Gone Viral...and not in a bad way

So...how was your weekend?

Mine started off at its usual clip, breakfast, shower, little TV. Then I remembered that I needed to check OregonLive to see how the story Katy Muldoon had wrote turned out, as well as the video Motoya Nakamura put together.

Needless to say, I was pretty stunned by it, as well as the reaction it got locally in the Portland/Metro area. In a slight bit of self-chastization, I must admit I think I watched the video on repeat for about an hour, realizing that yes, that's indeed me sitting there talking about the Scroll and my grandparents and doing my best to sound intelligent.

Never too old to become a narcissist I suppose.

By Sunday, I really thought that would be the end of it. The story was out online, as well as in the paper, and I assumed life would again continue as it has. Only it didn't quite work out that way.

Being a journalist, I peruse news compilation sites constantly looking for good stories. My favorite (for no reason other than it was the easiest name to remember) is FARK.com. And as I was scrolling down the news page...there it was. Our story....with a "COOL" tag next to it.

Once the shock wore off I posted the good news on my Facebook page, as is Standard Operating Proceedure, when a fellow journalist and friend from college says, "By the way, it's on Reddit too." That I wasn't expecting either and after about five solid minutes of sifting Reddit's convoluted listings for the link, I found it...

...and realized he had been the one to put it there. The shifty bugger.

Once that batch of shock wore off, my weekend was about over and it was time to return to the day job. Then I got a blip on my Facebook page this afternoon from my cousin back home telling me, "Do you know you're on Yahoo?!"

Uh...not really.

Turned out a reporter, Melissa Knowles caught wind of this little project of mine and decided to report on it. Unbeknownst to me, apparently my grandfather and Steven Segal are one and the same person. Except Mr. Segal broke boards with his hands. Gramps split them with a table-saw.

You can see the story here - World War II Letter Soldier Serves as Keepsake to Grandson

In all the stories I've written as a reporter, I know there's always that bit of hesitation on the part of the subject before they decide to put themselves out there. After all, we're not used to being public figures. We're just regular people who have fairly regular lives, or so we like to think.

For myself, it's been weird having the tables turned and being on this side of the magnifying glass. That said, I'm also so ecstatic at many of the responses I've gotten from people interested in seeing this project completed, it provides more and more motivation to get cracking on it and see it through to the end.

I hope when it's done, it's too your liking. Until then, there's a lot of work to do and we're blowing up the internets, as the kids like to say. Tally ho!