Fan Club Of Eight Years Olds

It was a pretty busy week; I was out half the day on Tuesday, since I was going to see a sleep study that night, and even though I went home and slept for three hours I was still exhausted and booked up on Wednesday. Busy weeks make me always focus on Thursday: If I can live through Thursday at about noon, then I'm set.

Also, I took off Friday this week, so if I could make it through until Thursday afternoon, then I was practically free.

My managing editor volunteers at a local elementary school, and they'd invited her to come present for career day. Since it was Thursday and she's busy putting out the paper, she asked us reporters if any of us wanted to go. I volunteered because it sounded like fun. I can entertain a group of third grade students for a half hour, no problem. There were many years when I was in high school and my entire income came from birthday money and babysitting.

I contacted the school counselors, who asked if I could do two classes instead of just one. I said sure, and my ME gave me little tiny notebooks with the paper's name on them to hand out to the kids, and I got a giant bag of pens from the children's hospital, since I figured a lot of kids had heard of it or been there before.

I showed up about five minutes late, parked across the street and tried to run across the street to the school. I ended up dropping most of the notebooks in the middle of the street, and a kind semi-truck driver stopped so I could pick them up without getting killed. There was a volunteer student aide in the library waiting for me, and she lead me to the first third-grade class.

When I started talking, I found myself getting flushed and my voice quaking a bit. Then I remembered that I could definitely spell better than the kids, and I was good. I talked about what I did, and they asked a lot of questions. I handed out notebooks after explaining that most of my life is spent taking notes, and they all excitedly wanted to write my e-mail address and the paper's website address in there. That took forever. Seriously. I said the website like 10 times and spelled it out and wrote it on the board and they still got it wrong.

Then my aide took me to my next class, and these kids were a little slower to get in to everything, but then they kept me there for an hour, asking question after question. The good news is they were good questions and I had plenty of good reporting stories to entertain them with. I told them about going out with a falconer to scare grackles, Dumpster-diving with anarchist freegans, finding a blind man's dog, trying my hand at being a crane operator, and doing the sleep study. I encouraged them to be nosy, ask questions, and always be curious. One girl in particular seemed to love this, and asked as many questions as she could possibly think of. The teacher finally cut them off, and as I was leaving the students all waved and the one girl wanted to get a hug.

I was smart. I didn't tell them that they won't get paid much and that journalism is changing and freaking out everyone involved in the industry. With any luck, one of those students will become a journalist and get into the business so I can someday retire. My 401k won't exist at that point, but I need some other kid to get suckered into this business so I can die anywhere but at my desk. (Just kidding. I did tell them I usually love my profession.)

So I took off Friday, and so did Dan, but he was invited to come in and speak to a couple of intro journalism classes at SMU so I tagged along. They were hour and a half classes, and Dan's presentation was about online journalism, and it was a really interesting presentation and then Q&A. (I'm not being biased, either. Not too biased. The students got into it and the discussions.) It's always strange to see someone in their professional role when you're used to seeing them elsewhere. It's like going to one of those take your kids to work days and seeing your parent doing something other than getting you snacks or telling you to clean your freaking room.

Naturally, every off day has a result, so Dan's working today. It's Saturday. It's ok, though. We got up and went to a bike race before he had to go in, and he did really well in the race, and then I went back to bed because I was cold and tired. My sister is in town today to see her best friend, so the three of us are on our way out to get lunch. Fooood. Then I'm going shopping. If I were a housewife, I could live every day like this!

Next, A Dog

Saturday night was the first wedding of any of us out of our scijo class at BU. Some came into the class already married, like Molly and Andrea, and lots of us were dating people, but Liz and Pat were both students in our class who fell in love over science magazine articles and I am crossing my fingers they will now go on to produce a lovely second-generation of scijo dorkiness, hopefully in the form of a cute dog with an appropriately geeky name.

(I'm not ruling out children in the long-term, but seriously--everyone who starts asking married people when they're going to have kids should STOP. Immediately. The married people will have children when they want to have children. However, they should have pets when I want them to have pets. I like cutesy animal photos.)

The wedding was fantastic. Kirk, Karen, Eric, Dan and I shared a cab from the Union Square area out there, and Kate met us there. It was at the Park Chalet Garden Restauarant, and even though it was raining and blowing like a hurricane, it was very pretty and simple inside, with the giant fireplace decorated. All the friends and family stood around the fireplace as a justice of the peace married them, and then there was lots of drinking of the handcrafted beer and partaking of wines and appetizers. Food was good, later on, and the whole thing was simple and fairly casual, with about 120 people in attendance.

It was good to have most of the scijos from our class there. It made me realize how much I miss them all and that it's already been close to two years since we graduated and left for traveling or jobs or internships. These are people who came from various backgrounds but all came together to spend most classes with each other. Doug and Ellen said more than once that we were the most united class they'd ever had, and I think that's still true. Yeah, I'm shitty at keeping up with people, and I may not talk to someone for months at a time. But this weekend it felt as though when we're all in the same place again, there's that easy familiarity that comes with having seen people at their best and worst, all thrown into a new (and yet the same) situation.

There were toasts later on in the evening, and all these friends of Liz and Pat's stood and talked about hearing about them for the first time, meeting the other and hearing that they were going to be married. In the back corner of the bar, us scijos were talking about how they would come into class at the same time (usually just in the nick of time or a minute or two late) with coffee from the same place. We all knew it was a relationship before they admitted it. Perhaps one of us should have stood up and made some sort of speech, but we didn't. That's ok. Liz and Pat knew we were there; that's why we were all invited as a group.

Also, Liz and Pat (probably more Liz, if I had to guess) opted for cupcakes instead of a big traditional cake. I think I had three of them, and they were fantastic. I have also realized that I don't think I took any photos at the wedding except of the cupcakes. I'm a bad friend like that. I did see a professional photographer wandering everywhere, though, and flashing her camera in our faces, so I am hoping for a link to an online album soon.

Overall, it was a successful and wonderful trip to San Francisco. I ate cheap Asian foot, walked until my legs were going to fall off, went tourist-trap and locals-only, saw rocking Halloween costumes, got two friends married, and ate a ton of cupcakes. I even made it to the airport on time the next morning, despite being near drunk, crippled from high heels and confused by a time change.

Tipster

I got my journalism "break" from an anonymous tip left on the voicemail of my dorm room phone. The female voice didn't leave a name or contact number, but she told me a time and place to show up, and I did. A whole slew of stories then unfolded, and I feel my entire journalism career is thanks to that tip. It got me into this story, got me investigating, got me loving the deadline rush and nervous feeling of asking the tough questions. It got me a journalism award, a scholarship, and it set the stage for other stories that were similar.

Tonight I sent an e-mail to the editor in chief of the student newspaper with a semi-anonymous tip about some stuff I'd heard went down on TCU campus. What supposedly happened is similar to something that happened when I was the EIC, and I had a reporter who did some digging and it turned into a good story for a while. I dunno if the editor will use it, but it was worth a shot to send her the info and let her do with it what she wants.

Sending all that information made me feel a little bit silly. I wondered what the woman who left me the tip felt when she called me. I got the feeling like maybe I was just being overly confident--I mean, who am I to send her a 'tip'? Who even uses that word any more, except over-eager PR people who are just trying to sell a client, anyway?

But I'd seen a situation similar, and I'd been a reporter fielding a tip and an editor telling a reporter to follow that similar situation. Surely I know more than the average person about what qualifies as a good tip or suggestion, right?

I don't know what the paper EIC will decide to do with it, but as a journalist and former editor, I could go either way--she could either ignore it or follow-up on it, since it's a kind of in-between situation. (I'm not going to divulge more information about the situation on the net because, HELLO, it's a tip. Tip = not substantiated but any real reporting.) The whole thing makes me really, really hope that someone leaves me an awesome tip again soon. I think the last good one I got was a bit over a year ago. And that's only if you don't count when someone tells me there are donuts in the break room. Because those are the BEST tips.

Intimidation, High School Style

Around May I decided my new work out of choice would be running stairs. Since the beginnging of 2008, I decided I needed to work out at least three times a week, both for my health (I run so I can eat donuts) and for my sanity (oooh, nature! kinda!) and started going running in this neighborhood Dan used to live in.

Once it started getting really hot it was miserable for running. I'm not a chipper person who can get up at 6 a.m. and run before work; I feel shitty for the rest of the day when I work out in the morning. I work out immediately after work, because once I get home, I'm probably not going to move from my couch.

I gave up running and started running stairs instead. I go run dozens of times up and down at the local high school, which is about a quarter mile from work--there's only 24 steps, do I have to do a lot of reps. (Like 80 reps . . . yeah, a lot. Boring) I did reps at the TCU stadium for a while, until the temperature got over 100 degrees and the temperature inside that miserable metal-and-concrete stadium got over 110. That's insane.

Today I went out to run stairs at the high school and there were dozens of football players on the field and high school students EVERYWHERE. Kids hanging out in the parking lot, kids on the steps leading down to the track that I run, kids in the shade under the trees. I couldn't bear the thought of going and sweating and looking insane (anyone who runs steps so many times looks insane) in front of all these high school kids. There were all these high school boys down on the field, and all these tiny, tan, pony-tailed high school girls everywhere else.

I've been out of high school for seven years. I am a successful person with a job, a driver's license and a car, two degrees, and a cell phone plan I pay for all on my own. (Even if I sometimes pay it two months late.) I should not be intimidated by the thought of being grody and sweaty in front of a bunch of high schoolers.

And yet I was, I went to Dan's neighborhood and went running instead. Good thing it was relatively cool outside today.