Sticky

You're right: I should have updated sooner. I mean, it's not like I'm actually doing much in Houston. I go to work, and then most of my evenings are kind of spent bumming around. I'll get dinner once or twice a week, go to the gym, but there's been plenty of time to update.

I'm glad I didn't, though. I wouldn't have wanted to be hasty about anything I wrote, hasty about assumptions or susceptible to falling into moods that might pass.

I've been down in Houston for about six weeks now, and the humidity is already warning me that I'm going to be a greasy, sweaty mess for at least half the year as long as I live here. Memories of three years in Florida, including my first two years of high school, swim in the back of my mind when I wake up and it's sort of mildly cloudy and damp. Tonight I came back from the gym and found a mosquito sitting on the outside wall of my apartment; thankfully, it wasn't nearly as big as the mosquitoes in Alabama, that sticky place I spent my senior year of high school.

Tonight I also finally started hanging pictures on my wall. It's to make my little apartment feel more like home and less a place I happen to sleep when I'm at work, ticking away hours between trips to Fort Worth.

I left Fort Worth after four years, the longest I've ever consecutively lived anywhere. The city was good to me—it gave me an education in college, when I was there for school but left at every chance to go home and be with Topper. It gave me a job, a career start, a place to let Topper live with the pony, an epicenter where my friends and eventually family would be. It gave me the love of my life (Dutch's burger, in case you were wondering . . . oh, and my guy, too). It gave me a place to really work on growing up.

The most peculiar thing about this move is that I'm going back. I've written before about how going back to places I've once lived is an extremely rare opportunity, which makes me often feel like my past is imaginary. I'm going back to Fort Worth frequently on weekends—my family, my friends, my soulmate (Topper) and the love of my life are all there. It's four hours up the road. I have a car, I have cash, I can return.

And it's almost as strange as never returning.

Every time I'm driving north on the highway that leads toward downtown Fort Worth, I have to check my mental state. Am I happy? Am I relaxed? Am I unnerved? Do I realize I don't live here any more? It doesn't matter that I'm not gone long enough to miss much, that I read the newspapers every day and most of my life is still there: I am not there. Not really. I am just a visitor.

I really like most of what I've seen of Houston so far. I'll delve more into my work, my neighborhood, all that stuff in the future, but I still haven't realized it's home. Maybe I'll somehow keep deluding myself that Fort Worth is still home, or maybe it's that place that I'll call home from now on. People will ask, Where are you from? and I'll answer, Fort Worth. Right now, I just say, I moved from Fort Worth. I don't claim it yet. But it looks like maybe I can, maybe I will.

It's hard to tell.

First Of The Last

Tomorrow is my last day at work.

This is, I guess, my first grown-up job, which doesn't include having back-up income from student loans or nannying or something like that. My freelancing when I first got out of grad school was pretty fun, except for the whole barely-able-to-pay-rent-why-does-the-daily-only-pay-once-a-month-this-is-bullshit part, and when I quit that I basically called the metro editor and told him I got an offer of a full-time job. He told me I should take it. I told him I had.

So tomorrow, really, is the first of what I'm sure will be many (hopefully not too many) last days of work. I've already turned in all my stories, already contacted all my favorite PR people to tell them how much they've helped me over the years and how I only know like three phone numbers by heart (one is Dan, two others are PR people), and so if I end up in a car accident and they can't find my phone and they need an emergency contact and Dan's not around, I'm calling them. Tomorrow I'm basically going in to finalize a list of contacts and story ideas for my editors and to pick up items and drink beer.

I'm still processing this whole thing, the whole "holy shit, I'm moving to Houston" thing, but I'm feeling calm now. My work here will be done. I'll have a week off. I'll go with Dan to the North American Handmade Bike Show the weekend before my first day, and then I'll be going back and forth until I can move everything with the much, much-appreciated help of my parents. I went down over the weekend and found an apartment, and I'll be signing the lease and getting keys and paying for a place that includes all bills, and you know what that means in Texas: I can crank my AC down to 62 in the summer and not have to pay extra. Bonus points for also being able to not feel the guilt for slowly killing the planet one fake Fahrenheit at a time, since I won't have to pay more for it.

Today I cut out of work an hour early and checked in on a fossil site near the office, since it hadn't rained in a while and I figured the creek bed would be nearly dry. I wandered around picking up sea urchins and snail shells for an hour and a half, because clearly I need more rocks before I move halfway across the state. I just realized yesterday that I could perhaps find more recently deceased (or live) sea urchins or snails near my new home, since Galveston will be nearby. I've often been close to the shore -- D.C., Boston, Florida's Fort Walton Beach -- but it will just be so different after living in Cowtown for four years, which is Texas prairie.

I guess I mean that to say that yes, it's all going to be a big change. But some things don't change. It will still be Texas, and one thing I've learned about this state is that it does have the power to continually surprise me. I look forward to the next surprises, and I'm crossing my fingers for lots of pleasant ones.

Remember That Time?

Remember when I said I was going to do the NPR Three-Minute Fiction contest? Well, I did write it, actually. I just forgot to send it in. It was a bit of a whirlwind weekend--it's been a bit of a whirlwind several weeks, actually, but more on that in a moment--and so it completely slipped my mind to send it in. You probably don't believe me when I said I did finish it in time, but it is 599 words (one under the 600-word limit!) and I posted it on my other site, Journalism's Dark Secret, for all you who are not creepers and who are actually friends. Yeah, it's totally randomly thrown in, and if you read preceding posts, it makes ZERO sense, since that's where I put Nanowrimo stuff, but just go with it. Right? Right.

Right: So I took a new job and I'll be moving to Houston in like two weeks. I'm trying not to think about it, because denial is a pleasant state right now, since I have no place to live down there and I know three people in the whole damn city (and work with one, so that's nice) and my room here in Fort Worth is such a damn fucking disaster that the thought of packing makes me feel slightly hive-y.

I've been in Fort Worth as an adult (read: post grad school) for four years now, and I feel good about the change. On the other hand, I feel sad and miserable and terrified. Dan will start looking for a position down there, but he'll be up here, and we'll be doing that whole long-distance thing while trying to finish planning a wedding. (We have it all planned. We just . . . well, we haven't actually executed most of it. We're working on it.)

The horses will stay up here and will probably be moving down at a later date, once I find an apartment and get some paychecks and all that good stuff. They're at an excellent full-board barn, so they'll be looked after nicely, but still--moving Topper is always an experience, and I mean "experience" the same way people say someone is "interesting," which is never in a good way.

So many of my friends are here in Fort Worth, as are my parents and sister and Dan's parents and a few siblings (after one comes back from Stanford and discounting another who is in the Army). My Horned Frogs and TCU are here. My favorite burgers and pizza are here. My favorite seafood is still outside DC or on the Emerald Coast, but I've learned to live with these challenges.

Growing up moving around a lot, I got fairly adept at getting shit to happen, making living situations work and moving on. I expect it will take a bit longer now to make friends and settle in--I'm really looking forward to working with everyone at the new place (more info to come), but I also think I'll be on the younger side again, so may not be in the same stage of hanging-out-abilities as coworkers, so that might mean it's slower to make friends. How do you make friends as an adult? Through friends of friends is mostly what I've seen. However, only knowing a few people in Houston, I don't know how well that will work out there. We'll see.

Anyway, I'm excited. This will be good. Don't expect any updates soon, but if I am updating, leave me a comment telling me to shut to fuck up and GO PACK. Because seriously, this place is a disaster.

Teeth Grinding

There should be gnashing of teeth and rending of garments about all the things didn't accomplish in 2010, but here I am, half a month into 2011 and feeling OK about my slacktitude.

(A side note: I have a 2005 Mac Powerbook, which I love, but it's starting to show it's age. It's a bit slower, it's a bit crankier with wifi, and my "I" button frequently doesn't work. I guess that's a testament to the sort of writing I do.)

I didn't finish my Nanowrimo. Maybe I still will. Maybe I'll say fuck it. Right now I'm daydreaming about NPR's Three Minute Fiction challenge — 600-word short fiction. That's something I can deal with. It all fits onto one page. Right now, I feel like my mind isn't quite working the way I should. I'm scattered and forgetful when I'm not at work, and most of it is because of work, which I won't get into but will say my (incredibly hot and young) dentist told me to stop grinding my teeth and I want to be like, Dude, I'm a reporter, I can't help it, you should talk to my doctor because she knows better than to lecture me on my blood pressure.

The one thing I have stuck with is the running, because I'm sort of afraid of keeling over if I stop logging the miles. I'm not a great runner, and I'm definitely not fast, but I already downgraded to a 10k at the end of February instead of the half-marathon and I find comfort in mindless circuits on the high school track.

People already made New Year's resolutions and a bunch of people have probably already broken them. I didn't really resolve to do anything, because I feel like they're unnecessary for me at this moment. I already made the biggest resolution last year when I said yes to getting married; all I have to do this year is follow through. In the meantime, I'm just going to do what I've been doing: wander about feeling happy if slightly off-center, like I'm wearing sweatpants that are two sizes too big. They're still damn comfy and awesome, just a little off. Not that there's anything wrong with that. This too shall pass.

And now, for my journalism wrap-up of 2010:

I can now say I've had two moments as a reporter that kicked ass. I mean, I've done some investigative things, ruffled some feathers, gotten doors shut on me and phones hung up on me, blah blah, but these are opportunities that were just too good.

In 2004 or 2005, I was editor in chief of the Daily Skiff, the student newspaper at TCU. James Carville, the political commentator, was coming to campus for something, and there were a handful of spots for us student journalists, so I took it upon myself to go, along with another editor or two and a few reporters.

Most of the time I wouldn't go out to something like this; figures visit college campuses all the time. However, I'd just discovered the movie Old School and knew Carville was in it, so I joked to my staff that I'd ask him the question he's asked in the movie during a debate: What is your position on the role of government in supporting innovation in the field of biotechnology?
And so I did. I raised my hand and had to read the question off a notecard. And he laughed. It was awesome.

I one-upped that this December when Uncle Bob, as he's jokingly called around the Schieffer School of Journalism at TCU, was the guest of honor at the big annual fundraiser MD Cancer Center holds in Dallas each year. There was a press conference beforehand, and it was just me, a writer from a Dallas magazine, and a bunch of TV camera people. Schieffer was just sitting there when I walked in, so I introduced myself and could feel myself turning bright, bright red. I was all stammery and hot. He was very gracious and showed me his custom TCU cowboy boots, and when the press conference got started (Tom Brokaw was also there), I asked most of the questions, since I was basically the only reporter there.

At the end, I worked up the nerve to pull out this rolled up poster out of my purse. (I don't have a picture of only the poster, so forgive me for that.) Dan had stolen it from the walls of the journalism school at TCU during homecoming; they raffled off a signed one, which we didn't get, but Dan took that one with the philosophy we could still hang it somewhere.

So I roll this poster out and tell Schieffer this may not be professional, but I'd love it if he could sign my poster. He laughed and held it and showed it to everyone else (hi, Tom Brokaw!) and then signed it to Dan and I and added "Go Frogs!" at the bottom.

I'm going to get that shit signed and you can bet your sweet ass it will be hanging wherever Dan and I take up residence.

Journalism's a weird world. I got through another year, got a second weird notch in my belt of bizarre journalist encounters, and hold on to that sort of thing whenever I wonder what the hell is happening.

A Penance

For those of you keeping score at home, November came and passed without me finishing Nanowrimo. Am I disappointed? Yes. I have a ton of excuses, too, ranging from work stuff to personal stuff. Do I want to finish what I started? Yes. I'm going to try to finish it before the end of the year, effectively giving myself another month to write (and I'm losing days already, because HOLY FUCKING SHIT, we're in December).

As a sort of peace offering, a penance, an act of contrition to the Great Writing Gods, I've decided to instead, here and now, finish the story of Dan and I traveling to Leadville. Remember that trip, way hell back in August, the one where we killed Dan's car and went through Boulder and tooled around at such high altitude that three flights of stairs to our little prudish Victorian hotel room made me feel like I'd run a mile without breathing? That one. For a reminder, here's the first part of the trip, and here's the second part. I never finished it because, as you can tell, I tend to take on writing projects that never quite get completed.

So the alarms go off at an ungodly hour to wake us up for the race, which starts at 6 a.m., just when it's getting light. It's cold out, and Dan and I eat breakfast at the hotel, which graciously had a Riders Breakfast earlier than usual and filled with things like peanut butter, hard-boiled eggs and oatmeal. Dan kitted up, I pulled on about nine layers of clothing and got my bag of supplies and cameras, and we went to find a place on the street for the start. There was a vibrating sense of urgency and excitement as families and crews did checks with their riders. Do you have your CamelBak filled? Do you have your other gloves? Are you warm enough? Did you eat enough? Do I need to get anything else to put in my bag?

Just before the start

The shot finally went off, and about 1,600 riders went off and out to the great beyond. The day before I'd met a really nice woman whose husband was racing, and she'd offered to meet up with me, and I'd met another woman who'd offered the same thing. The three of us met after all the racers went (there were very few women racing, so a lot of the crews were headed by women) and we went in one of their rental cars up to the first viewing spot.

Didn't see a lot at that viewing spot--except the race leaders, including Levi Leipheimer, go smoking by and kicking up a huge tail of dust. The younger woman and I decided we'd like to get on to the next stop, our riders be damned, and so the older woman stayed and the younger and I hitched a ride with another woman to the next stop, which was on a damn right before the really scary ascent up a big mountain.

When we were lugging all our assorted shit to the next stop was when I realized it wasn't the weather I'd banked on. I was prepared for rain, cold, sleet, snow, an apocalypse, and instead it was getting warm, bright, sunny, and as we waited, watching. There were drunken frat-type guys pounding Natty Light, there were kids playing, there was a really long line for the porta-potties. I didn't have any food for myself--a major oversight--so had some Gatorade and a few bites of a Powerbar. I propped open my giant umbrella and pinned my TCU flag on it so Dan could find us (and the husbands, who'd been told about my flag), and tried to stay out of the sun. I met one dude who had possibly the most impressive thighs I've ever seen.

Seriously. Glorious. And yes, my shirt does say "I Love Jens Voigt."

One of the women I spent the day with. We traded the shade; I haven't seen the latest Leadville documentary yet, but I hope my TCU flag makes an appearance.

I didn't see Dan on the way up the mountain, but I did see him coming down. It's an out-and-back course, so he saw my flag and I yelled at him and he stopped, grabbed his bag, refilled with fluids, gave me a quick kiss and went on his way. I felt dusty and excited when he arrived--he was riding with a vengeance, mad because a guy had crashed into him and another rider on the way down the mountain due to carelessness. We'd packed up bags for him at each stop, in case I couldn't find him, and the volunteers at the race were ridiculously quick about getting his bag, filling his CamelPak, shouting encouragements at him as he took off again. I felt a little light-headed and really happy when I saw Dan disappear going toward Leadville again, knowing that he was more than halfway to finishing.

Made it back to Leadville, where the mayor was acting as announcer and calling each rider's name and hometown as they came over the line. I went to a little bakery and bought cookies to eat while camping out waiting for Dan to pass the line. It was nice to eat, nice to watch each rider come through the finish. Some looked like death; others looked so jubilant that they might float away. Lots of kids ran through the finish line alongside their parents as they rode in. It was like a festival, and everyone was jovial.

I was keeping up with text messages, telling Dan's mother, my mother, his best friend and another friend of ours what was going on. When he rolled across the finish line, I hung over the barriers and yelled at him, and he came over to the barrier and sat down for a bit. His knee was gashed open and bleeding and he was covered with grime. He looked exhausted, but they put a medal over his head and I passed him a water bottle, so relieved he'd survived and I wouldn't have to come back next year. (I'm pretty certain if he hadn't finished in time, he would have gone back to try to do it in time again.) The only bad thing is my camera had died, so there are no photos I took of him finishing.

He rolled out of the finish area and he said he wanted someplace quiet to sit, so we went to the back side of this bar (free Sierra Nevada beer if you have a medal!) and sat down on the sidewalk, in the shade and away from the crowd. We sat for a few minutes in quiet, and he reached into his saddle bag, pulled out a ring box and proposed. No one cried. I giggled like a mad man. Then about thirty seconds later, a volunteer medical person came by and asked Dan if he would want to get his knee cleaned out in the medical tent. He helped us up, and I pushed Dan's bike along as he gimped to the tent.

Honestly, I'm glad the man came along, and for more than the obvious reason that Dan needed someone to clean his leg out and bandage it up and make sure he was ok. I do better in life if I have a purpose, so pushing the bike, gathering up all the stuff, running to get some more food and drinks for Dan while he was waiting, and then walking slowly with him back to the hotel was nice. He showed, I showered (I got a wicked sunburn, which hurt), we got a pizza and marveled at ourselves. We called people, sent text messages, and then pretty much fell asleep by 8:30.

The next day was the awards ceremony, and they called up every single finisher to get their prizes. It was a long wait -- some 800 people completed -- but Dan and I sat through it, and by chance ran into a really nice guy who was talking about the drive home (turned out to be the same guy with the Futurama outfit; I hadn't recognized him without seeing so much leg) when he and Dan saw Dave Wiens walk by. Wiens is a god in the Leadville world (six Leadville wins, has beaten both Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong on the race), and when the two stopped him to ask if he would mind doing a photo, he obliged, very graciously and very politely.

Dan had me print off a copy of this when we got home. I fully expect it to be on the bedside table when we move in together.

Dan and I tooled around Leadville a little bit; I wanted to take photos of the old shop paintings and various murals around town. We got pictures of him and his medals and silver belt buckle in various places. The main drag of the town is about six blocks long, so it was easy for him to limp along slowly while I stopped with my cameras. We loaded up all our belongings and took them to the Budget van to drive home, and we filled the CamelPaks with ice cubes to wrap the internal bladders around Dan's knee on the drive.


We had a lot to talk about on the way home, of course. It helped pass the time, since the drive was considerably slower. I was the only one who could drive (Dan's legs were useless), and the van went about 15 miles per hour slower than the car had. The time change headed back east also caught us. But we got back, and here we are in cyclocross season, with Dan racing on weekends and then accompanying me to the barn, and we're planning a wedding. It's fun, I guess. There's a lot of it that's bullshit. I could rant about it, but I won't. I will say, however, that I'm excited to be marrying Dan, and that as awesome as the Leadville experience was, the whole wedding thing can't be any more of a roller coaster than that was.

Ethics And Apple Screwed Me

Today I traded an Apple iPad for a flu shot because it was the ethical thing to do and because journalism is clearly out to show me just how much the industry hates me.

I went with a coworker, one of our ad reps who has the same first name, to the opening of this clinic run by a big local hospital system this morning. She's friends with the guy who does all the sales and marketing for the clinic, and I'm the health care reporter, so it made sense for us to go. We went, took a tour, got some free coffee (and a nice travel mug) and a danish and put our names in a drawing at the urging of the guy who works there. Why not, right? It'll probably just ensure I get put on their mailing list, but I'm the health care reporter, so it's cool, I want their mail.

I got back to the office and added a story about the opening to my budget, since it's going to be a noteworthy thing for our kind of readers. Midmorning, the ad rep comes in bouncing off the walls that she won the iPad and the guy had called her to tell her, and she was so psyched and I gave her a hi-five and thought, Dude, iPads are sweet. I've been lusting after one since they came out (after I got done making all the feminine hygiene jokes, because they write themselves, right?), and I secretly hope I get one for Christmas from my family but I can't justify buying one because I'd got a wedding party to finance (alcoholic journalist friends are expensive to buy booze for) but maybe we'll put it on our registry. Whatevs.

The ad rep swings by to go pick up her iPad, and then I get a phone call in the early afternoon when I'm driving back to work after a late lunch. It's a person who works at the office who says, Congrats! You won an iPad! And I laugh and can hear the ad rep laughing in the background and think it's all a giant joke.

Because journalists do not win things, people. Never happens. Except that one time Dan won a 10-pound Crunch candy bar as a door prize, but it was at a college journalism reunion thing, not a work thing, and it doesn't count because I'm still bitter that he didn't let me have any of it for a YEAR. He just displayed it like a prize on his bookshelf.

Anyway, so I think it's a joke and laugh and they say, No, really! And I say, Yeah, sure, give it to our ad rep and she can bring it back.

Turns out the guy who does all the sales and marketing just read the first name on the slip that was drawn, assumed it was the ad rep, called her ans said, You won! when in reality is was my name on the slip and I won. The ad rep was all dejected and came back with an iPad, and I then I was stuck: I couldn't accept an iPad. A health care reporter who regularly reports on this parent company and who is writing a story about this opening cannot accept a $400 piece of glorious touch-screen wonder life-changing awesomeness.

Phil, since you were my ethics professor and mentor, I know you would be proud of me. And damn, I wish you were around so I could tell you this story because it is so good.

So I have to call them back and be like, Well, I thought you guys were joking, and now that there's an iPad sitting here in the office, I can't accept it. You guys will have to redraw. We have a general editorial policy of accepting nothing worth more than $10--it lets someone buy you a fancy-ass cup of coffee, maybe, or get some general trinket/token they give out to everyone (like the awesome mug).

The guy who worked there was very nice about it all, and came back to pick up the iPad so I didn't have to drive it over (which would have made it so tempting for me to steal it away and then to claim, I was hijacked! Someone stole it!). Then he said he felt horrible and had to offer me something. Could I, would I, accept a flu shot?

I said yes.

(This Is A Long Sad/Angry One)

Dear Phil--

Today I went to your funeral. I found out you died on Monday morning, when Dan called me at my desk with the news. It was pretty surreal--remember when he got laid off and I had to have him repeat what he just said to me? Same sort of thing. He said that you'd died, and I just felt shocked, angry and sad all at once.

All week I've been grappling with this feeling that you're not really dead. That it's just a rumor, or a crazy story I've heard, and that I should file it away in the back of my mind to tell you about the next time we met for lunch.

I'm so glad I got to see you about a month ago or so for lunch. Thanks for paying, by the way. You get it--you'd been a cops reporter before, you'd worked all sorts of journalism jobs, and you knew that even though Dan and I could pay for ourselves, it would help if you paid. And you did. Even for the slices of pie we all had.

I also wanted to let you know I joined the membership of the church we had talked about, St. Mary of the Assumption. Dan and I didn't know what to do in terms of joining a church and establishing a membership to get married, and I was really glad when you said you liked St. Mary, just down the street from where I live. That's the church where you got baptized and where you got married, and that's where Dan and I plan to walk down the aisle next fall.

I'll be honest, I'm really, really angry you're not going to be there. In so many ways, you were like family and friend wrapped up into one, and you know that's not an easy thing to do. Dan and I even briefly considered trying to get you to marry us, but then we opted for the full mass instead, which requires a priest, not a deacon. Remember when we were joking about getting Bob Schieffer to our wedding, and how we asked what we had to do to get him there? You said that you'd probably have to die in the same week, because then he'd already be in town and might be willing to go to the funeral of two journalists he's never met. He gave a beautiful eulogy today, by the way.

After the funeral a bunch of fairly young college alumni went out to eat and drink at Fuzzy's Tacos. One of the former students said that was where you used to take your college journalism ethics students after the end of the semester, which made me feel old (I know I'm not) because you used to take classes to Jon's Grille, when it was still around. One person made the comment that it was very Irish of us all, going out to drink and talk about you and life and journalism, and I answered that it was just very reporterly of us. What else were we supposed to do? (On a side note, I'll admit I'm writing this with a few drinks under my belt, but you never turned down a good drink and I've seen you drink mai tais with little umbrellas, so I feel ok about that.)

You were one of the kindest people I ever met. When I was a senior in college and became really, really sick with mono and a host of other concurrent infections, you gave me some leeway on my final project and let me turn it in late after seeing how sick I was and how I had a hard time just getting through classes, much less doing anything outside of class. Of course, you also expected the best of everyone, and you were totally right when you scolded me and my editors for eating a cake that had been left in the ads department. It wasn't our cake to eat (even though it was really, really delicious.) I'm really glad I bought a replacement cake before you found out about the whole incident. I feel like every journalist who's known you should always keep in mind, "What Would Phil Record Do?"

There are a lot more things I've thought about writing, because all week I've know I'd have to write you and let you know my thoughts on all of this. For a while I thought about writing everything out longhand, in a reporter's pad or something like that, but I feel ok with putting this on something goofy like a blog. You were a big proponent of communication, of the media, no matter what form it took. I always looked forward to getting e-mails from you, when you'd start by saying "Beloved Liz" and end saying, "Love Ya, Phil." I don't know how to hold on to those things that you sent me. Do I print out the e-mails? That seems bizarre. Do I keep them in a folder? That seems even more bizarre, since maybe someday e-mail will be passe and everyone will communicate in some other way.

I don't know what to do to hold on to the few things I actually have that you gave me in some (semi) tangible form, but I do know that everything you taught me, starting more than five years ago when I was just a student in your media ethics class, an editor of a student newspaper, will stay with me. I like to think I'll be a journalist forever, I won't give up and do something else, but it wouldn't matter if I did. The things you taught me -- to be a gracious, kind-hearted person, to expect people to try their best, to forgive when people didn't, to laugh frequently and to never had a bad day, to be proud of the people you love in your life -- will last forever, even if my journalism career doesn't. You should have seen all the people at the church today. They all felt the same way. And that, in my opinion, is saying a lot.

I love you and I miss you,
Liz