A little bit about a lot of things:

• Wonderful celebration Saturday, courtesy of the Stanislaus County Commission for Women, whose 2008 “Outstanding Women” award winners included Mattos Newspapers owner and publisher Susan Mattos.

Susan is a well-deserving recipient of the prestigious honor, and Kathy and I were honored to be among those on hand for the occasion.

The evening as a whole was enjoyable, in large part because it paid tribute to the successes of women while encouraging others to reach for their fullest potential.....and not be held back by traditional stereotypes or roles.

We don’t yet live in an equal society (in ways which reach well beyond gender), but we should continue striving for that goal.

Men and women look at a lot of things from different perspectives, to be sure, but those differences should serve to complement each other.

Of course, any time a group of men and women get together there are bound to be a few good-natured remarks about the opposite sex (men, of course, give women plenty to talk about just by being, well, men).

So the program wasn’t without its occasional pointed remark.

My favorite was from the recipient who explained that, “if you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

She had a point.

• As always, enjoyed going to the annual Easter egg hunts held in Gustine (Lions Club) and Newman (Knights of Columbus) Saturday.

I had to wonder, though, just what happens that so many of those kids who can pick a park clean of 3,000 eggs inside of two minutes’ time are the same youngsters who take a month to pick up their room as soon as they hit age 12.

Just asking.

• Make a note of this....always shop for Easter before Easter.

My plans to put together a last-minute Easter basket Sunday didn’t seem like such a big deal.....just go to the store, grab a chocolate bunny and all the trimmings, and we were good to go.

Except that there wasn’t a chocolate bunny to be found, at least not the real, solid milk chocolate variety I had gone looking for, unless I was looking in completely the wrong place.....and it’s pretty hard to miss something that large on an empty shelf!

And, the shelves were pretty stripped of all things Easter.

There was an occasional “Peeps” here and there, a few marshmallow eggs, and some bunnies advertised as “milk chocolate flavored.” I think I’ll pass on that one, thank you.

Now I know how Charlie Brown felt when he showed up at the Christmas tree lot and found only one sad-sack tree....when you go tree shopping on Christmas Eve and try to stock an Easter basket on Easter morning......well, sometimes you just take what you get!

• What’s a word here and a word there?

All depends on the word......much to our chagrin.

Our story last week on the California Transportation Commission staff recommendation that West Park receive $25 million in state funding inconveniently left out the “million” part. There may have been some folks on the West Side who would be thrilled if West Park was only in line to get $25, but we can assure you that is not the case.

And, an error more along the “cut-and-paste” variety caused another story to incorrectly state that a Modesto attorney owned a real estate loan business in Newman.

Given the context in which each appeared, it was obvious that each was a misstatement.

We hate mistakes with a passion.....just as any newspaper should.

At the same time errors do occasionally occur, some more serious than others, and when that happens all you can do is accept responsibility, do what needs to be done to set things right and move on.

This is usually a fun business....but it can also be very humbling.

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