Another long workday, ending with another issue put to bed.

It amazes me that, some weeks, the paper is so tight that we have several stories left over. Other weeks, we are scrambling to fill a couple of pages because we have an unusually large news hole.

And then there's this week.

We're already down a reporter, with another on vacation. And an extra-large news hole.

At the start of the day, we had five pages that were "empty" -- there were no stories our reporters planned to generate that could fill them.

Luckily, sister papers in Orlando and Seattle came to our rescue. And we scooped up some briefs from our own Web site, which was nice.

All in all, it was a long day. But we did it, just as we always do.