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Jealous of my midnight Friday blogging? Probably. Wake up, work, jog, paint, eat a piece of pizza, go to bed. And so it continues.

Anyone who has taken a rudimentary class in forecasting or has ever talked to someone who has taken a rudimentary class in forecasting has heard the following statement: "The first rule of forecasting is that forecasts are always wrong." At this point in the class, some moron (probably me) says something that they truly believe to be original - "Then what's the point of this class." If I was the teacher, this is where I would say "Well, this is where the first rule of forecasting fails, because I was predicting that someone as dumb as you would be in my class this term." Yeah eat that fictional student that was probably me in fictional class that I probably took.

For the last 10 years, economists forecasting the Michigan economy and job growth have always said "this year will be bad, next year will level out, and the year after that we'll return to slow but steady job growth and economic improvement." The one exception to this was last year when economists were pretty much saying that nothing would ever be good again (until, in my humble opinion, the federal government saved our collective bacon. Thank you good people of the federal government). With all this background, then, I am both encouraged and cautious when I read another article that says that economists are predicting that job growth will return to Michigan next year. Nothing could make me happier, but there isn't much about which I could be more skeptical. Same tune, different year. If this forecast does, in fact, come true, this could be further legitimate evidence that we have come through a bottom and the future may finally be better than the past for the good people and businesses of our state.

I'm this close to throwing a scrapbooking party to celebrate. If I could have all the time back that I currently use trying to convince people that we don't suck, I could waste my time in other ways like writing more about television and working on that elusive karate brown belt. Hi-ya.