Slow

Last night I did the mystery murder dinner thing with the other young people on the editorial side of the paper. I was a feminist politician running for Senate, and it was good fun to dress up in giant glasses and a big hat.

It was the first time I'd ever done something like this, and the good news is most everyone else was new to it to. The personas were fun, and the time period it was set in was also fun for us. The whole thing was generally absurd, but a good way to spent the evening.

I got home around midnight and thought about going out to the bar but then decided against it. Dan was out with a friend, and when I got home I just couldn't work up the effort to go out again, so I watched two hours of Degrassi online instead. I love Canadian teen shows. They're brilliant. I went to bed around 2:15, and Dan rolled in around 2:45, and we slept until 10. Then we got up, ate breakfast, watched a bit of TV and then promptly fell asleep for another two hours on the couch.

Today was really slow, which is just great by me. I booked a ticket to fly home for Christmas and didn't pay quite as much as I have in years past, so that was a relief. I think I'm the only one at work whose family isn't locally based, so I turned in requests for days off last month, just to make sure I'd get them off. It's a pain, because I spend half a day on a plane either direction, but it beats when my family was in Florida or (horror) Alabama, when finding direct flights was a rarity. I fly back on Dan's birthday, which is something I've done for several years now, and I think I'll be home a total of 10 days. My goals for being home are: eating crab, going to the Newseum, seeing Liz and Pat for cupcakes, possibly going to the National Academy of Sciences, and just spending lots of down time with my parents.

I gotta admit, my parents are pretty awesome. There are things we really disagree on, and there are things about them that drive me up the wall, but all in all, I like spending time with them. I was never one who left home for college and then never wanted to go home. (Part of it is they had custody of Topper still, so if I wanted to see him, I had to see them.) We spend a lot of time on the couch, watching movies and TV, and in the car, driving around shopping or running errands.

It's weird that we're in November. We have a new president, the fall colors of Texas are fading (they're only really bright for about a week and a half), it's dark at 6 p.m. and I'm looking at Christmas plans. Wow. My days might be slow, but the weeks disappear at an alarming speed.

Who Done It?

Tomorrow night I'm going to a murder mystery dinner thingamajig at a fellow reporter's house. Most of us there will be the young staff, and we all have these characters to play, and the whole thing is set on July 20, 1969.

(An aside that proves just how much of a geek I was in middle school . . . remember the movie Apollo 13? My favorite movie in middle school. I had the sound track, which included this recording of Walter Cronkite when they landed on the moon, and and I knew it by heart, and he said "on this July 20, nineteen hundred sixty-nine" and I loved the way he said the date. Then I found out he re-recorded a lot of stuff for the movie, but anyway. I'm totally going to pretend tomorrow night that man just landed on the moon.)

I've never been to one of these things. I did a murder mystery theater thing when I was a freshman in college; it was the summer after, when I was at home, and a friend from TCU came to visit for a few days. We drove down to Florda, fell asleep on the beach, got some horrific sunburns, then went to the theater that night. This was about a month before I shattered my arm and spent all summer longingly gazing at Topper and fantasizing about tying my shoes again.

We were short a person, and I asked Dan if he wanted to go, even though I knew he'd probably say no. He did say no. This is a sticking point in our relationship. Except for modern art and some movies, we have very little in common. I grew up with the arts--going to plays, going to ballets, going to symphonies and all sorts of things. He has little patience for any of it, and it makes me sad. Not that I want him to take me to the opera while he secretly is bored out of his mind and wants to spork his eyes out, but it would be nice if we had more in common in that sense. We try once in a while to do things that we'll both enjoy with the arts. Thankfully, the things we both enjoy most are modern art museums, so at least we're good there.

I'll let everyone know how it goes and if I make a complete fool out of myself.

Photo Links

I may throw some random pictures up here later this evening, but I thought I'd share photo links for everyone who hasn't already seen them on Facebook.

These are some photos of the city and of the California Academy of the Sciences, including the damning photo of a giant puddle in the middle of the floor. I'm hoping that the Academy will pay me an exorbitant amount of money to get me to take them down. I would, and then I'd send the photos out to everyone I knew.

Here are super touristy photos, including lots of scenic views of boats, seals, trees, water, and a giant bridge that kept getting in the way of my view of the sky.

The final album are an assortment of people dressed up for Halloween.

There are cupcakes in every single album. I'm considering seeking professional help for this.

Also, can I sing the praises of film cameras? Digital cameras are good when you need to be assured of a great photo, because you have instant gratification, but film has that element of surprise which makes it fun to work with. I have a bunch of rolls from the cyclocross race on Monday night which I'll probably post this evening, so expect more links tomorrow.

For the past year and a half or so I've been kicking around the idea of starting a science/health blog. I'd post links to breaking news or interesting information, ask a bunch of questions, maybe just spur people to think about the topic for a moment. I do have a day job that dovetails into this, sort of, but I probably wouldn't have the time to post a ton of in-depth analyses. It sounds alluring. It sounds alluring because, frankly, I'd like to morph into Carl Zimmer, and I'd very much like his day job.

The Status

Ok, so my sister is the first one who mentioned this. Last night, after the election, she was telling me about all the people she's friends with on Facebook who have these really negative status reports posted about how Obama is a socialist (my sister got offended because they weren't using the right definition of socialism). She said she thinks a lot less of some people because of their Facebook statuses.

I noticed it again today, when I saw a bunch of comments on Jezebel about women de-friending people on Facebook because of their statuses. Leslie even posted a status saying she's disappointed to find out (via Facebook) what some people really believe.

Personally, I only have an odd one or two friends on Facebook who have posted anti-Obama statuses. Some have graciously avoided it (kudos to them), but most of my friends have political persuasions that reflect mine, so it's generally not an issue. I think a lot of it is an issue for people who A) like my sister, friend or accept friend invitations from anyone they ever meet and B) who are more liberal than most of their families and friends, usually due to culture/geographical things.

Maybe everyone on Facebook with de-friend everyone whose political statuses disagree with their own views. Maybe people on Facebook now will only accept friend invitations from people who are legitimate friends (instead of everyone you ever meet once) or who have views more closely in line with their own.

Probably not.

But wouldn't it be funny if this election changed Facebook forever? I love me some Facebook theories.

The following are comments I pulled off Jezebel, because they're funny/sad/awesome/really amusing:


"Also, reading all my friends' Facebook statuses keeps making me cry, too. It's unbelievable how many of them supported Obama and amazing how it is affecting so many people in such profound ways. "

"Some of my friends' Facebook statuses are making me cry too, but for a different reason - I can't believe people that I used to think were decent and logical have turned into crazy assholes. "

"That sucks. Shockingly, I can only think of 3 or 4 of my hundreds of Facebook friends that were McCain supporters. That makes me happy. But I am in a liberal area, went to school in a liberal city, and am queer. So that might explain that. "

"I live in Middle America (yeah that red strip down the middle) and my Facebook page is oddly silent. heh heh heh. Yesterday I was fighting with self-righteous McCain supports and today I guess they've gone to the ammo store to buy up the guns. "

"I just "de-friended" one of my best friends because he's an unthinking Republican and I cannot having him harshing my mellow right now. I feel sort of bad about it, but I just do not need shit like this in my life: "_____ is a true American because he supports even the lowest of presidents, instead of whining like liberals". God, just STFU, go crawl into a hole and build a goddamn shrine to Sarah Palin's loveliness, fuck twit. "

'MY COUSIN is pulling that shit right now. He congratulated Obama, and when someone commented on his status, he mentioned that it would be nice if the left had been as "magnanimous" about the election results in 2000 and 2004. I just told Facebook to not show me stories of his on my news feed."

Read All About It!

As Gawker puts it, today's a great day to be a newspaper. When I got up this morning, I got up early to try to find a copy of the paper. I got to the Barnes & Noble a mile from my apartment two minutes after they'd opened, and they were already sold out of the New York Times. Same thing at the grocery store. Same thing at the gas station. Same thing at another grocery store, and then I ran out of time and had to go to work.

There are copies of some papers, like the Star-Telegram and the Morning News. But I don't want a copy of those. I want the big one. USA Today? Too much of a paper lite reputation for me to hold on to it until I die and my relatives have to dig it out of my attic.

I love this commenter on the Gawker website:

"Times Editorial: We now support term limits. Short ones. Say, 90 days."

Maybe this will be like the day-after-Thanksgiving sales that push retail stores into the black for the first time during the year (although that's looking doubtful this year). Can one day of fantabulous sales make up for an entire fucked over industry, though?

It'd be nice to think so.

Happy Tears

I nearly cried like eight times listening to Obama's speech on NPR while I was driving home from Dallas, but especially when he told his daughters they had earned that puppy that will move with them all into the White House.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to wake up early and buy a copy of the New York Times at a bookstore on the way to work.

On Edge

On the eastern coast, it's about two minutes from Nov. 4, Election Day.

I'm trying to be optimistic, but I'm still anxious. Something huge is going to happen, and I'm just hoping it's not a disaster.

Dan has a friend who calls us both part of the liberal media. My being in the media has nothing to do with it.

It has a lot to do with health care, women's rights, the wars in the Middle East, the economy. Fuck--I need this economy fixed. I'm going to have to start baking my own cupcakes instead of just buying them at stores if things keep going the same way. I don't have the skillz to keep up with the country if we've stayed on the path we've been on for the past 8 years.

Midnight now in part of the U.S. There will be anxious postings tomorrow, I'm sure. I'm not going to get rid of this nauseous feeling until I'm 100% sure my cupcake consumption is safe.

Next, A Dog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drowned

Saturday Dan and I got up relatively early to find it pouring in San Francisco. Rain everywhere, wind and a real chill, too. We decided it'd be worth the extra money to take a cab to the Academy, and we got there about a half hour after they opened. The building was huge, and I'd built the whole thing up a lot in my head, so I was geeking out when we got there and plopped down our $25 for each ticket.

The first thing we went through was a four-story rain forest, a giant glass dome that was humid and filled with a glass-bottomed waterway with giant fish, fake trees, real orchids, birds, little jewel-colored poisonous frogs and lots of psychedelic butterflies. You went up this spiral walkway around the exhibit, and there were little exhibits with examples of creatures found in rain forests, like really bored looking chameleons and fish. People were going nuts in there, trying to get photos of the butterflies.

Aside from the rain forest, we saw penguins, an albino alligator and the "living roof," which has seven mounds on it (to represent the seven hills of San Francisco) covered with different types of plants growing on it. They weren't in pots or planters; they were rooted into the roof itself. It was pretty, but also cold and rainy sideways, so I took quick photos and then we retreated.

Back inside we cut through the cafe/atrium area to head toward the aquarium, which was in the lowest level, under the rain forest and everything else. Cutting through the cafe I noticed they were blocking off a large section in the middle with those little A-shaped yellow "wet floor" signs, a huge wet spot on the floor, displacing families who had packed little baggies of apple slices to feed their cranky children. There were little puddles spotting the floor too, causing people to scoot their chairs out of the way.

It was brilliant. This awesome piece of architecture, this new building that cost $500 million and was 10 years in the planning, had a living roof that leaked. A lot.

Naturally, I took photos. They'll be posted, of course, as soon as I get them developed. If I'd just used a digital camera, I would have posted it already. I'd be a shitty mobile journalist. Awesomely enough, though, the San Francisco Chronicle didn't seem to do anything about the leak, so they suck too.

Maybe when people google the California Academy of the Sciences this blog post will show up and they will know that the roof leaks and AVOID THE PLACE IF IT'S RAINING. You will get wet and all the children will be in the basement aquarium, trying not to get wet and all screaming.

The aquarium was really neat, from what I could see around the strollers and children. It seemed like every kid under the age of 8 was there. Hundreds of children, running amok, looking at the fish and corals and everything else. I like aquariums, but I could hardly see anything, and I could feel myself getting more and more tense the longer we stayed. I hadn't eaten breakfast, and so was a bit frayed because of that, and then the kids just sent me over the edge. Dan and I cruised through and then went up to the bookstore, where I bought a postcard (a picture of the front of the museum, since I didn't get a good one due to the rain) and a chocolate bar. Then we took a cab back, ate food and spent the afternoon holed up in the hotel room, watching crappy movies. Really crappy movies. Seriously crappy movies.

I'll post about the wedding later, since it deserves a post of its own. I am back home right now, with my poor little neglected cat, who gets sad on his own. I am also all disoriented from the time change issues, but luckily don't have anything really scheduled at work tomorrow.

It's a bummer I've got to go back to work, though.

Halloween

Yesterday Dan rented a bike and took it across the Golden Gate Bridge and up Mt. Tam, a ride that took several hours and gave me lots of time to wander around the north side of San Francisco. It was raining lightly when we headed out to the bike place, out on Fisherman's Wharf, but it was also early, around 9, and the time and weather were keeping most of the tourists at bay.

(At bay. Get it? Ha!)

The bike shop dudes were bored and said no one ever comes in when it's raining. Dan got his carbon road bike and put on his helmet and shoes and headed out, and I had his digital camera, my film camera, and time on my hands.

I thought about going elsewhere, since everything I'd heard about Fisherman's Wharf and that area, including Ghirardelli Square, was fairly negative. Is it a tourist trap? Why yes, yes it is. And did I spend all morning there? Why yes, yes I did.

I didn't go into any of the super touristy shops, the ones that sell stupid Alcatraz items and vaguely dirty, sexual shirts. I wandered along the coast, looking at the boats and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, taking photos and half reading all the signs. It was overcast, and I saw something flailing out in the bay and realized it was someone out swimming.

Ghirardelli Square is in that area, within walking distance, so I walked through but everything was still closed because it was early. I went back to the shoreline and walked out on some piers and through some Fort Mason park, going up a hill to look out toward the bridge. There were more bike people coming out at this point, and most of them got halfway up the hill, then ran out of steam and had to walk their bikes up the rest of the way, which I thought was hilarious. There was a little park up the hill, and I took photos and watched a huge out-of-control poodle tear around after a ball.

Ghirardelli was open at that point, so I went back to the cupcake shop and bought a few cupcakes. I sat outside and ate one, in front of a wine shop that had just opened, and the guy working there came outside and asked me how I was doing. I ended up going into the store and the guy convinced me to do a wine tasting, five tastes for $10. I think he was bored, though, because I got about 10 or 12 tastes for $10 and talked with him and ended up getting a little tipsy by about 11:30. It was kind of awesome. I bought a bottle of wine to take home and then went to a little woodworking shop, where the owner and artist ended up talking with me for about 45 minutes. He wanted to know what astrological sign I was, and we talked a lot about how he got into woodworking and how he ended up in San Francisco from New York during the Summer of Love. I was still feeling the wine, so everything was groovy, and I bought a bowl he made from heavy rosewood. I dunno what I'm going to do with it, but as Dan helpfully pointed out later on, I could put like one apple in it.

I put my headphones in after that and walked to the other end of Fisherman's Wharf, past the aquarium and people selling clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls. Lots of tourists. Walked by the sealions, who were noisy and surrounded by people taking photos, so naturally I stopped to take a few too. Then I went to Starbucks to sit with a coffee because I had been on my feet for a few hours and was tired, and I read and waited about an hour for Dan.

When Dan got back, we went back to the hotel, showered, got a very late lunch. After that we met up with Eric and went to an Irish bar to have some beer and wait for meeting all the wedding people at the Thirsty Bear. We didn't spent too long at the Thirsty Bear--about an hour and a half, I think, seeing Liz and Pat briefly since they were having to do the rounds talking to everyone who'd come to see them. Brad had awesomely invited us out to join a party in Noe Valley, so we hitched a cab and headed out there.

First of all, let me just say that taking cabs makes me nervous. In a new city you can never tell how much they're racking up the price by driving in roundabout ways, and then the woman who drove was like a bat out of hell last night. She was driving a small SUV-ish vehicle and then yakking on her little earpiece phone in what I think was Filipino, and she was scaring me. But we got there, and Brad was actually waiting outside the house in all his awesome glittery Blades of Gloriousness.

Brad's friend Valerie owned the house, and she was incredibly nice and gracious, bringing us in and giving us beer. The house was really nice and had a fantastic view, and it was good to see Brad, because I think the last time I spent any real time with him was when we were digging through Dumpsters at 3 a.m.

The party migrated to another party, a few blocks away, and I didn't know any of these people but they were all very welcoming and even let me harass them with my camera. (Photos to come later!) Whoever had the apartment also made kick-ass cupcakes. (I have pictures of the cupcakes, too. Because I'm not cool like that.) Stairs and a ladder went up the roof, and again there was a gorgeous view.

The whole night reminded me of a few nights I had in college, in strange cities but out partying with friends that you don't see often. You may not remember the parties you go to with friends you see on a regular basis, but you remember those odd nights. They're the nights where you don't really need a camera, because you'll have snapshots in your head, but I had one and film to use.

It took forever to find a cab back--people were wandering around in costumes all over the streets, drunken and tottering around. We finally flagged one and got home at a fairly decent time, and then naturally crashed.

This morning Dan and I hit up the California Academy of the Sciences. I'll post about it later, because it makes me tired thinking about it. Besides, we have to leave for the wedding in about an hour and ten, and I have to shave my legs. That could take forever.

SFMOMA

Dan and I flew out to San Francisco early this morning for Liz and Pat's wedding on Saturday night. We left DFW at 7:30, arrived in SF at 9:30, and God bless the hotel front desk people, they let us check in to the hotel around 10:30 instead of waiting until 3 p.m.

After dropping our bags, we went out looking for food because it was 12:30 Texas time and we were starving. A woman at the desk recommended a diner up about two blocks, where we stuffed ourselves on breakfast food before heading over to Chinatown, which was up a giant hill and east about three blocks. We spent a lot of time there, walking around, looking at cheap Chinese-made toys and nicer home items and going into food shops where nothing was labeled in English but lots of stuff looked sort of illegal to sell. (Shark fins? Whale baleen?) I bought some little things for myself and Julie and tried some dim sum that probably would have been better if it had been pan-fried.

Then we figured since we were halfway to Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill, we may as well go there. So we did. We walked there. The hills here are ridiculous. I'm going out tomorrow with my little film camera (I left my big one at home because I haven't had enough time to test it out all the way) and hopefully I can capture the insanity. My calves are so fucking sore. I think all told we walked four miles or so, and a lot of it was up hills that had a 30 percent grade. Tomorrow I'm taking the public transportation.

We came back to the hotel, and I tried to take a nap but it didn't work, which is too bad because I don't think I really slept at all at Dan's parents' place last night, for a lot of reasons. The nap didn't work, but the giant bathtub made my legs feel better, and Italian food helped. I had to buy Excedrin to take care of the killer lack-of-sleep migraine, and then we went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which is half-price Thursday nights.

I love modern art. I know a lot of people say that some of it is stupid, since some of it is absurd or looks like it could be done by anybody. That's part of what is so neat about modern art, though--it's not necessarily about the object or outcome, but at least partially about deciding that this thing can be art. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp is one of those things--it's a urinal he bought, painted "R. Mitt 1917" on the side, put it on a pedestal and called it art. It got removed from some exhibit when it debuted, I think, but this is a current version and now it's at the SFMOMA, so he wins.

There were also a few paintings that I'd seen before but just never realized how detailed they are in real life, like Diego Rivera's The Flower Carrier. I'd seen it in books, but up close the basket detailing makes it look three-dimensional, and the flowers look soft and feathery on the canvas.

Ladder for Booker T. Washington, by Martin Puryear, is part of the permanent collection at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and yet when we walked into the SFMOMA, there it was, hanging in the giant atrium space, on loan. It looks a lot bigger in the Modern, which has it in a smaller, starker place, but it was funny to see it here when I'm so used to seeing it at home.

Then there were other staples of the modern art museums, also represented at the Modern: Clyfford Still with his huge canvases and ragged streaks of colors; Roy Lichtenstein and his dots; Donald Judd with his stacked boxes hanging from the wall; Robert Bechtle and his photo-like paintings.

There were a couple of installations at the SFMOMA that I really liked and would have put in my house if I could figure out a way. My favorite was The Structure of Light by Alyson Shotz, a beautiful, swirling, transparent and sparkling example of form in air. (I can't find a big photo, but here's a little glimpse of it.) It was made of piano wires, strung with transparent beads, and it shimmered as you walked around it. I realize how dorky this makes me sound, but it reminded me of what I imagine the principles of physics look like.

Yeah, that was geeky.

Not as geeky as how excited I got as the special exhibit Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900. It showed diatoms, snowflakes, daguerreotypes of eclipses and photos of insects. A woodburytype (I dunno what that is) of the surface of the sun, an image of the Orion nebula, circa 1900. Lightening and electrical sparks, Trouvelot figures, electrical pulses of the heartbeat. Eadweard Muybridge's galloping horses and flipping gymnasts. Ernst Mach, of supersonic fame, and photos of flying bullets and the disruption of the air around them. Radiation emitted by things and x-rays of various items, including the fetus of a river dolphin and x-rays of x-ray tubes.

All of the images were beautiful, and also so familiar, especially to those of us who spent years in science books. The photos of cells don't look much different than photos of cells today, and x-rays are x-rays. We have more advanced imaging today, like MRIs and electron microscopy, but it was amazing to see these images and realize all of them were at least 100 years old. I just never think of close-up photos of the moon being taken during the 1800s. I couldn't find any prints in the museum store, so I ended up buying a book about the exhibit instead, so I can be geeky any time I want. I wish I could find giant prints to frame and hang on my walls, but no luck yet. I'm going to do some work with Google and see what I can find in the future, though.

Tomorrow we're getting up and Dan is heading off on a bike ride, across the Golden Gate Bridge and up Mt. Tam, which I stay over here and take photos and hang off cable cars like a rhesus monkey, just like Eddie Izzard said. Then we're going to hit up the California Academy of the Sciences, go drink with the wedding people and go find Halloween parties with a friend who went through BU's science journalism program the year before me.

Dan's already decided he wants to move here. As we're sitting eating dinner he says, "I wish the Chronicle weren't such a shitty paper, because I'd totally live here." I like the city so far. If I moved here and walked around all the time, I feel like I could cut out working out from my life. That could free up a whole, oh, hour and a half of my life every week. I could do a lot with that time. Like eat chocolate and seafood.

Productivity

Today was a full day and I got a lot done, and today feels about the same--I've finished reporting for stories for this week, and half finished for next week. Tomorrow I'm taking a half day, and so will probably spend the morning writing up this week's stories, and then I'll leave for lunch, go ride Topper, take a nap, watch some crap TV, and start packing. Every week should be only 2.5 work days. It makes me feel so much more productive. When you take all the spare time out of the work week, the time spent waiting on call backs, the actual amount of work I do every week is really only 2.5 days. And that includes time to still read the news and check my usual blogs.

Yesterday I got off work, went for a short run and got myself all winded and tight chested. I haven't gone seriously running in about two weeks because I thought I had a cold and now I'm obsessed with daylight after work. I like being able to get to the barn and get onto Topper before it gets dark because even if it gets dark once I'm on him, he's better if we start in the light rather than starting in the dark. I don't know why he's like this. We've already established he's a weirdo, so who knows what's up with that behavior.

But yesterday I made the run shorter, since I haven't been out in a bit, but tried to step the pace up instead. It was good, except at the end I had to fish my inhaler out of my purse, where it was under receipts from Target and books. Today I'm hoping for a mile and a half before I go to the barn and hopefully tack up quickly.

Thursday morning Dan and I are flying to San Francisco, and it would be an understatement to say I'm excited. I'm really, really looking forward to this. I've been planning and scheming and now, finally, we can go and I can wear my fucking awesome silver strappy shoes to the wedding on Saturday. Additionally, I can hopefully dink around in Chinatown. I love Chinatowns. The Asian sector of any city is one of the best places to walk around. The general neighborhood we'll be staying at is really central and Chinatown should be within walking distance, so I'm hoping for dumplings. That's not too much to ask, right?

It's finally fall and chilly and I can't function at work without my space heater on. If it ever breaks, I'm going to bust out the fingerless gloves I have from being in Boston. I got them because I couldn't work my cell phone with normal gloves on. That, and I was too lazy to take my gloves off when I'd go grocery shopping.

Keeping Up With The Skillz

I haven't done one of these since I was 15 or so, but Dan and I had a good deal of fun on Friday night:

http://www.dallasnews.com/video/?z=y&nvid=296822

I'm hoping the Fort Worth Business Press doesn't care that I helped make a video for the Dallas Morning News. I always tell people journalism is an incestuous little world.

Counting Down Til Five

Today I got to meet billionaire T. Boone Pickens. He was the guest speaker at a huge fund-raising event for the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and the event is always held in Dallas, so John (covers energy) and I drove out to go see him.

Pickens is a pretty amazing guy--he's given hundreds of millions to charities, made billions for himself, and he got lead into the hall by the Oklahoma State University marching band, which I guess is pretty appropriate since he's got several things on that campus named after him. He was also a really great guest for the event, which was a sort of Q&A format. John got a one-on-one interview with him afterward, too, and we got signed copies of his book for being media.

We were also the only reporters there--there was supposed to be someone from the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Business Journal, the M.D. Anderson PR person said, but they never showed. I wasn't really surprised at the DMN thing. Dan is sitting in a newsroom today quaking in his boots as people all around him get laid off. Everyone there knew last week that this would be the week for layoffs, and nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened, and they're doing it all today. Dan sent me a message online saying it was like a funeral in the newsroom, and he even had a scare when his editor and editor's boss called him over to have a little meeting. Turns out they only wanted to talk about what was happening, like it was some big secret that people were getting axed.

I guess yesterday was the 10th anniversary of "Baby, One More Time" by Britney Spears. Remember that? Of course you do. It was the debut of Britney, and since then tabloids and internet rumors have never been the same. The two writers behind Go Fug Yourself wrote a short piece about the video for Spears' website, and I just find that little bit of pop history trivia amusing.

Other interesting news: Dan and I will be in San Francisco in one week. Actually, less than one week, since we'll get there next Thursday. I haven't had a real vacation yet this year--three day weekends don't count--so I'm very much looking forward to it. In case you couldn't tell. Which everyone can. Because I can't shut up about it. Because I need a vacation!

Aside from that, this week has been long. Lots of issues to work out, stuff I won't get into here. Dan will be thankful when the dust settles and I'm not griping anymore, because he's obligated to listen to me when I gripe. Tonight I think he'll be the one griping, though. I'd ask all the journalists out there to raise a beer and salute the laid-off reporters and mid-level editors tonight. You know they're getting let go from more than just the DMN.

I'm Just Like You

Lots of phone calls and interviews today. Lots of getting to use the phone voice. Also a lot of me trying to assure people I'm just like them.

I do this a lot, especially when a source seems nervous or it's a touchy subject. I want them to relax, feel comfortable--I'm not out to skewer anyone, even those people who probably need to be skewered. (For those, I just want to get the facts and quotes and let them skewer themselves. It's less messy for me.)

This week I'm working on a story about horses being neglected or abandoned or being seized by the county. There was a horse slaughterhouse here in Fort Worth until last year, and so I wasn't sure if there were a bunch of horses who would have been slaughtered and are now lingering and dying slowly in someone's back yard.

It's not exactly a happy topic, as you can probably tell, and when I covered some animal seizures when I was at the daily I got a lot of unhappy people on the phone who didn't want to talk. I had one animal control person hang up on me and then no one answered that phone when I tried calling back repeatedly. People are afraid of sparking a big fight, I guess.

So this week, as I'm getting my sources on the phone, I'm always trying to suavely point out that I'm a horse owner and I'm conflicted about the slaughter houses and that's why I'm trying to find out more. I try to let them know I'm just like a normal person, wanting to talk about it. The only difference is I'll publish this for thousands of people to see, that's all.

I'll do that with almost any topic. I have a bunch of shit I'll pull out. Oh, I went to TCU too, when did you graduate? My father was in the military too, when did you serve before opening this business? Yeah, I lived in New England for a while, aren't the summers here unbearable? It's never disingenuous, because that stuff is all true, and it's just me trying to relate to the source. I can understand why people are gun-shy around the media. I can understand why someone would be hesitant to talk to a reporter. Frankly, I'd be reluctant to talk to the media myself, even if I weren't a reporter. The majority of us use our powers for good, so to speak, but there are those who are lazy or manipulative.

Also, like normal people, I'm looking at the clock and it's 4:05 p.m. and I've got a mofo of a headache coming on and it's gray and breezy and chilly (fall! finally!) and I want to go home. My ME isn't here. Why am I here?

Coffee

When I was in high school, probably my junior year or so, my dad was up getting breakfast at the same time as me and asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee. I said no, I didn't like coffee, and he joked that I'd never live through college unless I drank coffee.

I did live through college, and grad school, and a crappy freelancing job and year and a half of a real job without drinking coffee. Diet Coke and similar products--diet cherry Coke, diet Pepsi, whatever--have always been my best caffeinated friends. They make me happy. And they're so deliciously cold and bubbly, and sometimes feel like you're drinking battery acid. Sodas are for me.

Last winter I got mildly hooked on the cafe au lait (misto, if you happen to go to Starbucks, because they are freaking Nazis). It's one-half or one-third milk, which cuts the bitterness of the coffee, and it's warm and sweet when you throw in a few sweetener. I used to like to stop and get one over the winter when I was done running in the freezing rain or something equally stupid. The cooler weather lately (although it's getting into the low 80s now as I speak, naturally) has made me crave them again.

I decided to start making my own instead of throwing $2.50 at Starbucks every time. I brought milk up to work, and last week mixed my own drinks with the giant communal coffee pot in our break room. Then on Friday I realized I was drinking more caffeine than I really needed, and I worried about going down what Dan refers to as "that slippery slope."

My dad is addicted to his coffee. He drinks about 36 ounces a day from a giant tub, laced with sweetener, and he probably drinks more when he gets to work. I still love my soda, and I don't want to be drinking insane amounts of caffeine--I've been through that phase of my life, and it doesn't need to happen again. So I went to Target last night and bought a 4-cup coffee maker and some decaf ground, and brought my own coffee to work today.

It's another one of those "holy shit I'm an adult" moments. It's also one of those "holy shit I'm just like my father" moments. It's funny when you start realizing your parents' traits in yourself; usually it's a good thing, but it's still strange. I'm very much like my father, as I think I've probably discussed before. My mom and sister get cold sores; my dad and I get canker sores. My mom and sister can be hot tempered; my dad and I get annoyed a lot, but rarely really, really mad. There's 101 more examples, but no one needs to be subjected to them.

My coffee maker was quite nice today. I'm looking forward to it through the winter. Maybe I'll start gradually decreasing the milk and become like my dad. Maybe I'll get myself a giant tub-mug to drink out of. Maybe my dad would like my apartment now if he came to visit, since the 4-cup maximum is his minimum for waking up.

Voicemail

For months now I've been getting these phone calls at work from a 312 area code and this person never leaves a voicemail. I'll come back from lunch, see my blinking voicemail light, check it, and it's a message that's two seconds long of ther person just hanging up. I figure if they don't want to leave a message, then they're creepy, and I'm not going to return a call to some unknown number with an unknown reason for calling me.

Recently, over the past 6 weeks or so, my phone would ring and I would see that 312 number and just not pick up. I'd sit there, staring at my phone, waiting for them to leave a message, and they never would. So I'd never pick up.

There's a point you reach where you don't want to pick up the phone when you see certain numbers. It's like when that drunk friend calls at 3:12 a.m. and you just don't want to deal with them. Certain area codes mean trouble, and those are:

A) Dallas area codes, like 214 and 972. Those typically mean it's a PR person in Dallas who wants you to cover something clearly outside your county coverage, and you have to come up with a nice way to say no.

B) 202, 212 and 312, which are area codes for DC, NYC and Chicago. All of these mean it's a PR person who's representing someone in North Texas who typically doesn't know jack shit about your newspaper or what you cover but they're gonna try to get an article in your paper anyway. And they want you to listen to it. They also want to call you and make sure you got the spam-ish e-mail they sent over, too.

So I just never picked up this number. It's been months now.

Today, I accidentally picked up the 312 number when I was half-distracted reading a news article online. It was a PR person I'd talked to eons ago about some start-up home health care company in the area, and she wanted to know if we'd done something about it. (Answer: No. I need a news peg, people. I know we're weekly, but I gotta get a news peg of some sort.)

She and I had a brief discussion where I told her I needed dates for openings and updated contact information for the business, and at the end of the conversation she asked if she could call me back with that info and leave me a voicemail if I wasn't there.

Seriously? Seriously.

I wanted to laugh. Of course you can leave me a voicemail. It had this vague impression that she didn't leave one because she didn't know if she could or something. I told her I check my voicemail every day and usually return calls the same day, and part of me wanted to tell her that if she'd left me a voicemail 3 months ago, she wouldn't have had problems finally reaching me.

The Red Sox lost. This means I no longer have to watch any baseball for the rest of the year. Oh well. Top Chef starts soon, and honestly, that's almost as big of a nail-biter. Project Runway would have been, but we all knew who should win, and when she did America wasn't surprised. We were just glad we didn't have to deal with any nasty dramatic turns of events.

I went through mail yesterday. My 401k lost about $236 in the period. Given how small mine is, that's a lot. It made me sad. But my mutual fund made $1.68 or something, so I'm gonna live large and buy myself that Big Gulp diet Coke I've had my eye on.

Odds And Ends

Some random things for the day before I jet outta here at 5:00 on the dot:

I need to eat more tacos off Hemphill. I went to this place near Seminary today, and it was amazing. Andrew, who has a similar love for tacos and especially waitresses who bring him tacos, came along with some other friends and we did a leisurely lunch at a new place today, El Mil Tacos. He saw a review in the Fort Worth Weekly and we gave it a whirl and it definitely did not let us down. Better yet, it cost $6 to have four tacos, chips and salsa and a can of soda. Significantly cheaper than the sushi we've been eating the past few weeks. Last summer we did weekly tacos, and I don't remember why we ever stopped, but I hope we can get back into this regularly.

Also, TCU kicked the shit out of BYU last night, in addition to the Sox winning. Happy sports times! Photo above courtesy SomeECards.com, which has fantastic stuff. Much better than the first generation of e-cards, which all had bad flash animation and annoying sound effects. Remember that stuff? From back in middle school and high school? That stuff was painful.

Today I went to this presentation thing by a doctor who directs this breast cancer center at a local cancer center. It was for this story I'm working on, and I did my due diligence and called around to all the other hospitals and cancer centers to see if they had any doctors who did similar presentations. A PR person for another hospital called me back and said, Why, yes, this doctor does it--and it was the same doctor I'd already talked to. That sometimes drives me nuts with the medical community. The same doctor who's a faculty member at the college can be a division director at a local hospital, or a program head at a hospital can be a partner in a practice and all sorts of things. Half of them have about 3 affiliations and 10 titles. It just seems awfully complicated to be a physician. Geez. And speaking of being a doctor, I've decided putting off classes until I have money. Even with community college prices, I'm spending way too much on student loans to be able to blow a few hundred dollars on classes. I guess my potential future career depends on the success of my current one, and when I make enough as a journalist then I can pay to get out of the industry. It sounds as though I'm screwed, doesn't it?

Need More Sex In Headlines

Today was press day (hooray!) and I spent half my day proofing pages and the other half at a board meeting for the county hospital system. The board meeting was pretty successful, in that it was exciting enough to keep everyone awake and people were throwing out tons of numbers and stats. I adore stats and numbers, and I tell everyone this. All of my coworkers have probably heard me say this like 1,000 times, but it's because grad school put the FEAR of BAD STUDIES into my heart.

Anyway, a bunch of us reporters were milling around looking at final pages when Aleshia commented on the headline "Get your groove on to put food on the table." It was about a '60s music festival kind of fund raiser thing for a food bank, and it's something I wrote in the morning because we needed a long headline. Groove is totally '60s music, right? It's also kind of a euphemism for sex, as Aleshia pointed out. Whoops. I completely did not see that.

Nor did I see it when John pointed out a headline on one of his stories, which said something like "CEOs expect more blows during holiday season." I bet they think it's an awesome Christmas gift.

I was going to ride Topper today, but I'd completely forgotten it rained a lot this week. All of the arenas (except the big covered one) and the lunge pen were flooded into quicksand, and there were 8 horses and show jumps in the covered arena. I was not going to fight with two lessons, that many horses and the arena all blocked up with jumps. Not worth my time. That's part of the reason we moved to this barn; the last one only had one medium-sized arena, and when there were more than 3 horses it was just too damn crowded to function, and Topper would flip his shit and start getting the other horses riled up. If it hadn't rained, it would have been a great night, but oh well. I grazed the horses for a bit in the cool weather instead.

When the horses were busy stuffing their horses, I tried calling my parents, but I think this is the weekend where they're down in Florida at a wake for the MH-53J. Let me explain the 53: This was one of the biggest definers of my family while I was growing up. It's a massive helicopter used for special operations, and my dad piloted one of these for most of his career. He lived and breathed the 53. It was a cool-looking helicopter, lots of guns and rockets hanging off it, and there was a very small community of pilots and their families, and a very small number of bases the helicopters were based out of, so we all knew each other really well. It was the extended family that comes with small niches in the military.

Anyway, they finally retired the 53--it was basically a Vietnam-era aircraft, and while it was effective, the Air Force is moving toward other types of aircraft, like the tiltrotor V-22. All of the 53 pilots are sad, since it's the end of an era--the end of their era--and there's basically a wake for the 53 and its programs and its pilots down in Florida. My mom and dad are going and will probably get tipsy-giggly and trade stories with others, stories about flying incredibly low between the hills in Scotland in thunderstorms and taking Navy SEALS into snow-blinded areas to drop them for missions.

It kind of makes me sad, too. This is something, a career of my father's, an identifier for so long, and now it's gone. It's this reminder that my life is no longer defined by what my parents do but what I do--something that still takes some getting used to. When you're in school, everyone asks, "What do your parents do?" Now, people ask, "What's your job?" It always seems strange to me to say, "I'm a reporter" or "I'm a journalist." (It will be stranger yet when I say "I'm unemployed" because newspapers disappear into a black hole, but hopefully I don't have to get to that point for a while yet.)

Anyway . . . while my parents are mourning, I am not! Not yet! The Red Sox somehow dug themselves out of a hole and won the game tonight and are now 2-3 with the Rays. Whew! I was preparing myself for commiserating comments to others when I wear my Sox hat this weekend (because I hate brushing my hair or showering on Saturdays unless I have to), and now it looks like I have a bit more time. And since we're focusing on headlines today, ESPN's headline of the game story on the main Web page is "Don't Stop Believing." Am I the only one who will now always associate that song with the last 4 minutes of the Sopranos?

Mourning Over . . . Now

Our ME announced yesterday that we won't have to do two of our special publications next year. They killed the Men's Magazine (because the world needs more stories about . . . tie pins?) and Homestyle (because we needed to see pictures of beautiful homes of people who make 50 times what I do annually).

There was much rejoicing.

And although it didn't make me sad at all to see those two pubs come to their end, what does make me sad is the state of the Red Sox. Let's just say they got their asses handed to them on their home turf. That hurts. I'm prepared to possibly hold a wake for their season later this week.

Tonight is the last presidential debate, but it's also the finale of Project Runway. I will probably not be a good American, not be a good journalist, not be a good intelligent person, and will watch PR while flipping to the debate only during commercials.

Two weeks from now I will be packing for San Francisco. I spent a lot of time yesterday gathering information about the trip--looking at public transportation lines, examining maps, looking at outrageous admission prices for the California Academy of the Sciences. I would be tempted to say "screw them" and not go, since they're going to charge me $25 to go in, but dude: They have a lawn on their roof. That's awesome. How can I not go?

Hoping Against Sickness

Boston vs. Tampa Bay. It's stressing me out. Maybe that's why Saturday night, during the ridiculously-long game, my chest started tightening up and I couldn't take a deep breath. I've been glued to my rarely-used asthma inhaler ever since, getting embarrassingly winded going up the stairs to my apartment or up to the office, and I'm just hoping it goes away soon. It makes me tired, slightly hoarse and cranky. I think it's the early stages of a cold and will go away soon, but who knows. As long as I'm not sickly going to San Francisco.

I spent a good amount of time over the weekend reading books, which is nice. It's good to sit on the couch for a few hours, with nothing to do, and work through a book. I picked them up for about a buck each at Thrift Town up off Jacksboro Highway, where I went to find things for a mystery dinner party I'm attending. (The sunglasses I bought make me feel like Elton John . . . and that's just effing cool.) The books were ones I hadn't read before, and it's a good feeling to have lots to read in the coming weeks. I also went to the Halfprice Books by my apartment and chose a copy of a classic that was printed back in 1978 or something, so the total price was 73 cents. That's one of the reasons I like reading classic books--they've been in print for eons, and so it's easy to find a used, ultra-cheap copy. Also, I feel like my high school literature classes were really lacking after 10th grade, once we moved to the sticks of New Mexico and Alabama. Since I was a journalism major and only took the required composition classes in college, I hardly read any books for class as an undergrad. Same thing in grad school. Good thing I love to read on my own, have to read on my own, can't stand the thought of not turning to the characters and symbolism and stories of the printed word.

Today looked like fall but didn't feel like it; it was kind of balmy, almost. My arms felt itchy after I went to the barn and carried flakes of hay out to the horses' paddock. I lunged Topper, since I wasn't feeling up to riding and potentially fighting with him, and he ran and rocked and bucked around like a madman. He seems to have very human moods, and I can empathize with them; sometimes he just doesn't want to deal with me, and stays at the back of his stall or paddock, always slipping out from under my hand. On those days I just let him have his time alone and leave early. Sometimes he frolics like he did today, reveling in the feeling of movement and seemingly happy to have someone to play with. Sometimes he's tired, or lazy, and I have to urge him to work but try to let him off early, and some days he's just anxious and frazzled, can't concentrate and can't be bothered to think about being good.

I need to buy warmer breeches before it gets cold this year. Last winter I suffered through with my summer breeches, which are a thin layer of fabric that doesn't do much to keep warm. I need some gloves, too. The problem is it's an expensive sport--the cheapest breeches are $40 for summer ones. At least the bare-bones gloves can be had for $5.

So many things on my list of things I want, so little time and money. It's a downer sometimes, but luckily I really like thrift stores.

Pinked Out

In case you never set foot in a store in October or never see fliers or listen to the radio or are just a damn hermit, this month is the national breast cancer awareness month.

Sigh.

I have conflicted feelings about this month. For one thing, it's great that women, patients, advocates, physicians, families, everyone is coming together to raise awareness and funds for treating and eliminating breast cancer. It's the second most common cancer in women (after skin cancer), and the risk of getting it is about 1 in 8. It comes in lots of different varieties, from relatively benign to very lethal, and it has a huge economic impact when you look at lost productivity and money spent on care.

But holy shit, give me a break with the freaking pink stuff. I walked into the grocery store the other day and was greeted by a table full of pink iced cupcakes, pink magnet decals for cars, pink dishtowels, and a lot of other stuff. There are no real regulations about all those pink items out there for sale, and read the fine print carefully, because there's no real obligation to give any portion of sales to an organization like Susan G. Komen for the Cure or anything like that.

It's all just playing off of feelings, too, which is what drives me nuts. Buying cupcakes with a pink ribbon on top is supposed to make me feel stronger or something. Beats me. In the mean time, you'll eat lots of pink stuff and get fat, and fat in women produces hormones that can be related to breast cancer.

I'm glad to see people united, but at the same time, breast cancer has a pretty good treatment rate. Where's the love for the other cancers? What about multiple myeloma, a blood cancer my grandfather was diagnosed with? What about anal cancer, which makes people snicker? What about pancreatic cancer, which is incredibly fatal, most of the time?

I know that whenever there's a big cause to rally around, people will try to profit off it. That's what business does. I know that women are more proactive in their health, typically, than men, and that's why a disease that usually strikes women gets so much attention. (How come we so rarely hear about the guys who get breast cancer?) But I also know that most people out there with cancer do NOT have breast cancer, and we shouldn't forget about all of them and their need for treatment and disease elimination as well.

And as a complete aside, October is a pain in the ass for me. I've got to write some kind of story with a breast cancer angle, otherwise readers will get ticked off and think I'm stupid that I ignored the biggest health phenomemon on the calendar. But finding new angles, and especially new business angles, is really hard to do. I don't want to write the same story over and over. I can't just rely on this really fantastic survivor, because anybody who survives deserves lots of credit, and I'd feel crappy picking one person over another. Thank goodness for a few PR people I know who feel my pain and help come up with new stuff, though, otherwise I'd be miserable.

I'll be glad when October is over and even happier when researchers figure out a way to prevent breast cancer. I hope I live to see the day when it's a disease of ages past. I also hope it's soon, before I retire from being a journalist, so I can relish an October without all the over-wrought stuff.

Error

Yesterday, while the PR person and I were waiting for this doctor-source to finish with patients, we scheduled a time to talk to another doctor-source. I wrote down the doc's name and the time in my notebook so I could talk to him today.

Today I knock off for lunch and get back to five missed calls on my work phone. Whoops. I completely forgot to take the appointment out of my notebook and put it on my calendar. I cannot function, day to day, without my calendar for scheduled phone calls, so I had missed the phone call and it was a huge snafu.

I ended up calling the PR person back, apologizing profusely--I'd never done this before, and I felt incredibly embarrassed and just plaint stupid--and she ended up conferencing the doctor in for about 15 minutes between patients. I got my interview, I did lots more apologizing, and it all ended well.

Strangely, I looked back at my notes and found out I did leave the office about three minutes after the time we'd set up for the doctor-source to call me. So, technically, I was here for the appointment. But three minutes is a lousy error times, especially that I usually give people about 15 minutes before I try calling them.

I did another interview with a woman today and found myself amused by how much she was assuming about me while talking with me on the phone. I'd never met her or talked to her before, but she said she was a baby boomer, she had grown children, and she made an off-hand comment about the lacking work ethic of the younger generation (and that younger generation would be . . . me. Her theory may be right. I'm at work writing a damn blog post instead of writing stories.).

People often say, Well, you're probably too young to remember, or, I'm old and I remember a time when, etc etc. People will ask if I'm married or if I have children. People will ask if I own a house. People also draw correlations and ask me to remember something that happened before I was even born.

It's just funny to think how much I infer from a conversation with someone on the phone, even if I have no freaking idea. And it's funny how they do the same.

But now me and my lacking work ethic should go do real work.

No Wall Street Journal

Today I've got a whole slew of interviews with doctors set up. I knocked out two earlier today; even though I had to wait a half hour on each interview, it's OK because they were doctors finishing up with patients and the PR person I was waiting with is young and friendly and we just shot the bull for a while.

When I got out of an interview, I had these missed calls from the director of communication at another institution. I'd talked to a communications coordinator earlier in the week, trying to get an interview scheduled, and the coordinator called me back and said the professional I needed was out of the country and only available during one half-hour window by phone. I already had an interview booked for that time, so the coordinator and I decided to e-mail questions to this guy instead.

I guess the coordinator and the director didn't talk to each other, though, because the director left these frantic messages about how I needed to call this professional ASAP. I called her back and explained that I was tied up and couldn't call the guy in Europe. I asked about the e-mail, and the director said the e-mail wasn't the "right format" for the guy I needed and I had to talk. Well, wasn't going to happen. I explained this, and the director said something to the effect of, "Well, we didn't have problems getting in touch with the Wall Street Journal."

That's right. The Wall Street Journal. A PR person trying to compare the Fort Worth Business Press to the Wall Street Journal.

It was frustrating. I think the PR director was just under a lot of pressure and frazzled and was accidentally snide to me, because they've always been very nice and very helpful. But it did make me indignant--don't try to make this seem like my problem. My schedule is first-come, first-served; whoever calls first and books a time gets it. The interview times were already full, and it's not my fault this guy only has a short window for me to call him in Europe. Don't try to make me feel guilty, because I'm not. Your problem, not mine.

I have two more interviews before the end of the day, and both should be fairly straightforward and good, just like the other ones. Then, off for a run (yesterday was another mile and a half, and that dead possum is STILL in the middle of the road; it's a good neighborhood, right by the Bass family, so why hasn't it been scooped up yet?) and to ride Topper. I may wimp out on the riding, since I'd like to see most of the presidential debate tonight, but I feel like I shouldn't squander the evening light because soon it'll be daylight savings and dark at 5:30 or something dismal like that. Then my urge to sleep and eat cake will be doubled as my body keeps hoping I'll just hibernate through the winter.

Hurry Up & Wait

Right now it's 3:23 (according to the phone clock, and 3:17 on the computer clock) and I'm waiting for a source to call me. He was supposed to call at 3, but he's a doctor, and he probably got caught up with a patient. This happens a lot to me. This kind of thing always makes me slightly anxious, though. It's time that's going slowly to waste because I know I can't pick up the phone and call someone else or get up to get a cup of water; the minute I'm on the phone or in the break room, the source will call and then I'll miss it and have to call him back. It'll just be a huge pain.

Rushing and then waiting is the nature of journalism, though. I think I've mentioned this before. You make a whole slew of phone calls, and then things are out of your hands. You're chained to your desk, or phone, or Blackberry or whatever, waiting for this . . . there he is. I'll be back in a half hour . . .

Ha! Totally wasn't him. It was someone else, a PR person, scheduling for another interview tomorrow. I was on the phone for 20 seconds with her and the other line rang, though, so now I have to go listen through my voicemail (I cannot express how much I hate voicemail) and call him back. So now I'll be back in a half hour. For real this time.

At least the gentleman was worth the wait. He was helpful, well-spoken, good for quotes. It's always a pain when you've arranged and waited and hoped for a good interview and then it turns out to bomb. But that's the thing--I don't think people realize how much is out of the hands of reporters. Sure, a reporter should do due diligence, but sometimes there's just not a lot you can do.

The Red Sox play the Angels in game 4 of the ALDS tonight. They should've won last night--Fenway and I were both watching the game--but they didn't. Sad. That's what I spent Friday night doing, too--watching baseball. I rode Topper after work, and he only spooked twice, and then went to Dallas, where Dan and I went to dinner with his friend and a bunch of her friends. I was thankfully able to talk to some of the friends, and had an OK time, and I think I said maybe 10 words to this friend. She just drives me nuts. I don't want to be completely rude, but I don't want to be fake nice either. It's a tough spot to be in.

Today is gray, sort of cool and drizzling off and on. It's a lame attempt at fall weather, but it's better than nothing. It makes me miss the New England fall, with snappy, crisp days of sweaters and hot drinks and being able to smell fires walking to and from the subways stop to my place. The house I lived in was probably close to 100 years old and had been split up into three flats, and our apartment took on a very distinctive smell every fall when we fired up the oil heater to get warm air flowing through the Victorian vents and into our rooms. The best part was a refund form the oil company at the beginning of every summer. But the beautiful falls turned into OK winters and pain-in-the-ass springs where it rained for months on end, so Texas isn't too bad. I'll take what I can get.

Still Useless

It can be really hard to fill an entire day when you have nothing to do.

Also, on weekend plans: Dan asked if I'd be willing to go out to dinner (maybe drinks) with this friend of his. I personally cannot stand this person, but she has no idea. I have successfully avoided seeing her/having anything to do with her for a few months now. I will probably end up saying OK and going out, but at least Dan's good enough to know how I feel, not pressure me, and even gave me an out that we can leave early to watch the Red Sox game.

I have the completely unfounded joking-belief that my cat (named Fenway) caused the Red Sox to win the World Series last year. I also have a completely unfounded joking-belief that he will bring good luck for the team this year as well. Yeah, sure, the team is lucky and talented, but I think a woolly cat in Texas has more sway over the team than good hitting.

It's awfully fun to believe/say absolutely bullshit, insane things.

Useless

During story meeting our managing editor was telling us we had another round of assignments for another freaking special publication coming out, and John wrote on the back of his paper something to the effect of "Special publications make me drink heavily and do drugs."

And all of us reporters kinda collapsed into delirious giggles, because special pubs have killed our last brain cells.

Yesterday after work I went out for a run and got in a good one--well, a good one for me, anyway. It was like a mile and a half at a steady pace and I didn't get hit by a car, so that equals a good run. There was one point where I turned onto another street, and all of the sudden this smell hit my face and it made me want to gag. There was a giant, bloated, fly-encircled dead possum in the road right in my path. Thank god it did smell, otherwise I would have totally run into that congealed mess. I'm not very good at paying attention to my surroundings when I run. That's why it's considered a successful day when I don't have near encounters with vehicles.

The debate last night was better than I would have dared seriously hoped for. I have more respect for both our potential VPs, but I still want to backhand Gov. Sarah Palin. It's her cutesey, folksy way of talking that drives me nuts. It's like talking to a 14-year-old Mormon, all the "gosh darn it" and "you betcha" bullshit. And then she pulls out the whole soccer mom/hockey mom thing and I want to yell at her.

I pretty much came to work today so I could go to lunch with Andrew. I made calls yesterday on all my stories for next week, and I'll probably get some call backs setting up interviews, but I sincerely doubt anything's going to happen today.

But I can take a long lunch, sit here, probably put up like three posts, read a bunch of blogs, dink around and see if it rains. Then I can bolt at 5 p.m. on the dot and go ride Topper before heading to Dallas for the weekend. Too bad my editor ruined by weekend by bringing up the damn special pubs again.

And Exhale

I'm feeling good about the week now, and I think it's because it's almost over. This happens almost every Thursday, even if I'm not as frantically busy as I was this week.

Do you remember Thursdays in college? After your freshman year, it was rare to have morning classes on Friday (or even classes at all on Friday), and so Thursday was this automatic jump-start for the weekend. Lots of bars had college nights on Thursday, and a lot of those places let in everyone 18 and over, so right from the start you were invited to make every weekend a three-day weekend.

That stuck with me through most of college. My senior year, the only thing I had on Friday was holding a staff meeting at noon for the college paper, and most of the students (reporters, editors, everyone) would show up nursing a hangover. You should up, you have a half hour meeting, the editors have a planning meeting, then everyone resumes their drinking or weekend slacking.

Grad school was more of the same. I don't think I ever had class on Friday, and I did work late night agate at the paper on Thursday night, but that still just encouraged me to stay up late and sleep in and do jack on Fridays.

Now that I have a job, not a lot has changed. Fridays we have a story meeting at 10, and we can wear jeans, so it feels like it should be a weekend day. Thursday night I have this sense of freedom--all my stories are done, we've gone to press, and I can sleep in a bit in the morning, don't have to dress up and can relax through most of the day.

(Recently, special publications have made Fridays busy, but I think we're done for at least a little bit. I think. Maybe. I hope I didn't just jinx us.)

Tonight is the vice presidential debate. I'm hoping that there will be some intelligent back and forth, but the gossip/bitch in me wants a total train wreck. I want something I can talk about for years to come. Plus, I admit that I love hearing gossipy-type stuff, so I want to hear lots of dishy excuses and complaints and jokes afterward. I think that if my legitimate journalism career ever blows up, I'd be rather content at a snarky blog or whatever that supermarket rag is that talks about the bat boy and aliens. I'll pass on the celebrities and semi-truth-and-rumor mags; give me the insane bullshit.

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.