Avoiding The Breakdown

The weekend was fantastic--drinking and music and Whataburger at 2:30 a.m. on Friday, then artfully slacking on Saturday and Sunday.

So far this week, however, I've been swamped with budgeted work, special pub stories and a last-minute story that got put onto my plate. I've spent so much time on the phone with people that my left eardrum is driving my crazy. I've reached the point where just hearing any voice on the phone in that ear is enough to make me want to tear my hair out. Every time you talk to someone on the phone, there's that slight tinny quality that comes with being blasted through the airwaves, and that tinny feeling vibrates my ear the wrong way and sends the same feeling up my spine that I get from nails on chalkboards.

Yesterday I was extremely busy (why are all these people calling me back? I have an error rate that I work with that's fairly high, so I only expect a percentage of my calls to come through, and when they all call back I'm fucked), and was really excited to get out of work. I bolted as soon as I could, went on a run (good one, hurrah!) and then had an excellent ride with Topper. He didn't try to kill me, didn't even spook once, and I've taken back my title of horse whisperer.

Then I went home and wrote two stories. It made me feel incredibly productive, and I knew my Wednesday would be less stressed because of that, and I got up this morning expecting to feel better. However, I found out my cell phone service had been cancelled because of a past due bill.

Ok, so I should be ashamed that I didn't pay the bill on time or whatever. But I'm not. Using the phone is just something I take for granted and then forget about it. Frankly, I'm more worried about forgetting to pay a student loan bill or rent than I am my cell phone. That's why I have a phone at work too, right? (Kidding. Kind of.) But they slapped on some rather large late fees, and I ended up paying it all off and wiping out all the money I'd been trying to save to the trip to San Francisco at the end of this month for Liz and Pat's wedding. I've already paid for my airline ticket, and still have a small amount that will pay for part of the hotel room, but now I've decided I don't really need to eat in San Franciso.

People aren't calling me back for my last-minute story and I had an interview with a bitchy person that put me in a dour mood. I called Dan (the good thing is my service was back on within about an hour of paying it) and told him I may or may not have a nervous breakdown today. Then I told my editor the same thing, and we decided that getting ice cream would keep us from coming unglued.

The good news is I can see this BS will end soon. The bad news is I'm also not totally sure I should be spending $5 on ice cream.

Airwaves

I was in my car listening to the radio on the way back from lunch and I heard this song "I Can Only Imagine" by the band MercyMe (Mercy Me? Mercyme? have mercy). It's a fairly bland song--and a very Christian one. Christian power ballad, if you will. Jesus is invoked a lot.

Hearing the song struck me as strange--I'm Christian (well, Catholic, so depends which Protestant denomination you're talking to as to whether I'm legitimately Christian or not), but I cannot stand Christian pop/rock music. Makes me want to throw up. I'm familiar with the song, just because I've heard it in commercials before (Wow Worship CD boxed set or something), but on a mainstream radio station? Puh-leese.

It's not that I completely object to Christian or faith-based music ("Jesus Walks" by Kanye West is great on the radio, and I wish I heard more Matisyahu on Texas stations), but this song was blatantly Christian, sung softly and slowly so you can hear every crappily-written lyric. Moreover, the music was offensive to the ears.

(I use a fuck-load of parentheses, don't I? Holy shit.)

Anyway. Don't want to hear that song on the radio again. I did also hear "Yellow" by Coldplay, and then I remembered hearing the song my freshman year at TCU, and THEN I realized that was in 2001 and when the hell did I become an old person? That was seven years ago, which doesn't seem like a long time, but in music, it is. Seven years can be an entire musical era. That's almost one of those "best songs of the '90s" type things.

Today I got my second press kit in about three months that's on a flash drive. The first one I got was the annual report from a hospital system, and this one today had press releases, bios, photos and the history for this company. Is this perhaps a new trend? Is giving someone a flash drive with a company logo on it the new pen with a logo on it? Seems like it would be fairly pricey, but I've seen small drives at Target for $10 or so. My desk is cluttered with enough papers that I'm intrigued by this new format.

This weekend: drinks and music Friday night, Omni theater Saturday morning, TCU-OU game, possible party in Dallas and spending Sunday out there. I'm having major issues with logistics, these days, with "logistics" meaning "that effing long and expensive drive to Dallas."

A Pox Upon Them!

It's Wednesday, and should be my busy day, doing last-minute reporting and finishing things up to go to press on Thursday. Instead, I'm leisurely writing one more story today and tomorrow will be a busy day, since I had to nix one story and pick up another one.

It blows when people won't return phone calls. Almost everyone can return phone calls within two days unless they're out of town--or that's my opinion, anyway. The people who are "too busy" to call me for 2 minutes and 37 seconds and explain that it's a bad week, can we maybe reschedule the story are a bunch of jerks. No, you don't have to talk to me. And yeah, you can be busy and everything and tell me to get lost. But at least call me back and TELL me that.

I do a lot of griping, don't I?

Here's some more griping: Lance Armstrong will return to cycling in 2009, coming out of retirement to supposedly up awareness of cancer. Yeah, he's done a bunch of great things for cancer research and support and awareness (remember when everyone wore a yellow Livestrong bracelet? Sometimes I feel like the only one who still does, and then I go to a cancer center and see them everywhere again). But coming out of retirement?

This guy must be BFF with Brett Farve.

On the non-griping side, the Red Sox have at least a wild card berth to the post-season and eliminated the Yankees from playoff contention for the first time since something like 1993 or some time long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

That, and I have a Diet Coke with Lime in the fridge. I cannot express my love for this soda.

Three hours, 38 more minutes until America's Next Top Model. Four hours, 38 minutes until Project Runway. My week is always better once I get some Tim Gunn.

Home Work

Today at work I spent the whole afternoon procrastinating, dinking around, putting off work. About 4 p.m. I knew my chances of getting any work done were shot, and at 5 on the dot I grabbed my stuff and headed out for a short run (blah) and then to go ride Topper (our first really good ride since he tried to kill me, and it was wonderful). It was one of those days where I just couldn't focus, so I thought, Hey, no big deal, I'll just take my stories home with me.

And now here I am at home procrastinating, dinking around, putting off word. Ta-da! That was a wonderful magic trick, right? Of course, the night is still relatively young; I probably won't be in bed until about 11:30 and asleep until close to midnight, and so there's still time to work on stuff. Will I work on it tonight? Sure I will. Eventually. I mean, I worked on the story today at work. Granted, I only did like 150 words of about 750, but I worked on it.

The one interruption of my afternoon was some PR person in Canada calling to see if I got a book about leadership they sent me about two weeks ago. It was written by a woman from North Texas, and it's about leadership from the heart, and this PR person thought that it's health based since it was about the heart. It was a pretty entertaining stretch to hear her explain.

Sometimes when I'm on the phone I start listening to myself and it makes me tired. I have this total phone voice. I can't help it. It happens when I talk to people professionally; I talk louder, like I'm talking across a string between two tin cans, and I have this tone of voice that is completely different from the way I talk outside of work. Outside work, I say the word "dude" with alarming frequency. I curse a lot. My voice is deeper. On the phone, I'm loud and higher pitched and don't curse. I sound fake to myself, but I just hope it doesn't come across as fake on the phone. Who knows.

I'm hoping tomorrow at work will go better. I'll have some last-ditch efforts to track down this woman who will not freaking call me back, even though I'm supposed to write a story about her stable. And when I'm done with work, I get to go to Dallas and watch America's Next Top Model and Project Runway with Dan.

Someday I hope to have a job where I get paid extra for quality dinking off.

Signs Of Fall

TCU was playing Southern Methodist University on Saturday, and Dan bought tickets for us about a week ago so we could go. SMU is the big TCU rival, but it's never really a rivalry because SMU sucks at football--a lot, usually, and it's rare that the game is anything but an ass-stomping.

SMU also happens to be two miles from where Dan lives in Dallas. It's a pretty campus, all red brick faux-Ivy League looking, with big huge trees and every single student dressed to the nines. I have never seen so many dresses and heels at a football game, and I went to freaking TCU--where the girls wear their pearls and sorority T-shirts to games.

Since the stadium was so close and we knew we'd end up parking a half-mile away if we drove, Dan and I went to his parents' house and borrowed their clunker mountain bikes for the weekend. We dressed up in our purple shirts and then biked to the stadium, chaining them up across the street from the stadium. It was the best idea ever--the place was swarming with red and purple, and parking was a nightmare.

It was the first time I'd ever been to the SMU stadium (Dan had been with his best friend, Loren, before) and the first time Dan had ever gone to a TCU game that he wasn't covering from the press box. It was also the first football game we'd ever attended together. I love football games. I can yell at people and clap and be noisy, and it's all very cathartic. It didn't hurt that TCU won 48-7 and are now ranked No. 23 by USA Today and 24 by the Associated Press.

SMU, the Mustangs, also had a teeny tiny black mini horse that they had out on the field with them. They'd run this little black horse across the field when the team entered the field before the game and when they scored (we only saw him in action twice). It was one of the most hilarious things I'd ever seen--the little horse had a handler on either side, and he was wearing a red blanket and little red polo wraps, and they'd kinda walk him around the field and he pricked his ears around and looked really well-behaved. Every time they ran him, though, it was away from us (we were sitting in the end zone) and so all you saw were these furiously-working little hindquarters. Aah, SMU.

Dan made the good point that in terms of smack talking, there isn't a lot you can do with SMU. We were discussing what to yell at the team and its fans, and basically the only thing that sucks about SMU is its football team. It's a rich school, but it's also an academically prestigious one. That means we couldn't yell out "SMU is stupid" or anything like that. Bummer.

The bike ride back to Dan's apartment after the game was awesome--the neighborhoods around the school are very wide and smooth, and it was dark and cool (very few steet lights). It felt like flying. We also got home without any incidents, which is good. The last time I rode in the dark was my first day owning my road bike, and I ran my front wheel into a chain strung around a parking lot and crashed, spraining my elbow and gashing my arm up. Not so cool.

Today we went to see the afternoon Rangers game, where they got beat by the Angels (no surprise there). This time I planned ahead and took lots of bottled drinks and sunscreen. I still can't believe we're going into the end of baseball season and we're in football season. Where the hell did the summer go?

Fish & Bitch

Andrew, who works at the Star-Telegram, and I went out to get lunch today. I had a wicked sushi craving, and he'd never had it before, so we settled on a place where he could order other food just in case the sushi wasn't to his liking.

I've known Andrew for years, and we first met at the school paper, and I think he's been with the Star-Telegram for well over a year. We're good friends, and he comes out with Dan and me pretty frequently (when we're in Fort Worth, these days, which is always a toss-up) for drinks and food. I hadn't seen him in a few weeks, and the topic turned to what it always does when journalists get together--the pitiful state of the industry.

This happened a few weeks ago when I was at an event at a university in Dallas. I met a half-dozen public relations people for the schools involved, and half of them had been at the Dallas Morning News. We did all the small-talk thing, and then we all started talking about papers and how they're all going down the toilet. We talked about the great journalistic minds who took a buy-out or got fired because they had too much experience, too much seniority, required too much money on their paychecks. Who needs wisdom and experience when you can hire two cheap fairly recent grads for the same amount?

Andrew's also doing grad school right now, and he's in a sort of safe spot. The Star-Telegram and its parent company, McClatchy, have been in some really hard times lately. (Frankly, who isn't?) Andrew and I talked about the Star-Telegram and the Business Press, but the conversation could have been about any newspaper.

He also brought up this recent article about how girls bond by talking and whining to each other (cannot find the link, grr). We determined this is what journalists do, too, because there's this undercurrent of fear in every journalist's heart at the moment. But as LeVar Burton on Reading Rainbow said, you don't have to take my word for it. Just go ask any journalist.

Isn't This PR 101?

This is how journalism works: I get a story to write, I call the PR person to help me set up interviews, I do the interviews, I write my story, turn it over to my editors, and after some magical editing, it ends up in print.

It's my belief that most PR people know how journalism works. They know that they can ask me to fact-check or quote-check with them, and I'll gladly do it. They also know that I will never, ever give them a copy of the story before it goes to print so they can approve it.

Somehow I still get a lot of requests from PR people who want to see my stories before they go to print. Let me make it clear that people I work with on a regular basis don't do this--they know me and journalism too well to make sure a mistake. But I thought that all PR people knew not to ask for a story. Maybe they're all taught to ask for the story every time, though, on the off-chance that one of us journalists will slip up and send them the story.

It just drives me nuts when a PR person asks this. No self-respecting journalist would do such a thing. When I meet these PR people I automatically assume they must be new to the field or they don't know what they're doing. Sometimes I even run across PR people who used to be journalists who ask me to send them the story before it goes to press. Did they forget absolutely everything about their previous career? Are they just crazy?

If you want to see a story before it goes to press, think about hiring an ad person. Our ad team is fantastic. They will let you dictate what you want in print. If you ask a legitimate journalist to see their story before it goes to print, they'll just get insulted. Trust me.

Man, I sound like a self-righteous prick. But no, I won't send you the story. Go find an ad agent.

I Like Normal People

SafeHaven, a local shelter for domestic abuse victims and their children, is having this big luncheon in the beginning of October to recognize great women. I first learned about the event back in May or something, when my managing editor asked me if I wanted to interview the guest speaker. I asked who it was, and she said, Tim Gunn, and I said yes and got all giggley.

Well, that fell through, for one reason or another (I don't know why), and the new guest speaker is Patricia Heaton, known for her role in Everybody Loves Raymond. My editor set up the interview with the local SafeHaven PR person, and then gave me the time and date for the 15-minute phone interview.

I did the interview this morning, and I was very pleasantly surprised at the way it went. At the exact scheduled time, my phone rang, and after I picked it up and said, This is Liz, I heard the woman on the other end say, Hi, this is Patricia Heaton. No PR person lurking on another line, no comments about how this is only 15 minutes, no requests that certain topics be off limits. It was just a normal interview, and she was very pleasant, and that was that.

I've never interviewed someone quite like that before--I mean, I've interviewed people that are big in certain communities, like the medical community or cycling community or whatever, but never people that the general public knows about. I don't know that I'll ever do many interviews with well-known people such as Heaton, but if they're all as low-key as her, then I will happily do it whenever my editors need me.

Ballpark, Boston-Style

It's been almost a week, but let me take a dorky sports-moment to tell about the Red Sox-Rangers game Dan and I went to last Sunday.

That whole week had been cool and nice, so I thought we'd have good weather for the Sunday afternoon game. The tickets came from work--we had four season tickets to the Rangers, and when they were announced back in the spring, I asked for two tickets to some Red Sox game. This was the last game of a three-game series, and I have been looking forward to this for several months.

Dan and I got totally geeked out for the event. I went and bought baseballs on Friday, so we could go to batting practice before the game and hopefully get autographs. Dan bought a giant bag of roasted peanuts, and we picked up drinks. We each wore a Boston shirt, and I wore the hat I bought at Fenway. We arrived about 10 minutes before noon (game had a 2:05 start), and then stood outside the gates until 12:30 before they let us in. Don't trust everything you read on the Internet! We found a schedule that said we could get in at noon, but that didn't happen.

What did happen was at least half of the people going to the game showed up in Red Sox paraphernalia. Once we got in, the teams were doing some easy field work, and there were four times as many people near the visitors' dugout waiting for autographs as at the Rangers' side. We got spaces on the rail and had our baseballs and Sharpies in hand, but no one really came over except one player, David Pauley, who very graciously signed EVERYTHING that people handed him. He worked down the rail, then took a seat on the bumper and let people keep bringing him things.

After a while even Pauley disappeared, and the security guys urged us to take our seats. We did, and we were in great seats, just past first base, but right smack in the sun. I could feel my skin burning. Soooo thankful Dan convinced me to wear a T-shirt instead of the halter top I'd been planning on.

The game was good; the Sox won, 7-2, and I got to see everyone that I really loved. I didn't get the chance to confer with Ellsbury about our future nuptials, but I did get to see him, as well as Youkilis and Pedroia and Ortiz and Papelbon (who I call P-Bon). It was funny to see all the little tics in person, like Youkilis and his goofy batting stance, and Papelbon's pitching. (The pitching is hilarious. He takes this huge sign, rolling his shoulders down, then his head--while down--rolls around to look at the batter, he breathes out again, gives them the Look of Doom, and then pitches. Love it. It made me laugh.)

My knees got sunburned, and I ate way, way too many peanuts. We only got one signature. I was sweaty and gross afterward. But it was fun, and even if we had paid for those tickets, it was a helluva lot cheaper than if we'd gone to Fenway, which is where I last saw the Sox.

Flattery

A few weeks ago I wrote a story about doctors at the local children's hospital using Wii games and other things to induce seizures and diagnose them better. The story came out on Sept. 1, and I thought it was a decent little localized story--I wish I'd had more time to do more national research, but I work for a local paper, and any national info would have been just an add-on.

The local NBC station totally ripped the story and did a video that came out Sept. 4. I only found out about it after I saw a feed to it on the MSNBC homepage. I'm sorta impressed they ripped off my story so quickly.

Ahh, the life of a journalist.

Misc.

I still haven't posted about the Red Sox on Sunday . . . because CVS botched my photo CD, and I went to get it fixed, and I got a new one, and then I left it at Dan's apartment. Whoops. I have to wait until this weekend when he brings it back to me, provided he doesn't forget it too. We forget stuff a lot.

This is just a bunch of random things:

Adrian and I spent more than a year watching every single episode of the Sopranos, all in order, all of DVD. This happened because I didn't have TV for a long time, and we both had always wanted to see the show, but neither of us had. So we went about watching all of them, and then when the series finished, I felt sad. We joked about how our friendship would now end, since we had no Sopranos to hold us together.

Then I got the creeping crud, which lasted about a month and a half, where I was coughing up grody stuff but I couldn't tell if I was contagious or just gross. I finally recovered, and Adrian and I settled on a new show: Entourage. Whoo! We start tonight. I'm excited!

I'm also excited because it's Thursday, which means it's almost Friday. Thursday is press day, so as of noon I'm usually done with all my deadline stuff and can move on to more important things, like reading other people's blogs. Friday morning means I can sleep in, as long as I show up to work in time for story meeting.

This week I had a story that got held because it didn't have a news peg or a business angle. It was an interesting topic, but my editors wanted an obvious "why am I reading this?" angle. This is the part of working at a business newspaper that is hard for me--I want to geek out sometimes and write articles that say, "Oooh, this if nifty! Learn how nifty it is!" and my editors come over and say, "Show me the money."

It's not that all I want to do is write fluffy feature articles, but sometimes fluff is all you find after spending several days researching and interviewing. That's what happened in this case. I asked about the number of employees spent working on this project, the cost of doing it, and was getting fairly vague answers back. I just don't think they had the numbers or had ever thought of getting them.

What I do love, however, is being able to point to my editors and say it's all their fault that a story is being held, even when I know it needs to be as well. It means I can continue to be the good guy, out there finding stories and being all friendly with everyone and not taking any of the blame. Brilliant!

Fake Journalists

OK, so this is something that has been a pet peeve of mine since I was forced into slave labor at the student newspaper at TCU and was spending more hours in the newsroom than I was doing any other activity, except sleeping. (We all know how much I value my time spent unconscious.)

I cannot stand fake journalists. Fake journalists are the people who write columns for the student newspaper, get paid $5.50 or whatever the going rate happens to be per article and tell their friends they are journalists--when they are really just cocky political science majors with big egos who feel the need to do some public griping about some issue.

Fake journalists are the people who work as financial consultants and sometimes write articles for some specialty publication (which they hope will be read by the general public but never will be) about how to get through tax season.

Fake journalists are the people who get a journalism degree and then freelance two articles a year while sitting at home on their couch because they made the wise choice not to date or marry someone also in journalism, thus ensuring that you will both have to work your asses off forever to buy a house.

Fake journalists are the people who write for most blogs.

Fake journalists are scientists (or researchers in any field) who write essays for JAMA or NEJM or any other journal.

Fake journalists are people who do the majority of their work for free, because honestly: If you're a journalist, chances are you need all the cash you can get. Why on earth would you do something for free?

So yeah, if you're talking to me about your journalism career and at least 50 percent of your income DOESN'T come from a fairly mainstream media source**, then you are not a journalist. Seriously. Don't be ridiculous.

I don't tell people I'm an animal psychic because I spent a lot of time out at the barn with Topper trying to read his brainwaves and figure out when he's going to try to kill me. I don't tell people I'm a teacher because I happened to TA kids while I was in grad school. (About 70 percent of my income was coming from doing newspaper scut work, therefore I was a journalist at the time.)

Just because you're a lawyer who writes for the local bar association publication or you're a doc who submits stuff to the medical association magazine or because you cover stuff for some online blog . . . doesn't mean you're a journalist. Doesn't happen. There may be lawyers who turn into legit journalists, and lots of people who are journalists by training and experience who go to other professions, but it's hard to be a journalist and something else at the same time, in terms of careers.

Whew. I feel better. Like I said, this is something that's been a hot point for me for a while (in case you couldn't tell). But despite the fact we can almost all write something doesn't mean we are all journalists. Just sayin'. So if you see a fake journalist . . . call them out on it. Because goodness knows I usually don't. I just smile and nod and then scream about it to the Interwebs, because, you know, don't want to accidentally offend someone and squash a potential source or anything.

I'm unbiased here, people. I'm a journalist.

**Most magazines have some kind of specific niche they fill, so most magazine writers = journalists (if they meet the 50 percent rule). However, magazines do not equal journals, and the majority of material in journals comes from researchers, so if you are usually published in a journal, you may not actually be a journalist.

PR Etiquette

I have a problem with people touching me.

It's not a huge problem; I don't have an anxiety attack if someone touches my hand or something. It's just a professional problem. I find it comes up with PR people, because I work with them fairly regularly and I'm pretty friendly with most of them.

Friendly, but not friends, with the rare exception. (Very rare, like I knew them before I got a job or some such.) Here's the thing: I like shaking people's hands for work stuff. When I see a PR person, when I meet a source, when I see someone I see every month--shake the hand. Love it. A good, firm handshake, lots of smiling, lots of friendly remarks about how vacation was or whatnot.

The problem is when you get those PR people who want to hug everyone. That weirds me out. I recently ran into a PR person I'd only met once before and I got a hug from this person. There are some PR people who just do that--they meet you once and then hug you every time after.

I don't get it. It just doesn't seem professional at all. It seems like in business school they'd teach you not to hug people. They teach you how to interview and meet with clients, so surely they'd cover "hugging," too. I didn't go to business school, so maybe they don't cover this. Also, I bet a lot of PR people didn't go to business school either, so maybe they didn't get this fictional business etiquette class either. I'm not a particularly huggy person--I don't even really hug friends that I've known forever unless I haven't seen them in a long time and they live across the country. When PR people want to hug me, even if it's just a half hug, it makes me extremely uncomfortable.

Is this something that a human resources person at a company would cover? Under the same personal/business topics as dating within the office, spending company time on Facebook and sexual harassment at the office?

Is this in an episode of The Office?

(Also, I will post about the Red Sox game as soon as CVS fixes the photo CD I paid for. Cross your fingers.)

Two Stories Up

Saturday morning Dan and I got up early, pulled on cycling clothes, put on T-shirts and shorts over everything and loaded up our pedals, wrenches, helmets, shoes and a bike pump to drive out to the Superdrome to meet our doom.

Ok, so it wasn't mortal danger. Not entirely, anyway. I am here, still alive, no broken bones, all my skin intact, and Dan came out unscathed as well. The whole track cycling experience was really unnerving, though, and let me just take a moment to proclaim my love for brakes on bicycles.

When we showed up at the Superdrome, we stopped by a little concrete building outside it to pick up track bikes, which were study bikes with a single, fixed gear. That means that if your wheels are moving, your pedals are moving, and if your pedals are moving, your feet are moving. There are no brakes on track bikes--if you want to stop, you have to try to pedal backward. "Try" is the operative word, here, because the force it takes to stop the pedals is fairly ridiculous.

Walking our bikes and gear into the Superdrome was intimidating. The track is a quarter-kilometer around, and in the corners it's a 44-degree angle and the top of the track is two stories off the ground. It was like a giant wooden wall raising up, and you could see these splintery-looking parts where the wood was getting torn up at the end of the season.

There were two instructors who helped us through the next four and a half hours. We all got comfortable on our bikes, and then they lead us up and down the straightaways (only 17 degree angles), and then gradually worked us up onto the giant curves. They were good instructors, and I know that physics would keep me alive if I was cautious, but the whole thing was so strange.

It took a lot of pumping and leg strength to pick up the appropriate speed to stay up on the wall, but the biggest thing about Saturday was how much it effed with my head. We went up in groups of eight or nine, and so I'd be in the middle or toward the back of the pack, watching everyone in front of me also on this ginormous wall. It looked like they were floating in the air. They were being held to the surface by two tiny strips of rubber, and I could see that the flat ground was a story and a half below us. (I only went up to the very top once, to make sure I could. It was too weird to do it again.)

Not all velodromes are built the same way. A lot of them have curves in the 30s, and I feel like I could have been more confident on something like that. I am proud that I stayed on (and stayed upright) on such an extreme track, but it made me realize how grateful I am that I have a bike that has brakes. It was just scary at some times being up on a track with a pack of other people who were also new to it and knowing you couldn't really brake if something happened in front of you.

I will definitely go back to the Superdrome. I just think I'm going to go back as a spectator next time.

Special Pub, Part Two

So I never even thought about this, but evidently "special pub" means "dude, check out this awesome place that has 50 beers on tap and good potato chips."

Kate pointed this out to me this morning, and it never even dawned on me. I guess it's because Texas doesn't have a lot of pubs. There are bars of varying types, and some clubs, but "pub" only shows up once in a while, like "Shamrock Pub," some place trying to pawn itself off as a chummy neighborhood bar in Dorchester.

To make up for my last post, which consisted of bitching about special publications, I'm going to talk about random other stuff, including alcohol, which makes it sort of related to pubs, right?

There's this place in Fort Worth that opened up around December 2006 called the Ginger Man that holds a very special place in my heart--the place reserved for special pubs, even though it's more of a bar, I think. (There's another place in my heart reserved for special publication "special pubs," but that involves a lot of loathing.) It's a small chain--there's another one in Austin and one in Dallas, maybe Houston too--but it's got a bunch of beers, some gourmet salads and sandwiches, good bratwurst, friendly staff and a decent jukebox. Last July they went whole-hog with this Christmas in July stuff, getting tacky with tinsel and a light-up snowman at one end of the bar. The service is friendly if not always entirely prompt. (But that can be easily remedied by just ordering from the bar.)

The Ginger Man isn't the coolest place, or the hippest, or anything else. It's generally an upper-middle class clientele--hipsters, yuppies, etc--but I can still show up in shorts, a T-shirt and flipflops and be fine. (By the way, if "yuppie" = young professional, than I=yuppie, and you probably=yuppie too. Scary, huh?) The one bad thing is they don't list beer prices on their menu, so you can inadvertently order a beer than costs $12 a glass.

The reason I love the Ginger Man is because the Ginger Man made me love beer. I always did mixed drinks (hello, screwdriver!) and wine (hello, sauvignon blanc!) and liquor (hello, tequila!) before the Ginger Man. Occasionally I would drink beer--a plastic cup of PBR from the keg at a party, a can of Bud Light at a friend's cook-out--but I never really found anything I liked and would seek out.

Ginger Man does this thing on Tuesday night where you buy the featured beer and you get to keep the pint glass it comes in. The glasses have the brewery or beer logo, and it's all very nice. I started attending this faithfully, figuring that even if I got a beer I didn't like, I would get a glass. And before I knew it, I had dozens of glasses and beers I actually liked.

So that's how a special pub changed my life forever. Now I prefer beer, and I also have a cabinet full of cool glasses.

Tomorrow morning Dan and I are going to the Superdrome in Frisco, about a 45-minute drive outside Dallas. It's a velodrome for bicycle racing, and it's gonna be a track cyclist fiesta! Dan somehow got us two spaces in the development class, so I get to go out and try my hand at track cycling tomorrow morning. Here's hoping gravity keeps up its end of the bargain when I'm going around a track with slopes of 44 degrees.

Sunday we have tickets to the Rangers/Red Sox game, and we're going to show up early for batting practice to try to get some autographs. This is also where I'm going to ask Jacoby Ellsbury to marry me. His birthday is an exact 6 months after mine. I think it's a match made in heaven, and I don't think Dan will mind.

I'll let everyone know how I survive the weekend.

Special Pub

I work for a weekly business newspaper. Deadlines are usually on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and we go to press on Thursdays. Friday is a day to have story meetings, line things up for the next week, and then start cranking out the next three or four stories. It's a good cycle.

Most of our readers get everything on Monday, and we also post breaking news briefs and short stories on our website. (AP style says "Web site," but that's retarded. I think we can upgrade to one word now, Associated Press. This new-fangled technology of the Intertubes is awfully scary, I know, but seriously.)

So we have a nice little schedule going, but you knew there was a catch, right?

Special publications bring fear into my heart. I cannot express how much I hate these things. We do about two dozen special publications a year, and these are magazines that we insert into the normal newspaper or, rarely, special editions of the newspaper itself. These magazines--with focuses on scientific research, or energy, or real estate, or whatever--will take a good week and make it tailspin out of control.

The publications have their use, don't get me wrong. They let us do longer stories about things that we wouldn't normally cover in the weekly paper, and if managed correctly and set out into a good economy, they can provide additional revenue through ad sales.

The problem is that since the economy is fairly crappy (and REALLY crappy if you're in the newspaper world), special publications aren't as productive anymore. We used to have a decent stable of freelancers who would do the majority of the articles. Then our newspaper's budget started not being so great, and we have to make some cutbacks. Now those of us who are full-time reporters are having the handle the articles, on top of our usual weekly quota.

I shouldn't complain. I still have a job, which is more than I can say for a lot of reporters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. All of the dailies are having buyouts and cuts. But now I have additional work to do in areas that I don't understand or sometimes even care about. Of course, I guess that's the problem with all newspapers right now. How do you put out just as much content with significantly fewer people?

I feel sorry for people at bigger papers, but I still hate the damn special pubs.

So Close

Topper nearly ditched me on Tuesday. He had been off for a few weeks, needing get new shoes, and our farrier retired without telling us so there was a scheduling delay getting a new guy. A few weeks ago I started riding Topper again, though, and he'd been really great, and then Tuesday he exploded out of nowhere and now I'm all sore and whiney.

The thing about Topper is he's just so damn unpredictable. I'm no stranger to getting thrown and falling off (two different things--one is his fault, the other is mine) and getting knocked around by him. But I can just never predict when he's going to spook. I see things I think will set him off--like a backhoe making a ton of noise and crashing around in the back frield--and he never blinks. Then he'll spook at something I don't even see, I don't even notice, and the whole ride is ruined because his nerves are all jangly. I guess that's what you get with a prey animal.

I've never seen another horse be as unpredictable as Topper. They're all unpredictable to some extend, but most horses get calmer with age. I got Topper when I turned 13, and now I'm 25 and he's 17, which is definitely middle age for a horse, and he still hasn't chilled out.

I'm really glad I didn't come off on Tuesday, though. We were cantering in the arena and he was fine, fine, fine, fine, then abruptly he was rearing up and bashed his neck into my body, shoulder and jaw. I'm always amazed at how quickly he moves; it's startling, and I think it's just reflex that kept me on. My back feels all kinky and my shoulder took the worst of it. I've been whacked in the head by him before, rearing up and hitting my face and helmet, and then ended up with a concussion---so at least he hit my body and not my head this time.

Last time I fell off was late last year, end of October, I think. I could barely function for days, and had to get x-rays to make sure he hadn't broken my pelvis. If there's one thing about my childhood I wish I could get back, it would be the springiness of my skeleton. When I was 10, I could fall off, get back on, finish my ride and not feel anything the next day. Now, I'm lucky to not seriously hurt myself in some way when I fall.

I'm 25 and I feel like an old fart. I hate to think how effed up I'm going to be when I'm 60.

Almost Famous

So here's the question: If you're a journalist, how much of a public figure are you?

It came up because a local journalist, whose byline is fairly well-known in the area, ended up in the headlines of his own newspaper, the local daily. His name is Dave Lieber, and he writes a column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called The Watchdog. He's been around for a while, and I met him once when he guest-lectured in a column writing class I had in college.

Here is the news story that came out yesterday about everything. Basically, he and his 11-year-old son got in an argument at a McDonald's on Aug. 13, Lieber got angry and told his son to walk home (he says in this column that it was a few blocks). After Lieber had driven off, some customers called 911 and the police came. When Lieber came, he and his son were sent home, and yesterday he turned himself into the police on two felony counts and two warrants: one for child abandonment with intent to return and the other for child abandonment/endangering a child.

Lieber went home after turning himself off, released on $4,000 bail. The Tarrant County district attorney will determine whether or not to file charges. He's currently suspended from his column while the case goes through, and the last column he wrote was on Aug. 15, where he told his side of the story.

First of all, I'm not going to pass judgment on what he did. I'm not a parent, but I can see both sides of the whole situation: yeah, maybe the kid was in danger, but then maybe not and the kid just needed to suck it up. Parenting is difficult.

But what I do find curious is the whole way his own newspaper is handling it. If this were some father who is a tax accountant, would this have warranted a whole news story when he turned himself in? Doubtful. A news brief, maybe, by whatever bored cops reporter is looking for something interesting, but I don't think it would have gotten a full 300-plus words.

They are suspending his column, so it does seem appropriate to have some explanation. Could they have gotten by with just putting up a disclaimer about "Lieber will be on indefinite leave while taking care of a family matter" have sufficed? Did he have to write about the whole ordeal in his column, which appears to have been posted a week and a half before he turned himself in and the news story came out?

I think this is something a lot of newspapers deal with. I've heard editors warn reporters before: if you get drunk and cause a crash, you bet your ass you're getting in the newspaper, same as everyone else. That's fair. But with these sometimes strange cases, it's hard to tell what would have happened if Lieber had been a non-journalist.

Does the fact that Lieber is a well-known newspaper name make a difference? Should journalists be treated a bit differently because they often report on genuine public persons, like a mayor or actress? Just because you see a byline all the time, does that mean the journalist is a public figure, even if you know little about them other than the stories they write?

Lieber was a columnist, and so did bring a lot of his personal life into his job. A lot of people probably feel they know him, just from reading his columns through the years. He is a sort of minor celebrity. He probably should be treated differently than a normal reporter. But even the "normal reporters" sometimes get minor celebrity status.

What do readers feel about the way it was handled? There's a lot of comments on Lieber's column about the whole thing, but most of them are about his parenting, and frankly, I don't have the patience to go through all of them and see if any are about his job and the editorial decision. Would people have been angry if the news story hadn't run? Would they have called foul and said he was getting preferential treatment because he works for the paper? Would they ask whether he'd get that news story if he didn't work for the paper?

What I do know is I would have loved to be in the editorial meetings about this but would have been loathe to participate in the decision-making process. Also, since I work at a business weekly, I guess I'm safe to get drunk and crash my car into a tree. It may show up in the daily Star-Telegram, but at least it won't show up in my own paper.

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.

How Much Again?

I don't like finances. Or money. At all. When I got my first checks, right before going to college, my mom sat me down to teach me how to balance my checkbook. I have lots of childhood memories of her sitting at the dining room table on Sunday nights, once a month, late at night with a calculator and paper spread all around her. I tried for about a month and then gave up.

I've never taken any finance or accounting classes because--duh--they weren't required for journalism or science, so I didn't take them. My undergrad reporting classes never included anything about reading annual reports or looking at municipal budgets, so I remained happily clueless.

In grad school, one of my classes touched on finances. We spent one class session in a computer lab, learning to look up publicly traded companies and their annual reports. I paid as much attention as anyone else, I think, but we spent a helluva lot more time looking at other numbers--numbers in studies, looking at whether the statistics made sense and the numbers meant anything.

I'm trying to make an effort to be not so geeky at work. I can talk about resident work hours or tumor profiles all day, but when it comes to following the finances of hospitals, I'm kind of lame and lost. Today was the annual budget meeting for the board of managers for the county hospital, and I went.

And oh. my. gosh. The public relations director--who's a wonderful woman--had copies of everything and handed them to me when I arrived. All of the papers were in two binders; one was a three-inch binder, and the other was an inch and a half. It was ridiculous. All these numbers, all these acronyms, all these board members discussing and changing and tweaking things and voting on motions and GAH.

At the end I picked up my ginormous binders and headed to the elevator, alongside a couple of people who worked for the hospital system. Waiting for the elevator, I asked one of the women, "So just to make sure: they did approve the budget, right?" She gave me this Look, then told me that they approved the budget and expanded services. The whole situation was embarrassing--I had told her at the beginning of the meeting that I had little experience in this, and I've worked with her briefly before, and she just made me feel two inches tall because I wanted to confirm everything.

Anyway. The meeting was about three and a half hours long. It was pretty tedious. But I survived. (Just ASK me how excited I am for next year!) The whole thing just reminded me that in no way am I prepared for the finances required to be an adult.

Strike Out

Thursday I had lunch with Tony, who was in town covering the Yankees as they played the Rangers for MLB.com (he's living the American baseball writer's dream). Tony and I met when we were both working on the "hawk" desk at the Globe, doing scut work like typing in agate and taking football scores over the phone from coaches with ridiculously thick accents. Sometimes I had to get other hawks who'd grown up in Massachusetts to translate for me.

Anyway, it got me thinking about my semester working agate. I did it three days a week; Thursday night until about midnight, Saturday afternoon until 9 p.m., and then Sunday late night, until the paper was pretty much sent to bed. The Globe had a brand new beautiful newsroom, but sports was in this part of the building that was old and skanky, with stained ceiling tiles and worn, green carpet and special trash cans you had to put foodstuffs in because there were mice.

An agate person is the bottom of the totem pole in sports; you type in scores, hundreds and hundreds of scores from every high school and university within a really wide radius, and you answer phone calls and fetch pages and first edition copies of the newspaper from the press, which was on-site (a rarity in papers these days).

What I hated and loved the most was answering the phones. Sometimes it was fairly straightforward, like taking down scores from high school football coaches, getting the names and yards run and conversions and everything else. There was also a guy named Frank from Montreal who was obsessed with the Bruins and would call almost every night, wanting to know if we'd heard any rumors or news about the team and its players. He'd like to carry on conversations about his hopes and dreams for the team. I liked Frank, because he was easy to prod into a conversation—he once told me about how he took a bus all the way to Boston once to see the Bruins play when he was a young man. (Tony claims that Frank never liked him and would always ask to speak to someone else if he answered.)

The worst phone calls were the random trivia ones. People would call up, often from bars, and want to know the answer to some really obscure question, like who the Bruins' goalie was in 1972. I think there was probably money riding on a lot of these calls, and this was before everyone had an iPhone and could look things up themselves.

The random trivia part sometimes annoyed me; I am definitely NOT a sports trivia person, but with putting a person on hold and using Google, I could find most things. The thing about these calls is it was men calling 98% of the time, and probably a good number were semi-drunk when they called, but as soon as they heard a female voice, everything changed.

Journalism is much better when it comes to sexism; the upper levels are still mostly men, but newer generations of women means that the work-force is much more balanced than it historically was. Sports is also better than it was; there are women reporters, occasional women columnists, but it's still mostly a man's world.

And even if things are better actually on the sports desk, no one seems to have told the people who call. A lot of times the callers would ask me if I knew anything about sports; there's no way they would have asked a male hawk that. If you call the sports desk, you should assume the person can answer it. (Despite my general lack of knowledge off the top of my head, I found answers for most of my callers, including a man who wanted a dissertation about brands of ice skates.)

Callers also asked me what I was doing working the sports desk; it was usually a friendly question, sometimes borderline-flirtatious (like I said, I think a lot of alcohol was involved), but again, a male hawk would never be asked that unless he had already done something to prove himself incompetent. (There were the odd total incompetents that would come work for a few weeks before they disappeared.)

And then there were the occasional callers who asked to be transferred to a guy.

Kudos to the world of journalism, and specifically sports journalism, for trying to get past the good-ol-boy culture that was ingrained into every newsroom in the country. Now how do you change the minds of readers and show them women can be just as competent as men? Do readers look at bylines enough to realize it when they read an article by a woman? Or are people just recognizing women when they see them in person as sideline reporters or something on the television? How many women sideline reporters are in that position just because of their looks, and how many due to their talent? How many will ever get positions as anchors on Sports Center or the like?

And is there any better entry job in a newspaper than working agate? Except for being a cops reporter, I don't think so.

Plan B

For those unfamiliar with the story of my college application process, let's travel back in time to my junior year of high school, when I was living in New Mexico and attending a tiny high school where the calculus teacher didn't like me.

Do you remember how much mail you started to get once you took the SATs and the ACTs? You go to the tests and fill out all your contact information and put in little codes for which colleges you're interested in, and then suddenly the mailbox is flooded with letters and brochures from colleges and universities all over the country. I had an accordian file that I would slip brochures into, where I could go back and look at them on quiet Sunday afternoons.

I got a brochure from Texas Christian University my junior year, and I remember it came in a lilac-colored envelope with tony purple horned frogs all over it. The list of majors impressed me, and I filed it away.

My senior year (the story of my senior year that I thought I didn't have to take should be saved for another day, because there's nothing like an uplifting story of the mishmash of public education standards across states) was spent in Alabama, in another small town. I was in the process of choosing which college to apply to, and I sent everything out and then waited anxiously that spring to hear back.

TCU (they are branding themselves as that because most Christian schools in Texas are crazy Christian schools, where you have to go to chapel and pretend to be Christian or something like that, and TCU just requires you take some kind of religion class, even if it's Witching 101) (I have a lot of parenthetical asides in this post, don't I?) accepted me, and I accepted them. They sent me a white polo shirt with a horned frog embroidered on the breast and a bumper sticker, and I was totally sold.

TCU was the ideal school because of one major thing: I could major in neuroscience, or I could major in journalism. None of the other schools had both of these offered to undergraduates, and while TCU wasn't my first choice, I did realize that this was a good thing.

I enrolled as a neuroscience major, fully intending to become a physician. A neurosurgeon, to be exact. I was going to cut into people's brains, clamp off aneurysms, and do daring treatments to treat spinal cord injuries. Oh yeah, and I was going to write books about all of this.

Halfway into my first semester at TCU, I realized the decision I had made, and wasn't sure I could stick by it. Chemistry was a struggle (chem has never been easy for me, but if I had a teacher that gave a shit I'm fairly certain I could do well, even if I never perform spectacularly), and I was seeing other pre-med track student run away as quickly as they could to become communications majors or something like that. On a half-impulse, I dropped chemistry and switched my major to journalism.

About two weeks after that, one of my biology professors told me about a science writing program at MIT. That was my answer, I thought--even if I'm not a physician, I'll write about science and health, and all will be right in the world. I coasted through my journalism degree with the purpose to write solely about topics that interested me, and went on to graduate school at Boston University, where I dropped tens of thousands of dollars on an awesome master's in science journalism.

After being out in the newspaper world for a year and a half, I'm finding myself in a slightly uncomfortable position. Anyone who's read this blog over that time knows I have questions about newspapers. Specifically, my part in them. I'm passionate about the need for good coverage, and I love my job right now as a health and science reporter, but I don't know if this is where I'm meant to be. Part of me is bored. Part of me is having a quarter-life crisis. Part of me wants to know I made the right decision.

All of me has been researching going back and getting all those extra classes to apply to medical school. Dan and I have discussed how hard it will be for two journalists to find two good jobs in the same area, and the possibility of me essentially dropping off the face of the planet for four years of medical school and many years of a residency. I bought an MCAT prep book last time I was at the half price book store.

I guess I just want to make sure that my plan B of journalism is the right plan. I'd hate to look back when I'm 60 and think, I should have just gone for it. Nothing is going to happen immediately, naturally, and if I do get into medical school in a few years, I'm definitely not flaking out, but don't be surprised to hear about me taking science classes at one of the local colleges to boost my postbac resume.

And if plan B is the right plan, at least I'll be a better writer for the extended science background, right?

(Expect more ruminations on this as I work myself into a second-guessing mess.)

Heated Discussion

From the National Weather Service about today, Friday, Aug. 1:

"Late Afternoon: Isolated showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny and hot, with a high near 102. Heat index values as high as 108. "

Oh, it's only a high of 102. Puh-leese. That's nothing. Tomorrow is supposed to be up to 106, and Sunday up to 107 before it cools back down to 101 on Monday and Tuesday.

There are so, so many things wrong with all of this. And yes, I realize I live in Texas, and I cam here voluntarily--no one threatened to hammer nails into my eardrumbs with turnips or anything unless I moved here after grad school. But I think I got spoiled last summer, when it rained and rained and rained and would not stop and flooded and killed small children.

The sick thing is that when it's 100, it really doesn't feel that hot because it can get so much hotter. I work out after work usually three days a week, going to a local high school and running stairs, and yeah, it's gross, it's hot, but you're working out anyway and you expect to sweat. So even if I'm working out in 105-degree weather, it doesn't feel that bad.

Even going out to the barn after working out and adding a layer of hay dust, stable dirt and horse hair to the sweat doesn't feel that bad.

What really feels bad is the work day. It's gross to get up and go to work in the morning and you're sweating just from walking from your car into the building. (And it's not a long walk, a huge trek across some forgotten stretch of tarmac. It's maybe 50 feet.) I feel disgusting, wearing a skirt and heels and cute blouse and having to worry about sweat marks when walking from my car into buildings for interviews.

This has been the worst summer of my life in terms of heat, barring the one summer right after college where Dan was at the Lance Armstrong Foundation in Austin and I was nannying and waiting to move to Boston. That summer was brutal, but I was charged with watching an 8-year-old, so we could go spend the day at the pool and I could wear tank tops and gym shorts all summer.

That was actually my first summer ever spent in the North Texas heat. Despite going to four years of school here, I never spent a summer here. I always went home (aka where my parents lived at the time, which was Alabama and Virginia), and then my summer internship in grad school was here in Fort Worth but I don't think it was quite this bad. (Plus, it was an unpaid internship, so if they'd made some comment about what I was wearing I would have just laughed at them. You don't own me!)

When I was a kid we lived in New Mexico and it's totally true--it's a dry heat, and it makes a helluva difference. I spent all day outside playing in the summer and was fine. Sweaty and gross, but in no danger of heat stroke, like here. We lived in San Antonio, about four hours south of Fort Worth; bad, yeah, but not tooooo bad. And Florida--humid, muggy, yes, but there was a thunderstorm almost every day that cooled everything off. Ahh, the perks of living on the water.

I guess maybe I just have a crappy memory for heat stuff. I really don't remember ever being grossly hot as a kid, whereas as an adult, I have semi-scary memories of nearly passing out on a bike ride and feeling nauseous after working out. (That's why I've relocated from the university to the high school: TCU's stadium was one, giant, aluminum-and-whitewashed mixing bowl to work out in, and it got sweltering in there. The high school is much smaller, with lots of natural grass and dirt to absorb some of the heat.)

Then again, I don't remember ever being really cold as a kid, either, and I spent an entire winter and a half bitching in Boston. Hmm.

Hey, check it out! Only 100 right now in the late afternoon with a 104 heat index! So glad it cooled off in time to go home.

I'm spending my evening in a movie theater, where it's cool and dark.

Self Censorship

I love being primarily a health care reporter. The potential to make my editors squirm shouldn't ever be underestimated.

This week I did this kind of trend story about treatments for incontinence; if you turn on a TV, sooner or later you'll see one of those ads about drugs to urinary incontinence (those "gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now" songs are SO annoying), and there's even surgeries that can help stress incontinence and urge incontinence.

And yes, there's such a thing as anal incontinence. Fairly self-explanatory.

So writing this story involved talking to a few physicians about the bladder, the anus, sphincters, bodily fluids, all sorts of things. It was kind of absurd. During each one, I could almost see myself from above, realizing just how crazy it was. Here I am, this journalist taking everything very seriously, and these physicians and PR people too, and part of me just wanted to stand up and shout, "Pee! Hahaha! Poop!"

Writing the story was so much harder than I thought it would be; I've written about things that I think make my male editor in chief cringe, like the cervix and sex and other stuff, but this one was wretched, and it's mostly because I have a horrible habit of cursing.

I didn't actually curse very much prior to my senior year of college and working at the student newspaper. I didn't have a problem with people cursing, and I said "damn" and "shit" and "ass," but I didn't use them too often, and I hardly ever said "fuck."

Then I became EIC and spent a whole year almost literally living in the newsroom around a lot of stressed out, potty-mouthed people, and within about two months I had the worst mouth of them all. I curse all the time now in casual conversation. I don't do it in interviews, but I do it around the office; I would never do it in front of my parents, but my sister and I use a lot of curses when we talk to each other. It just happens.

So writing this story felt so incredibly hard because I didn't want to say "accidents;" I wanted to say, "You shit your pants." I didn't want to talk about stress incontinence; I just wanted to explain that you'd sneeze and pee yourself a little bit. Using polite language just felt like it got in the way of conveying a clear message to readers. Surely our middle-aged, upper-income readers say "shit" when they're in their corner offices once in a while.

The story was the last one I wrote; I kept putting it off because it was hard to find a way to diplomatically talk about everything. I finally felt OK about it and sent it on to my editors, telling them it was probably the most awkward thing I'd ever written, and they agreed (although they said I did a good job of wording everything).

There's nothing like a little self censorship for the freedom of the press.

Bodies

I'm reading a book right now about a physician and her journey through Harvard Medical School and the transition to becoming a doctor, and while her writing style sort of grates on my nerves, I'm still fascinated by the whole idea of turning into a doctor. Physicians in this country are still largely better educated, better paid, and better respected than most in our communities, and sometimes I lose sight of the fact that they all started off somewhere.

As a reporter, I've gotten the chance to glimpse into that somewhere-starting place a few times, and every time I do it leaves me more confused about my future. I love journalism, I love writing, I love words and sharing stories and scenes with others, but at the same time, I find myself pining for the scientific knowledge that would let me change lives. Anyone close to me can attest to the fact that I'm constantly talking about how maybe I need to become a doctor or a nurse or a PA or NP or something.

A few weeks ago, our local medical school hosted about a dozen high school students during a summer seminar called More Knowledge In Science. I was writing a story about this, since it's a demonstration of the community outreach the school does as well as an example of how much funding is needed through various levels of the government to make these programs possible. I went with the kids the day they went into the gross anatomy lab at the school, and it really made me excited to see these kids as engaged and curious as I was.

It was my first time in the gross lab; there were about two dozen stations, each with a computer and a basin for dissection, and bright yellow trash cans stenciled with "Human Tissue Waste Only" or some other dire warning. We all gathered around one stainless steel table with a white body bag on it, and the PhD who was teaching that day gave the kids a short intro about how all the bodies were donated to science, and that these were people who wanted others to learn more about the quiet inner workings beneath the skin, fat, muscle and fascia.

The cadaver had already been dissected, and it had the muted, beige-gray colors of formaldehyde and time. I don't know how old it was, but the organs had already been separated and could easily be removed, like puzzle pieces. The kids pulled on gloves and handled the organs, poking fingers into blood vessels and pulling on tendons. I thought of the exhibits at the Body Worlds shows, touring through museums.

I went back to work that day and a coworker asked if something smelled funny; it was me, naturally, chilled and marinated in the chemical smell of science. It was quite a different experience than the autopsy I got to see at the medical examiner's office back in the late winter.

The autopsy made me nervous; for days before, I worried about whether I would pass out or feel nauseous and have to leave. When I was in high school, we had a family friend who was a veterinarian. I was thinking of being a vet at the time, and she invited me to spend a day with her during the summer. The first thing I saw was a small dog having surgery on its eye, which I think had been popped out of its socket for some reason. I was in there for about a minute and a half before I started getting lightheaded and woozy. I had to spend a half hour on the floor with my head between my knees and drinking a Coke before I felt well again.

The autopsy didn't make me woozy or lightheaded. Part of me feels proud of that, and part of me feels guilty. This was not a person who donated their body to science. This is a person who had been found dead in their bed just hours earlier. The body was still wrapped in the bedsheets. The colors were rich and still had the tones I would associate with life. The heart was full of thickening blood. The brain had many subtle colors. The organs looked as though if they were put into the right body, they would still work.

I was awe-struck by the autopsy, and asked lots of questions, along with my fellow media people who were there as well. The ME's office has a policy where autopsies can be viewed for teaching purposes; med students, nursing students, etc, can come through and see a body be studied for clues about its death. By asking questions and trying to remember all the info from my anatomy and physiology classes, I would stay detached. It was just a body.

The autopsy did have an effect on me. I was afraid of nightmares that night, but I didn't have any. The next day, I went on the ME's website and looked at the listings of deaths. Remembering the body and the rough time of death, I was able to figure out who the body belonged to. It belonged to a person, and I had the name, and I wondered how the family was going about making funeral arrangements. It had been a sudden death.

I guess it's taken me a while to write about it because I didn't know how to go about it. I don't want to trivialize death, but I don't want to trivialize the learning opportunities in it, either. As other writers have said, death is a great unknown, but there is so much to be learned from it. The cadaver, the body, each was a person with a history and life. Same goes for the various pickled organs on the shelves at the medical school; the stillborn baby with anacephaly and conjoined twins had mothers who carried them in their bodies and fathers and family histories. But you can't think about that too much if you're trying to learn.

I think that's the most fascinating thing about becoming a medical professional: learning to draw that line between detachment and compassion. As a journalist, it's something I can look in on, and I can have my own small struggles with sources or whatnot, but it's nothing compared to what the MDs and RNs face.

Also, it doesn't compare to what some reporters face, like cops reporters or those who cover disasters. Dan has seen his share of dead bodies, many from car accidents, and he's never said that he's been affected by them. He has said that they have to be viewed as mannequins or puppets instead of people, though. Thank goodness I haven't had to interview family members shortly after a death or tragic event.

I don't really have a grand thesis to this post or anything; it's just some musings on the body, and specifically the dead body and how to handle it. One thing I would do, however, is encourage people to consider donating their bodies to science. It's not for everyone; many people have religious objections to it, which is fine. Everyone should become an organ donor, though. The body is a glorious thing, even if it is deceased. And what better way to honor something than to share it, either through its individual parts or through the knowledge that comes through knowing and understanding all of it together.

Planning Ahead

I enjoy my job. I enjoy it because I meet all these wonderful people, all these people with jobs that when I was in high school I totally wanted to have. Jobs that sometimes I wish I did have, but I'm still grateful to meet them and ask them about their jobs. It saves me the hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational fees and countless hours actually having to learn organic chemistry.

Most of the people I meet and then question like it's the Spanish Inquisition are health care workers. I've met and talked to physicians of all sorts, from pediatric emergency care docs to neurologists to general surgeons. A wide range of physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nursing researchers, nurse-midwives and others have offered insight into their profession.

Additionally, I adore my primary care physician. She's treated me through countless bouts of Renegade Throat Infections and Bad Backs Courtesy Topper. She won't even lecture me about falling off Topper because she fell off a horse and broke her back when she was younger. In fact, that's what made her decide to go to medical school.

It's great to have people that you can quiz. I can live vicariously through other people's jobs in the trenches of health care. And it's comforting to know that if I ever become a 60-year-old man with prostate cancer, I know which physician I liked the most and would like to go to. Or if I were an 8-year-old with a broken arm, I know which ER I'd rather end up in.

Semi Bibliophobia

Thursday afternoons are slow at work. We go to press on Thursday, so things for reporters are nuts on Wednesday, trying to get the last stories in, but on Thursday the editors are the ones who are swamped with layouts and edits.

This leaves me with mellow time to think about stories I'm starting on, stories I've read in the news, and general nonsense. Recently I've been thinking about my alleged next great American novel. (I used to say I would write the NGAN, but now I'm going to say it's an ANGAN because at this point it's still more hot air that concrete fact I can check.)

I haven't written in about a month. When I was at TCU, I worked on it regularly through my junior year. (I formulated the concept second semester sophomore year; it was actually something I'd kinda kicked around since junior year of high school.) Senior year it became sporadic, and in grad school I decided it needed a major overhauling.

Now I'm daunted because I feel like I'm starting from scratch again. There's so much work to do. Even if this never gets published and no one ever reads it, it's still something I have to finish at some point in my life just for personal satisfaction. It's like an odd, slow itch, way deep down in my organs, maybe wedged behind my pancreas or something. It comes and goes. I can't scratch it because it's too far deep in my gut. But when it starts twinging, it's all I think about, usually for a few days at a time.

It's not just that I'm intimidated by the sheer amount of work. It's that I'm intimidated by what it all means. What does it really require, to put myself out there by pouring so much of myself into writing something that might be absolute shit? It's almost as bad as thinking about what if it were good. I'm not sure I'd want my name affiliated with it in any way. For a long time I've thought that I might need a pseudonym. (This is jumping so far ahead of myself, I know, but I also have plans for what I'd like to wear if I were ever invited to the White House.)

I write almost every day. I'm a journalist, a writer by trade, and I love my work and I love my words. Sometimes I put out stories that are lackluster or crap, and I accept that. But it's not something that's purely out of my head. And once a story is out, it's gone, there's a new one. Such is the nature of newspapers and short attention spans.

But to actually write something that would be bound is much more concrete. My failure (or triumph) could lurk on my bookshelf for decades or get passed down for generations. (You grandmother Liz wrote this. She never got it printed because she was too afraid of rejection, and we couldn't get it published because it's not that great.)

I'm really, really afraid of the whole undertaking. It's in part because I'm afraid what others will think of what's going on in my head. It's taken me years to even admit that much. It's part of the reason why I'm so neurotic about it: I won't discuss the topic or plot or characters or ANYTHING with anyone, even those who will be kind but honest. I think I'd rather only people I didn't know or who I'd never met in person read any of it.

And yet I'm perfectly okay with posting about my obsessive worries on the Internet, where anyone can find it. Go figure.

In Between

So I was driving back from seeing Dan tonight and I passed this school bus cruising down the highway, some of the windows cracked in the chill air. It made me think back to bus rides I've taken--and there have been a lot. My first time on a school bus in 5th grade, not quite understanding how the whole thing worked, since I'd always walked to school. Getting caught eating Cheetos on the bus and getting written up and needing a parents signature. I was terrified my parents would be pissed off or my great-aunt, who was in charge of the buses for the district, would find out. My parents thought it was funny.

Sixth and seventh grade, gossiping with my best friend and always sitting together and mocking the other girls who we didn't think were as enlightened and cool as us. Ninth grade, getting up ridiculously early and standing in the dark for my bus, which came by around 6:20 every morning. School band trips, sometimes in school buses, hunkered down in ugly, itchy polyester uniforms with a friend, just wanting to get back home. Eleventh grade, riding the short bus because that was the only one that came through our neighborhood and I didn't have a license yet. I hated those rides. I had no compassion at the time. The bus was half special needs kids, half regular students, and always smelled like spit. In the wrong seat, you did indeed get spat upon. I'm not sure I ever rode the bus at my last high school.

A lot of bus rides were early in the morning or late at night, in that twilight time when the light isn't sure what it's doing. I still love that time of day. You get two opportunities every day to see that instance of transition, and although I hate being up early, I love being up early and outside. (I fall asleep again if I'm inside.) It's easier to see at night, out at the barn or driving around.

In Fort Worth (also in Boston, near downtown), those times reflect off the buildings and cast a sort of rosy glow off highly-polished windows.

Talking about all this makes me want to get up early in the morning. The reality of it is I won't, though, because if I get up early I'm not going to have a chance for a nap. I love my sleep. A lot. And there's always tomorrow night.

Delicious

Dan and I took a trip down to Austin for an overnight stay downtown, food, bikes and seeing Molly and Scott. Now that I'm back at work on Monday, I keep thinking back to Saturday. It's that time of year where you wish weekends lasted five days and you only had to work two.

I had been smitten with the idea of going to New York City for a kind of spring break; I'd never been to the city, and Dan has an uncle who could have housed us. After a few weeks of imagining strolls through Central Park with spring leaves and buds overhead, I nixxed the idea due to financial concerns. (Sure, air tickets were cheap, but my credit card is still the bane of my existence and then I found out I owe major money for taxes. Gross.)

Instead, I figured taking a trip down to Austin and making it a swank affair would be better for the wallet. The last time I was in Austin was almost three years ago, when Dan was serving an internship at the Lance Armstrong Foundation and I went down almost every weekend. For this trip, I convinced Dan that we should get a nice hotel room in the Embassey Suites downtown, right off Barton Springs, which is a street that has tons of great restaurants and cool shops. We booked a hotel room (no need for a suite, we figured; it's just the two of us for one night, and we'll save $50), Dan registered for the circuit race and I made sure Molly was available for lunch.

The drive to Austin was quick and uneventful, and the hotel check-in was the same; the person working didn't even charge us for parking. We lugged our backpacks and the bike upstairs to our floor, and then found that our hotel room was miniscule. Tiny. A glorified broom closet. It was all very nice, but it was small. The bathroom took up about half the room. I was incredibly ticked off about it, and while it wasn't going to make or break the trip, it did annoy me. I guess when you try to splurge, you have to go all the way and just book the whole decadent suite, even though you'll probably only use one room.

There was a free happy hour Friday night, and I decided to at least get our money's worth in alcohol. We arrived in time to catch the last 15 minutes of it, and I downed two drinks quickly enough to become rather giggly. Dinner was Romeo's, a great Italian food place that's very tasty (although their rolls are kinda weird) and still relatively affordable (about $15 a dish), and then dessert was ice cream from McDonald's. After driving out to the bike course to take a look around, we headed back to the hotel. We were to bed pretty early in preparation for the next day.

The bike race was a circuit race, meaning classes of riders started off and had to do laps around the course over a certain amount of time. There were tons of colorful bikes and jerseys, kids and families coming to cheer on brothers and fathers and mothers, and thankfully it didn't rain. Dan didn't get wiped out by the massive crash in his class, and was happy with his finish.

There's a hill in Austin called Jester, and it's this half mile (I think) road that has a ridiculous incline. It's out in the hill country to the West of town, and Dan had always wanted to try it, so we drove there after the race and Dan got up it. Twice! In a row! I was very proud. It looked ridiculously hard. He was creeping up, and he's a really good climber. I would have crapped out after about 10 feet and three pedal pushes.

Molly and Scott let us come to their house so Dan could shower and stow his bike during lunch. I got to meet Tillie, who has some of the biggest eyes ever and these long eyelashes. She seems to consider everything. I haven't seen a baby like that before. She was also pretty cheerful, and although she got a bit fussy, she never started squalling or anything. (Chalk part of this up to good parenting and knowing how not to aggravate a tried child. I love that Molly knew when to walk away and let Tillie settle herself down quickly.)

The four adults and Tillie in her stroller took a walk down to a nearby Mexican food restaurant. The weather was pleasant, and Tillie quickly fell asleep in the stroller, and it was nice to see all the houses and gardens. Spring treats Texas well. The food was delectable--I can't stop thinking about the cerviche, this concoction of diced tomatoes and onions and cilantro, salt, lime juice and fresh tilapia. I can't believe I've been missing out on this all my life. Also, I can't stop thinking of it. I've decided I'm going to have to try making my own later this week.

It was so good to see Molly again. She makes me feel good about myself. She's level headed (babies are supposed to play in the grass and explore twigs and dirt) and friendly and smart and also is a real connection to grad school in Boston. I suffer from this thing where I feel like entire sections of my life are just an elaborate dream, and they never really happened. I blame it on the fact we moved around so often. Whenever we moved, it was like that whole previous period wasn't real. Seeing Molly and Scott made me feel more grounded, an affirmation that Boston did happen, I did buy a lot of pizza and see a lot of movies and ride the T to school. Seeing people from previous times is so much better than just an e-mail or phone call.

Dan and I told Molly and Scott that Austin is the only other place in Texas we'd be willing to move. The people, hills, trees, restaurants, architecture, and everything else makes me contemplate very seriously how to get down there. I want to go back for seconds, and I'm glad that we'll be visiting again in early June.

Expectations

Okay, so I know it's been like 9 months since the last time I posted. Babies are conceived and birthed in that time. I don't have anything near that cool; I just got ticked off listening to an ESPN interview and wanted to raise some questions about it.

I was driving back to work from picking up a sandwich for lunch when I tuned in to 103.3 ESPN. The Michael Irvin show was on; he and his co-host, Kevin Kiley, are sometimes amusing so I half-listened for a few minutes before I heard Kiley talk about some "quadriplegic" athlete that was going to be on.

Then Kiley proceeds to explain that this "quadriplegic" is a high school wrestler named Dustin Carter. I saw something on ESPN (on TV) about Carter a few years ago, and the New York Times recently ran an article about him. He's a high school senior in Ohio right now and has a 41-2 record in the lightweight division. He's only 103 lbs., and he also had a bacterial infection (meningitis, then gangrene) as a kid and his legs had to be amputated above the knee. One arm had to be amputated above the elbow; the other, just below.

So I start grumbling at the radio station because this kid is NOT a quadriplegic. Quadriplegia refers to paralyzation in four limbs or of the body from the neck down, and it can be full paralyzation or partial. This kid is a quadruple amputee, but finally they introduce Carter correctly, saying he's a quadruple amputee and drop the quadriplegia thing.

It's good that they finally said the right phrase because I was trying to find a phone number to call in and correct them. I am that anal retentive.

Carter is participating in the show from his home in Ohio; he was on the phone doing the interview. He's introduced as an inspiration, and Kline's first question is something along the lines of, "Dustin, tell us what makes you so special."

Carter replies to the effect of, "Well, I work really hard, I put a lot of effort into everything, and even if the season just ended I'm always training. I put in more effort than a lot of guys."

Points to Carter.

Kline then proceeds to tell Carter that yeah, this is true, and it's the most important thing, but tell us about the bacterial infection you had as a kid. Kline and Irvin prod Carter for another 10 minutes or so about his illness, how he plays sports, how he brushes his teeth, how he gets around, and so on and so forth, and Carter seems reluctant to get into specifics (it's ridiculous when they ask him how he's talking on the phone). The word "inspiration" is used every 30 seconds.

This interview made me angry. I'm a journalist, and I'm a nerd, so yeah, I wanted to know the details of this kid's life. But on the other hand, it made me squirm on behalf of Carter when these radio guys just keep hounding him about stuff he's clearly not wanting to focus on. He would give vague answers, and he didn't really get into the interview until he started talking about his "smoking hot" girlfriend, who goes to wrestling tournaments with him.

Taking a look at the situation makes it difficult to imagine what I would have done if I were the radio host. Let's face it: Carter was booked because he's wrestling with and unusual condition. If he were a normal high school wrestler, he wouldn't have been on the show. The hosts wanted to point out just how different he was and still taking down dozens of other kids. He's facing life differently than most people.

If he agrees to come on the show, surely he knows this. Did he expect them not to ask at all about his past illness? Should he expect them not to ask this? If a host asks, can they reasonably expect him to answer? This is not the first time Carter has been in the news. He played football for several years (the focus of the first ESPN TV spot I saw) and is now a top wrestler. When you're constantly called an inspiration and getting press, should you be up front about the whole reason you're in the news? Can you avoid it?

I have only been the journalist. I have never been the subject of a personal story or presentation. But it makes me wonder--what are our expectations?

One thing you can expect: that I will update this more frequently. I let it fall by the wayside, but spring is coming and it's a time for new things. Or, at least, time for a revisiting.

Career Crisis

So a friend said I was going through a college-withdrawal, but I think it may be something more serious.

Last night I was with my sister, enjoying a lazy Monday night. The past two weeks at work have been busy and kind of stressful--I broke a story that was pretty big, and it got some people riled up. My sleep was restless because it was hard to get my brain to calm down, but it was definitely nice to be consistently busy. I'd rather be making 20 phone calls a day than sitting and looking for things to do to waste time on the Internet.

Julie and I were talking about jobs, and I told her about this doctorate discussion class I sat in on at UNT's Health Science Center. The class, social epidemiology, was great fun--me and four students and the professor, discussing the tangle mess of race, socioeconomics, epidemiology. When I left, I told her how I'd much rather sit in a class like that then be bored at work, and so I was telling Julie how it'd be great to get a master's in public health.

And it really would be a great degree. There's so much to learn, and it's where science gets complicated with other subjects--do you get different treatment because you're black or because you're poor? Can we ever figure it out? How do we change it? It's an area of science that's very cool to me. I started considering applications, the financial costs of going to school (again . . . it would only happen if they paid my way), where to do this. I looked at Fulbrights, wondering if that would be worthwhile. (I decided I couldn't leave the country for 9-12 months and leave Topper again, and I don't think they'd pay to cover his international travels.)

"You've got a really sour look on your face," my sister said.

And it's true. I did. I was thinking about what I'm doing now and where I want to be. I like my job now because A) it's a steady paycheck B) I can write about science and health C) I get to learn lots of little things and C) they value my talents and knowledge. But it's not keeping me busy. I spend a lot of time reading celebrity news and other nonsense and reading every news site I can find. I'm not challenged, either. I might write a story about the costs of cancer treatment to patients, which is something I care a lot about and want others to know about, but it's not a hard story to write. Even the big stories I chased down over these past two weeks are more "shoe leather" than talent.

That's where the problem is. I want a job where I'm challenged, even if I don't love it, and I want a job where I can be a bit more consistently busy. Journalism is a hurry up and wait business--there will rarely be times where you're constantly busy, just because you're waiting on callbacks or whatever else. But the challenging thing has me worried. I'm not challenged here. Am I going to be any more challenged in a reporting job at any other publication? Each story can have its own quirks to figure out--the right way to word something, structure, keeping to word count--but it's all routine trouble-shooting.

I have this horrible idea that maybe journalism may not be a challenging field for me.

Remember, I love journalism. I love words, I love writing, I love deadlines and bylines and relaying information. But is it harder to write stories at the New York Times than the local business newspaper if you're in science journalism? Instead of getting easier with age and experience, does it get harder, more challenging?

I talked to Dan briefly about it. He said now that he's at a bigger paper, it's easier to report and write stories--he attributes it to the staffing differences. He said he's not really challenged. He enjoys it, sure, but challenging? Maybe not.

I've had it hinted to me that perhaps I could become an editor here at some point. Maybe editing is more challenging. I certainly enjoyed it at the Skiff, but that was small-time. I don't know if that was an accurate representation of real journalism. But if that does happen, at least it will give me one more piece of information--either editing is something challenging, or not.

For now, I think my only decision has been to get off my ass when I'm doing nothing at work and redouble efforts on the novel. At least it's challenging.

And perhaps I'll look at some more degrees to add to my resume.