Ask Mr. Smartypants

I've been going for particularly long runs on Sundays, in preparation for a half-marathon in April and, if I survive that, a full marathon this fall.

And the Sunday runs have gotten long enough that the dog I run with won't accompany me on the entire journey.

It's a funny thing about Rosie the Wonder Dog: Run her five miles and she's your best friend, but run her 10 miles and she will look at you like you outlawed beef liver and invented cats.

So last Sunday, I went to get Rosie for the second half of my run. She was in the backyard, and as I trotted over the deck and down the steps, I thought, "That's odd. There's a nearly grill-sized hole in my deck. Underneath the grill."

Understand, I live in a fantasy world. Great world. Low prices, beautiful scenery, and I rule it like a pudgy, naked, frolicking Norse God, but living there, I miss out on a lot of stuff happening in your world.

It's fun in that I'm always being caught off guard by stuff I find around the house: clothes, paintings, small children. My wife says we've had 'em for years, but to me they're all pleasant, vaguely familiar surprises.

So as Rosie and I began circling the block (because if I run anywhere other than the block alone, I come out of a dreamy reverie to find myself completely lost), I pondered the hole in the deck.

The first possibility was that, like so many things, the hole had always been there, and I had never noticed it. But Angela would have seen to it that news of a foot-wide gap in the planking was reported loudly and frequently enough to be heard even in Lanetopia.

Perhaps, I thought, there was no hole. Perhaps its appearance had been a trick of the light. I'm a big believer in the "there is no problem" method of solving problems. I once tried to convince my wife that a bat trapped in our bedroom at 2 a.m. was really just a large moth and she should go back to sleep.

But I knew of no "trick of the light" that would allow me to see through wooden boards to the ground below. The hole was real.

But why under the grill, not my big grill, but the little square one with the removable ash holder under ... ohhhhhh.

I had grilled flank steak the night before and not replaced the ash thingy, and the burning coals had fallen through and smoldered on my deck all night, as we snoozed, burning through the wood.

Which left me with this dilemma: What's the best way to tell your wife the exterior of the house was on fire the night before, as she slept?

And now she thinks she's added a new worry to her list: the fear that I will kill the family by cooking food over a roaring fire in a grill on which I've removed the bottom.

But I won't repeat that mistake. She's worrying about past errors when she needs to be thinking ahead, preventing totally new catastrophes.

Wild, new and creative mistakes with which I can nearly kill myself and my family, that's my gig.

Think of them as innovations, imported from a land they call Lanetopia.

The District 7 residents who attended Tuesday's Board of Trustees meeting were so mad ...

HOW MAD WERE THEY?

So mad they jeered the Bible. Seriously. When Superintendent Thomas White tried to read a verse from James saying he, as a teacher, is held to a higher standard, they laughed and booed. He glared at them as though he was their Sunday school teacher, not their employee, then continued.

White led off with a story about buying his wife a horrid piano without consulting her and how this backfired, which seemed to illustrate his understanding of the current situation: Again, he had not consulted with stakeholders. Again, people were angry.

What husband cannot relate?

The effect, though, was dulled by the 45-minute spiel that followed, in which he explained that the contract to pay the Country Club of Spartanburg $200,000 up front and $5,000 per year was a steal. The district would, for that money, get services that lesser negotiators in some districts haven't been able to convince golf courses to take a penny for.

White then asserted that the deal wasn't really kept secret, and had to be secret while negotiated, and the media only told half the story. About the secret that the district wouldn't share with the media. At all. Until after it was signed. But in full compliance with the Sunshine laws, in board members' minds.

Attorney Ken Darr chimed in, saying the district had complied with the part of the Freedom of Information Act he read out, which was true (maybe), but irrelevant to the district's trashing of the part he didn't read.

Readers might remember that the Herald-Journal has fought with Darr and the district over such issues in the past. Here's how it works:

The newspaper asks for information. The district, on Darr's advice, refuses to give it. The newspaper sues. The newspaper wins at every judicial level. All of us, media and public, get our information. District 7 taxpayers get stuck with the tab for the whole suit, including paying the Herald-Journal's lawyers.

White and Darr also said there was no conflict of interest in club member White negotiating the deal, or with club and board of trustees members Thomas McMeekin, Laura Bauknight and Chip Hurst voting for it.

Unfortunately, the only people who believe that are White, McMeekin, Bauknight, Hurst and Darr. Honestly, at this point, I'm not even sure they believe it.

If you belong to a private club and that club gets a huge cash infusion, you benefit. If you are in a position to vote to give that club a huge cash infusion of taxpayer money and you do so, it's a conflict of interest. All clear?

White also said the district can afford this deal, even with tax revenues plummeting, thanks to prudent planning. Unless he has a crystal ball telling him how bad the recession will get and how long it will last, I take issue with that statement.

White says the district will ask the state attorney general's office and the state Ethics Commission whether it violated the law. For now, the deal is officially on hold.

To White, Hurst, McMeekin and Bauknight, I say this: You made the God-fearing folks of District 7 boo the Bible. Do you really need the attorney general and the Ethics Commission to tell you what your next move should be?