I did it to myself and I know better.

When I woke up, I was still feeling ‘sickly’ to my stomach, so after getting showered and dressed, I asked our room-mate Kay if she’d fix me an Alka-Seltzer. She said that it would be no problem.

Kay handed me a small plastic cup with the effervescing liquid in it and without a second thought, I slugged it down. Instantly, I knew something was off about what I’d jus’ taken.

That’s when it struck me: Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus. I take the stuff only when I’m sick and need a real good nights sleep, because it knocks me on my butt.

Arrgh and oh, no!  She had given me the wrong stuff.

Now to understand fully, I was already tired from a lack of sound sleep and now I was ‘medicined’ and still had a full night of work ahead of me. I knew I was in for a struggle.

The entire evening into the early morning hours was like living in a slow-motion bubble for me. I had to concentrate twice as hard on not making mistakes as I normally do. Further, I had to keep in mind much of the stuff I do simply by rote.

Once home, I went straight to bed and slept a good part of nine-hours.

Then the phone rang.  It was Kay, wanting to tell me she had jus’ learned from a co-worker about what’s printed on the box the Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus comes in :  WARNING: As may produce drowsiness, do not drive an automobile or use heavy equipment after taking.

I told her, “I’m going back to bed for a while to think on it.”

On my way to work, a guy in an old pickup was jus’ ahead of me on Pyramid. He had an Australian shepherd in the bed of the truck – two legs on the tool box and two legs on top of the cab’s roof.

While approaching the traffic light at Los Altos, I decided change lanes, anticipating he’d be slower than me going up the coming hill. Jus’ then a car blew through the yeild sign coming from the Walmart, forcing the truck’s driver to stomp hard on his brakes.

The sudden stop caught the shepherd by surprise, as it was tossed over the roof and hood of the truck.  The dog landed in the roadway and rolled a few times.

For a couple of seconds, I thought the dog was toast. But after the third or perhaps forth tumble, he scrambled to his feet.

Without missing a beat he raced back to the still moving truck and jumped in the vehicles bed. He immediately put his front legs on top of the roof and hind legs on the tool box.

As I passed by, the dog looked over at me. And though I know animals can’t speak, I swear I heard him in his thick Aussie brogue shout, “Pretty effing cool, huh?”

Nevada’s secretary of state has referred complaints against Americans for Prosperity to the attorney general’s office for prosecution of alleged violations of state campaign finance laws. Americans for Prosperity is an issue advocacy group founded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

The Nevada Democratic Party filed a complaint with Secretary of State Ross Miller in August, arguing the group hadn’t registered or disclosed its finances. That complaint focused on mailers sent before the June primary targeting Democratic Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson in his state Senate race.

Three other complaints have since been filed against the group. Americans for Prosperity has called the most recent complaint frivolous.

Meanwhile, state education officials say Nevada is being awarded a $21 million federal grant over seven years to continue an education program designed to help low-income and disadvantaged students prepare for college. The Gaining Early Awareness and Education for Undergraduate Programs, also known as GEAR UP, helps provide services at high-poverty middle and high schools to make students better prepared for college.

Nevada officials say 4,000 Nevada students have benefited from $30 million in federal GEAR UP grants received over the past 11 years. They say the renewal of the grant will help another 5,000 students over the next seven years.

And finally, Reno Mayor Bob Cashell is recuperating after undergoing scheduled heart surgery on Tuesday. A family spokesman says the 74-year old Cashell is resting comfortably at Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center after surgery to replace a heart valve. He’s expected  to remain hospitalized for several days, and then will recuperate at home.

Cashell is a former Nevada lieutenant governor and university regent. He was elected mayor in 2002 and re-elected in 2006 and 2010.

His current term expires in 2014.

Every couple of years we are given a civil project to complete by a certain deadline. It’s called voting.

We have to research our subjects, whether they are candidates or issues, and educate ourselves on the positions we find most important to ourselves, our families, neighborhoods, communities, towns, cities, counties, states and our country.  We have to do this work and cannot rely on others to do this for us.

After all, in the end, you and I will be the ones taking the final exam and not those who we might appoint to give us the answers we seek and need. Friends, family, co-workers, educators and not even the media is held accountable for our vote, whatever vote that might be.

So do your own homework. Find a place to start and work from there.

Look over all the issues, angles and variables towards your final decision and remember – the more you know the better equipped you are to hold politicians everywhere accountable to the citizens they represent and work for. The final grade comes as you stand in the voting booth and exercise your freedom.

Having jus’ gotten off duty, I was still in my camouflage fatigues when I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a couple of items. Finished, I went to the check-out stand, where I ended up standing behind a mother and her young son.

He was about seven and eye-balled me seriously for about a minute. The way he stared at me left me feeling slightly unnerved and caused me to check not only to see if my gig-line was straight, but to make sure my fly was buttoned.

Then he looked up at his mom and loudly whispered, “Does he think he can’t be seen?”

A few year later and now out of the Marine Corps, my six-year-old son, Kyle came walking quietly down the hallway dressed in camouflage pants and a long sleeve camouflage tee-shirt.  I said good morning to him.

He stopped, dead in his tracks and with eyes wide from surprise, and asked, “You can see me?”

Former President Bill Clinton is back in Nevada to stump in the campaign battleground state for President Barack Obama and local Democratic candidates. The former president spoke at the Springs Preserve in Las Vegas about choices in the presidential election between Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley and congressional candidates John Oceguera and Steven Horsford are took part in the rally. His visit comes 11 days before the start of early voting in Nevada.

Later the former president implored California university students to vote for Democrats this November, acting in what he says are their own best interests. Clinton rallied about 5,000 enthusiastic students and supporters at the University of California, Davis, saying he wanted to offer a “fact check” he says was missing from last week’s presidential debate.

He appeared with four California congressional candidates in newly competitive seats: incumbent Reps. John Garamendi and Jerry McNerney, and Democrats Ami Bera and Jose Hernandez, who are vying to unseat incumbent GOP congressmen in the Sacramento area.

Clinton said Republicans failed at their number one goal of keeping unemployment above 8 percent.

Mitt Romney’s son Craig is hitting the campaign trail in northern Nevada for his dad. The Romney-Ryan campaign bus made stops in Fernley, Fallon, Gardnerville and Reno. His last stop in Nevada was September 28th, when he visited to open the campaign’s new east Las Vegas office.

Both candidates are concentrating on nine of the 50 states including Nevada. Some 93 percent of the $746 million spent so far on campaign ads has poured into the so-called battleground states, which include less than a quarter of the nation’s voters.

Nevada’s Governor Brian Sandoval says he won’t decide whether expanding Medicaid eligibility as called for under the federal health care reform law will be part of his budget proposal until after the November election and state revenue projections in December. The governor said his administration is still awaiting guidance from the federal government on various aspects of the law.

Sandoval has told state agencies to prepare “flat” budgets for the upcoming biennium, in part because of anticipated costs associated with the health care reform law. Agency budget requests to be submitted this week.

Nevada’s newest town officially opened for business July 1st, 2001. One hundred years earlier though, there was no such place.

The general area was part of the fledgling Truckee-Carson Reclamation Project created by Congress in 1902. On June 9th, 1904, the Lyon County Commissioners created the Canal Township next to the newly constructed Truckee Canal.

It was not until the Southern Pacific Railroad realigned its route through northwestern Nevada that the Fernley siding was created. Fernley first shows up as a station stop on September 18th, 1904.

Nearly a year later, Fernley is listed with a day and night telegraph office and wye facilities, for turning trains around.  A public school also operated  during the 1908-09 school year.

The one room school-house is still in use today as the home of the Fernley Chamber of Commerce.

Jus’ 159 people lived in the Fernley area in 1910 and most were active in the Socialist Party. The Southern Pacific Railroad completed the Fernley & Lassen Railway four years later and a suitable depot was constructed in Fernley.

Residents welcomed the Transcontinental Lincoln/Victory highways through town in the 1920s. Yet by 1960, only 654 people were living near the siding.

In 1965, the Nevada Cement Company opened a new plant built on the north side of the city between Fernley and Wadsworth. This was the first significant non-agricultural/ranching business to come to Fernley, aside from the railroad.

The population more than doubled by 1970 with the construction of Interstate 80. By 1980, the population more than doubled again.

Then in 1999, Amazon opened an order fulfillment center in the  former Stanley Works building, providing thousands of new jobs.  Since then, more companies have opened facilities in the town including Trex Inc., Allied Signal, UPS Worldwide Logistics (Honeywell), ARE Campers, Johns Manville, and Sherwin Williams Paint.

In 2010, the census listed 19,368 people living in Fernley.

Over the years, there has been speculation about Fernley’s name. One claim is that a Welsh physician by the name of Fernley opened a coal mine in the area, supplying coal to the railroad and yet another is that a Tom Fernley owned and operated a casino there in the 1930s

Yet no coal mines are known to have operated near Fernley, there’s no record of a Dr. Fernley living or practicing medicine there and Tom Fernley never operated a casino there either. It should be noted however, the Fernley family name is of Welsh origin and the town of Hereford, near Wales, was once known as Fernley.

Nevada’s largest newspaper is endorsing Mitt Romney for president, saying he has the principles and experience to lead the U.S. to prosperity again. The Las Vegas Review-Journal, in its Sunday editions, wrote that Romney was a Republican governor in heavily Democratic Massachusetts who had to work with Democrats to get things done.

The newspaper states his business management skills turned failing companies into profitable ones, and he has pledged to create a Cabinet of private-sector leaders focused on strengthening the nation’s business climate. The Review-Journal faulted President Barack Obama, saying his administration lacks in business experience and is openly hostile to free-market capitalism.

The newspaper endorsed Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain for president four years ago.

Two members of Nevada’s congressional delegation have joined the list of those who want to know why federal prosecutors in Reno stopped pursuing cases from local agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Aides to Senator Dean Heller and Congressman Mark Amodei they have requested an explanation from both ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Nevada.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is investigating the yearlong rift, which all but emptied the Reno ATF office and ended their undercover investigations into illegal firearms trafficking operations in Nevada. An assistant U.S. attorney in Reno reportedly told ATF agents in a September 2011 letter that her office won’t prosecute any ATF cases until certain unnamed “issues” are resolved.

Democratic congressional candidate John Oceguera is out with a new ad criticizing Congressman Joe Heck for his votes on a rape crisis center and abortion. The commercial points to Heck’s 2007 vote on a bill funding a crisis center, and says the Republican tried to restrict abortion for victims of rape.

It features a victim advocate saying she can’t understand someone voting that way unless he hadn’t looked in victims’ eyes. Heck’s campaign says Heck denied the bill including the rape crisis center money because it contained several unrelated provisions and was being pushed through in the final hours of the Nevada legislative session.

Heck officials say that while the congressman supported a bill against taxpayer-funded abortions, it included an exception for victims of rape and incest.

Faced with rising costs, Governor Brian Sandoval is backing off his promise to undo pay cuts imposed on state employees last year. Gerald Gardner, his chief of staff, says the governor has issued orders to agency heads to continue the reductions in the proposed 2014-15 budget.

Faced with rising costs, Sandoval is backing off his promise to undo pay cuts imposed on state employees last year. Gerald Gardner, his chief of staff, says the governor has issued orders to agency heads to continue the reductions in the proposed 2014-15 budget.

Gardner adds Sandoval hasn’t given up on efforts to undo the work furloughs, pay cuts, and suspension of merit and longevity pay imposed on state workers. But he says the governor doesn’t know if he’ll get the money to do so as rising costs are more than eating up revenue gains amid a weak economic recovery.

State employees complain the cuts amount to a tax increase on them so that businesses don’t have to pay more taxes.

Nevada has launched a new website to help  the state’s youth in their job searches. The site is available at NevadaYouth.org and includes tips on resumes, cover letters and interviews.

The site links to state-approved programs and organizations that help young people in assessing their career interests and planning for their future. It also highlights job openings throughout the state. Governor Sandoval says Nevada’s future depends on preparing youth, and is encouraging parents and teens to explore the site’s resources.

The site is a project of Nevada JobConnect and comes with the help of the Governor’s Workforce Investment Board.

Bumper stickers are generally an entire thesis in one sentence. In the last couple of months I’ve written down a few:

“All men are animals and some make nice pets.”

“Grow your own dope – plant a man.”

“Never judge a girl by her bumper sticker.”

“Have you ever experienced déjà vu? Have you ever experienced déjà vu?”

“I’ve lowered my expectations to the point where they’ve already been met.”

“I’m not a complete idiot. Some parts are missing.”

“Jack Kevorkian for White House Physician.”

“You know you are getting older when Happy Hour is a nap.”

“Getting second place means you won first place as a loser.”

“I’ve upped my standards, now up yours.”

“When all the chips are down, the buffalo is empty.”

“Never eat more than you can lift.”

“Watch out for the idiot behind me.”

“The fastest way to a fisherman’s heart is through his fly.”

And my favorite: “Very funny Scotty; now beam down my clothes!”

“The nation that reveres the First Amendment cannot revere it so much as to regard it without the First Commandment,” I told a group of church-goers once.

That is to say, the First Commandment should be more important to ‘how’ I use my words than the First Amendment, which gives me the right to say ‘what’ I do. And although I enjoy my free speech, being a Christ-follower entails exercising my rights in a way that shows ‘love’ towards others.

This nuance is often missed entirely by those who claim the First Commandment and First Amendment do not go together.  The reason it’s missed is simple: application of intellect and not heart.

Admittedly, I miss the mark on this more times than not — but I’m trying to do better.