Rumor-Mongering

Word on the street is five editorial people at the Star-Telegram have to be gone by Monday, and Belo announced that 500 people from the company will be cut by the end of February (that's roughly one in seven people getting cut from its newspapers too, which includes the Dallas Morning News).

Fuck!

I'm looking at my resume and wondering if there's till time to get into some kind of teaching program, where I can yell at thuggish high schoolers all day to SHUT UP and SIT DOWN and wonder why they don't care about the finer things in life, like naming the cell organs and reading The Sun Also Rises.

I think either tonight or tomorrow night will turn into another mournful, bitchy, whiny night of journalism drinking. I felt better about my paper after having too much crappy beer to drink last Saturday night (no hangover! it's a miracle! I believe it's the multivitamins I took before I went to bed, because a girl's got to believe in something, right?), and so I'm thinking maybe Dan and Andrew will feel better after some drinking and late-night Whataburger. Andrew, from what I gather, essentially had his regular job disappear from under him and will only be able to freelance now, so it's a good thing he's in graduate school, and Dan's nervous about what's to come.

I've talked a lot about changing careers, going into medicine, but those were always long-term plans, something to slowly work on and get ready for over the course of maybe four or five years. I cannot wrap my head around the idea of how quickly all the papers around here are falling to bits and I might end up getting fucked too. I'm not mentally prepared to do anything else; I don't want to do anything else at this point. I like being a journalist, I like the self-righteousness that comes with it and the superior feeling of always knowing something other people don't.

Thankfully I've been writing, usually in the evenings, so hopefully I can finish things up there within the year. Maybe I can get a book published and then become a hospital janitor or something.

I'm so glad it's Friday at 4:39 p.m. I'm also glad I have a stockpile of Shiner 99 in the back of my closet, just in case of a nuclear attack or an industry breakdown.

Ice Day

Yesterday I went to the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo (this is where you yell, Yee-haw! and then continue reading this post) to do some reporting for a story about whether the event is being impacted by the economy. This is the same event that started my journalism career in Fort Worth, two years ago, and I got these nice memories of eating funnel cakes for lunch and smelling like cows all day when I walked through the grounds.

When I was finished with my reporting, I noticed I had a text message from my ME telling me to go home, since there was an ice storm headed for North Texas. I left the Stock Show, drove out to the barn to check on the horses and make sure they were in their blankets and would stay inside all night, then picked up some movies and spent the night on the couch, watching movies.

I could hear the freezing rain coming down as I fell asleep last night, and this morning Fenway woke me up around 5:20 and after I fed him some food to shut him up I looked out the window. Behold! Ice! Everywhere! I didn't have an interview until 11, so I woke up again at 8:30, called to change the interview from in-person to on-the-phone due to the icy streets, and went back to bed. My ME sent out a message saying we were free to work from home, but all my notes were on my computer at work so I ended up being there for the afternoon.

Usually on Wednesday nights I drive out to Dallas to see Dan (or, more importantly, to see Top Chef or Project Runway, since I don't get Bravo at my place), but no way in hell I'm doing that today. It warmed up to about 40 this afternoon, and a lot of ice melted, but all the slush and puddles are just going to refreeze tonight. If I went to Dallas, I'd be driving back in ice again, and I'm not dealing with that. It's a nerve-wracking drive in bad conditions.

Since I wasn't driving to Dallas, I ended up going to this massive (and seriously, I mean massive) antique mall to look for tables/chairs for a new apartment and instead bought a really heavy brass piggy bank from Chicago. It's beautiful, looks like a real pig, heavy and solid and it was a total impulse buy, I'm not afraid to admit. Since I felt a bit bad about paying $40 for a piggy bank, I went to Central Market and spent more money on apples and clementines.

Dinner today was a giant apple, a half pound of edamame (hey, it was all shells), two clementines, and I'm going to have a slice of cake. They somehow even each other out.

Tomorrow after work I have to go to this grand opening/rededication sort of thing that includes drinks and desserts. It's not really for a story or anything at the moment; it's more of a mingling thing, and I feel decidedly awkward mingling. I do it; I walk over to strangers, introduce myself, strike up conversation, collect some business cards, but I have to force it. I may have talked about this before, but Dan and I have a theory that most journalists really hate talking to people. Way down, in the recesses of your journalist's soul, it just feels wrong. A lot of us get into this because we like hearing other people talk, we like being the one to record histories, we like collecting data. We just hate having to do that back-and-forth that normal society likes.

But if they're serving alcohol, I can have a glass or two of wine or a few beers (I hate that I'm usually the only woman who drinks beer at these events; why do women always drink wine, even if it's bland?) and the mingling will become a bit more easy.

I just watched a baby hippo get eaten by a crocodile. That's what I get for putting on Animal Planet. This effing channel. I'm going to fiddle with the channel and find that cake to revive me.

No Comment

I'm not going to discuss how the blog proposal went, but instead I'm just going to say this:

I have launched a new science blog, and I encourage everyone to check it out. I am not a scientist, I dropped out of my college chemistry class, I changed my major from neuroscience to journalism approximately six weeks into my college career, but it's still something I love and am constantly awed by and therefore I want to write about it. Even if you're not a science person, try it anyway. Hopefully it will appeal to you, too.

The Dork Reporter

Va-cay

Today at work we all found ourselves with five unpaid personal days that have to be taken by April 30.

Holla atcha three-day weekends!

I guess it's a good thing if it means not laying people off. On the other hand, it's sort of a pain, since it's unpaid, but I guess it would completely defeat the point if they just gave us another five days off. Less productivity, being paid the same, the company doesn't gain anything.

The first thing I thought when I heard this was, Dude, I can sleep in and ride Topper in the daylight on a week day. Sweet! Then I thought that I should take off my birthday, which is on a Wednesday this year. (My birthday was so much better when I was in school, when it was always during spring break.) Not only is it on a Wednesday, which is usually spent frantically trying to track down the fuckers who won't call me back, but it's for a health care focused issue, so I can't take off the whole day because it's an issue where I'm kind of necessary.

So I took off that afternoon, and hopefully this will motivate me to get my shit in line and work ahead. I already have one of the stories for that week, and I can do it at any point, and hopefully I can nail another two like that.

This week was a shitstorm when it came to people calling me back. I wrote two stories where I only got one real source and had to pull from studies and press releases to round them out. It was stupid. One of them was this story I was really enthusiastic about, one that I believed in, and one I actually worked on for two weeks. Unfortunately, one company had a national meeting one week and then everyone was catching up on work the next, so they didn't get back to me. Another company (thankfully) got back to me with nice, complete answers. The third company has a media guy who won't even return my phone calls or e-mails. I must have left him at least a half dozen voice mails, and in one I even asked him to please let me know if the company just didn't want to participate and I wouldn't leave him any more messages, but NOTHING. The guy sucks at life, and I can't tell him.

Sometimes I hate trying to be objective.

One thing that did make me feel better today, while I was stressed out and had high blood pressure, was listening to the White Stripes that I had on my iPod while driving to yet another interview in Arlington. My favorite song is "Ball and Biscuit," which is this brilliant (long) blues song with kind of nutty lyrics and this loud screeching guitar. Love the screech. It's from their 2003 album Elephant, and there's something intensely gratifying to me about loud guitars. Dan doesn't really get it, I don't think. He probably thinks it's just noise, and more than once I've picked him up and he immediately turns down my car radio.

Tomorrow at story meeting I'm giving a sort of presentation about blogs and what they could do for our paper. I got this task because I'm persistently asking to have a science and health care blog, and it's something I mentioned in my job interview almost two years ago. (Almost two years. I've now been at the paper as long as I was in grad school. Craziness.) I think it's the best thing for us, and I think all the reporters are enthusiastic. Cross your fingers I can convince the editors and administration, too.

Tomorrow is also Friday, and I plan on getting pretty intoxicated. It's been that kind of week.

Stray

This morning I had an interview out in Arlington, and I was driving along I-30 on my way back when I saw this large, white dog trotting alongisde the highway, limping just slightly, but going steadily with his tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.

The dog was on the left side of the freeway, in this sort of grassy median that turned to a really wide asphalt shoulder a few miles up. I looked at the dog as I went past at 70 miles per hour, and I briefly considered pulling my car over the trying to pick him up. Where was he going to go? How was he going to cross three lanes of traffic to get off the freeway? I didn't notice a collar, but I was going pretty fast. Maybe he belonged to someone. Maybe he didn't. Maybe I should have done something.

I have really, really intense guilt when it comes to stray dogs, and especially dogs who seem in a situation where no one is going to help them and they're going to get killed by being hit by a car. Cats are something else--I think of cats as more able to take care of themselves, and when I find a small stray kitten (like the little one on the exit ramp near University, or the one that lived in the bush near Dan's apartment), I can easily pull over, catch it and put it in my cat to take it to a shelter.

It's not the same with dogs. I have a small two-door, and a dog would be in awfully close quarters with me while I'm driving. What if it starts pacing around or climbing over seats? And what if while I'm trying to entice the dog over it turns out to be a mean dog that tries to attack me?

But what if it's a nice, gentle, hungry, dehydrated dog that needs help and I just drove past?

I thought about that dog the whole rest of the drive back. Obviously, I'm still thinking about him. I'm wondering if someone picked him up. Maybe they took him home. (I certainly couldn't bring home a dog, with two roommates, two cats and an apartment. It's just not sane.) Maybe he crossed the highway--at least he's got his bright color going for him--and headed off to a subdivision.

When I drive by and don't stop, it makes it awfully hard for me to believe I'm a good person.

Um . . .

I haven't posted in about 10 days, which seems like a long time to me, but only because I'm lame like that. I don't have anything big and huge to say, just some random points to make . . . but even when I try to be coherent in a post, it digresses into a mess anyway, so now I'm going to shut up.

First of all, I know everyone wants to know about personal drama, and I know the people I talk to on a regular basis (or who are unfortunately enough to see me every day or so) have already heard, but I am definitely moving out of my apartment by the end of May. I've been living with my sister for the past two years, since I moved back from Boston. First I moved in because it was convenient, then I stayed because it's cheap, and now I'm moving because I like my sister and need to remember than instead of being reminded of all the stupid things that we do that annoy each other. Our third roommate will be done with her graduate degree in May, so she'll be moving back down to Austin, and it just makes more sense for me to move out then.

Secondly, Dan started on a new shift at the paper, so now he's working from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. and holy cow, it's like being around my parents when we're together! (I love my parents, by the way.) He gets all tired and sleepy around 9 p.m., and is pretty much in bed and asleep by 9:30 most nights. We used to call and wish each other good night when we were going to bed, and now I can't because he calls me when I'm watching Anthony Bourdain or something and if I try to call he's been unconscious for two hours already. The up side is he has afternoons to spend out on his bike, and that makes him happier, so I guess it all works out.

Third, I have discovered the joys of eating seafood at home. I don't cook a lot--most nights I'm not home until around 8, and by then I'm too hungry to wait on something that takes longer to make than a grilled cheese sandwich or something. Additionally, I share a fridge with two other people, and there's only so much room to keep things, and occasionally things get shoved behind something else and lost and then spoil and have to be tossed and I think, "Fuck, that's $6 worth of cheese" or something like that. So anyway: The other night I really, really wanted to eat crab, and when I went grocery shopping I realized I was a dumbass and I could buy crab (or salmon, or swordfish, or scallops, whatever) at the store. Seafood is really quick to make, and now I'm eating seafood once a week--the day I go grocery shopping. I'm afraid if I buy two meals' worth, then one serving will get shoved behind something else and lost and spoil and smell so bad well have to throw the whole fridge out.

Fourth, I was reminded yet again this week that checking quotes with people can be a royal pain in the ass. (Oh yeah, you didn't think you were getting through an entire post without a journalist's gripe of some sort, did you?)

We have this feature sometimes that's a Q&A, and you talk to someone on the phone, type everything they say out verbatim, then edit it down for size/clarity . . . it uses what I refer to as "creative punctuation" to make sense of the way people talk. Few people talk in clear, cut-and-dry sentences, and so there are lots of ellipses, commas, dashes, etc, and people come out sounding fine.

This woman, who admitted on the phone to being a perfectionist, said she wanted to see the quotes prior to press. Since the whole thing was basically one giant direct quote, I had to e-mail it to her, and then she called me and said she sounded dumb and she didn't want her name affiliated with it. She said some parts didn't even make sense and maybe she does talk like that, but that's not the image she wants to convey.

I met with my editor and we reluctantly let her type answers to the questions instead. It was just more trouble than it was worth, and the answers she typed back were generic, boring, and really not as interesting as what she'd said. This is the whole reason journalists talk to people--you want to get that human feeling, that funny turn of phrase that sums things up so well. I think most people, if they saw a transcript of a conversation they participated in, would say, "Shit, I sound dumb." I'm sure I would. I sound ridiculous sometimes. But I know that, and I can turn on my professional-speak where I at least sound literate. I am guessing this woman turned on her professional-speak, and she sounded fine. But what can you do.

Oh wait, I know what I could do:
I could post a complaint on Angry Journalist. Or I could just be lazy and complain here.

Another good website, although this one looks like it's fairly new, but I'm optimistic:
Overheard in the Newsroom

And lastly, I am in the process of brain storming with my fellow reporters and looking for a way to incorporate a blog into our paper. We need a blog, right? Everyone needs a blog. I know people who have blogs for their cats. Clearly, we can do better than that.

Bad Attitude

Yesterday I was working on this story, and I called up a PR woman who works for a firm in Dallas that helped me track down people in this big company before. I wasn't sure whether she was the right person to talk to, but she'd been ultra-helpful and nice in the past, so I figured she'd be a good place to start.

She told me she'd have someone from inside the company get back to me, and sure enough I got an e-mail later that afternoon that had some general statements about the company. I wrote back and said, Hey, thanks, here are some more questions, my deadline isn't until Wednesday, so no big rush on anything.

I then got another reply from this guy within the company, and he was pretty snotty. He was telling me that they don't track those numbers, he doesn't have that information, he can't find that, it would take too much time and effort and his staff isn't big enough and waah waah waah. It really annoyed me. First of all, I KNOW there's got to be records of this stuff. This is fairly important financial stuff we're talking about, and this is a really big company, so you know they're tracking everything. (I'm not going to name the company, but let's just say it's a Big Company. Trust me on this one.) I know you've probably got a small staff and everything--fuck, there's five of us reporters churning out tens of thousands of words every week to fill a whole newspaper--but come on. Seriously. At least say, Hey, we'll try and get you what we can. Don't just blow me off. You saying you don't have the staff or time means "I'm lazy and don't want to waste my time with you."

Jerk. I hate snippy PR people.

Sunday night the weather took a turn for the winterish, and it got really cold and then start drizzling and freezing everywhere. I was inside on my couch, but my back started really hurting. Well, ok, not exactly my back. It was my pelvis, that huge giant bone, the one that felt like I'd cracked it into pieces a little over a year ago when Topper threw me like nobody's business. In fact, yesterday that bone felt almost the exact same way it did when I got thrown, when I had to go to an urgent care center and get it x-rayed to make sure there weren't pieces floating around in there.

The doctor then gave me a prescription for tramadol, which never really did anything at the time, so I generally didn't take them. Last night I took some on the off chance it would help, and sat on a heating pad all night (which helped with the other problem, which that it was really cold in the apartment). I went to bed around 11:30, really tired, finished reading a Texas Monthly article and turned out the lights at midnight. I felt exhausted, but then proceeded to lay in bed until 1:30, unable to fall asleep. Then, my sister and her boyfriend came home.

If I had to pinpoint one thing as the most stressful thing in my life, it would be my sister's work schedule. I know I gripe and whine about a lot of things on here, and I don't talk about my sister as much as say, oh, PR people, but it's because she's family and I want to kind of be respectful of her. But seriously: cannot take it. She works as a waitress and closes most nights, so she comes in around 1:30, 2, sometimes even 4 if she goes out somewhere afterward, and I always, always hear her come in.

I've become a really light sleeper. I don't know when it happened--the time some creepy guy snuck into my dorm room while I was asleep and hovered over my bed, causing me to wake up and have to file a police report? The time I got Fenway and he discovered the most comfortable place to sleep at night is on my face? The time my sister started coming home at ungodly hours and then sitting up and talking or whatever with her boyfriend until like 5 a.m.? I don't know.

But I do know I always hear her come in, and then I always hear her and her boyfriend and it drives me nuts. I've asked her repeatedly to lower her voice, shut her door, keep it down, get a real job, whatever, but it just doesn't work. Last night, Fenway was loud and obnoxious, I couldn't sleep (possibly the tramadol? I have weird reactions to some painkillers), and I could hear her. I laid in bed until 2:30, my heart rate progressively climbing from "oh, we're awake" to "we're doing jumping jacks" to "we're running a marathon and our head might explode." I started trembling because I was just so angry, so frustrated.

Then it was my turn to turn bitchy. I heard my sister and I sprang out of bed, whipped open my door, and stood in the hallway yelling something to the effect of, "Seriously, it's 2:30 in the morning! We only overlap in this apartment like 6 hours a day, and it's when I need to sleep!"

My sister said they'd been whispering and her door was shut, but that just proves that A) I have supersonic hearing or B) she's still loud. I'm opting for B. She has NO idea how loud she is.

But let me tell you, I felt a helluva lot better after yelling at them. I fell asleep with no problem after that.

Aaaaaannd Done

I'd just like to take a moment to gloat about the fact that I (generally) stuck to my 2008 resolution to take up running. Exactly a year ago today, I went out running for the first time since I had moved back from Boston (so there was a year off there, a year spent drinking a lot of beer), and ended up so sore it hurt to walk up the stairs at work on the 2nd.

I took some time off when I got sick, and switched to running stairs in the summer, because I am psychologically ill and clearly in need of help, but all in all, I'm pretty proud of myself.

I'm also feeling generally ok about 2008. Yeah, it was a shit year with the economy and all, and I haven't hit the jackpot despite the fact I buy $1 lottery tickets like three times a year, but for me it was pretty good. And even though my immune system finally cracked under the pressure of the holidays and being surrounded by sick people, I had a good time at the New Year's party Dan, Loren and I went to out in Dallas. I didn't feel it was prudent to drink with a cold and had volunteered as the designated driver, so I only had some Jello shots (those totally don't count) and a glass of champagne (again, doesn't count). It was a great house to have a party in, there was a bartender (!) that had been hired for the event (this classifies as really swanky in my book), and a great mix of dance music from the computer, just right to use the giant hardwood floor in front of a lit fireplace. For everyone who witnessed my dancing: I'm sorry. I'm just glad you were drunk.

So seeing as how I did fairly well with resolutions in 2008, I'm hoping I can do it again this year. I'm going to stick with the running still, and then my new task for the year is to do some serious work on The Novel. Last year was all fine and dandy, but the economy IS sinking fast and I don't have the money to enroll in school again, so I'm going to need to invest some time and effort into something else that has a remote possibility of offering some cash in the future. (I'm talking really remote here. I've spent many years researching and agonizing over how hard it is to get a novel published. But I also know that the sooner I get it out of my system and probably get the big rejections, then I'll be more productive as a journalist, knowing that I don't have any other options at the moment.)

And since this first day of the new year is almost done with already, I feel like I should probably go pound out 100 words or so, just to get some momentum building here. Maybe tomorrow my writing muscles will be so sore that I won't be able to get anything done at work, which would be a real shame, because seriously--how on earth am I supposed to fill eight (ok, like six, after you count showing up late and a long lunch) hours at work on the Friday after New Year's?

Broke

I'm all done with my Christmas break, which I guess I would classify as being successful. My flight to DC was only delayed 45 minutes, a miracle when people were spending days on the floors of airports as snow and ice whipped through most of the country, and I spent a lot of time reading, including finishing the damn D.H. Lawrence book I started and then had to finish because I'd gotten too far to just walk away. Everything was peaceful until Dec. 23, when my sister came home and generally caused a lot of angst, and then I got back to DFW without any flight delays and without getting charged for extra weight on my suitcase. So glad that ticket clerk was too busy with another passenger to pay attention to the scale!

I like breaks. They're gratifying. Sure, vacation is nice, but sometimes I just want time off where I don't really do a lot and most of my time is spent on a couch. That's a good break. Traveling to new places or cities often requires stress, the stress of being someplace new, of anxiety, the stress of being excited and overextending yourself, doing more in three or four days than most people do in an entire month. A break just requires showing up, that's all.

I did so some things--I went in to school with my mother, who's an elementary school music teacher, the day after I arrived and made photocopies for her and helped tidy up her classroom in preparation for winter break. I briefly went into work with my father, who will be retiring from the Air Force soon, and met all of the people he works with and had to really, really keep ahold of my curiosity since he works in an office where they put classified documents in paper sacks to be destroyed and then write "SECRET" on them. Seriously, so tempting. I saw Liz and Pat, who I saw briefly in San Francisco during their wedding weekend but was able to spend more time with in DC, where they actually live, and get cupcakes at the same time. I went to the Newseum, which I'll get into on a later post, and indulged myself in some journalistic dorkiness. I got to sift through a bunch of boxes of my childhood stuff in my parents' basement, setting aside stuffed animals and books to be donated and throwing away all my CD cases, now that they're all loaded on my computer and the discs are in a giant book. Remember buying a new CD and how difficult they were to open, with all the little stickers, and then flipping through the booklet to see lyrics or photos or credits and shout-outs to mothers and others who helped the band in some way?

I've also gotten over my shame for this one, but I read the first book in the Twilight series. My mother had read the first two, and she said they were entertaining enough, so I found a copy at the secondhand book store and read it. It was entertaining. It was like candy. It's good for a short while, and then you feel the need to have something with more substance. I have the second one in my suitcase to read soon . . . that's why my luggage is always so close to the weight limit (or over) when I fly home. I fill half of my big suitcase with books, take them home and switch them out with other books, since most of mine are still with my parents. Then I fly home with switched-out books plus all the books I've bought. If real paper-and-stiching books weren't so gratifying, I'd totally get onto the whole e-book thing just for portability.

I flew back on Saturday night and then had to go to a surprise party thing for one of Dan's brothers, who's getting deployed to Iraq in February. It was fairly awkward, and then last night I saw his family again because they were having a late birthday celebration for Dan, whose real birthday was on the day of the surprise party (and therefore generally ignored). That was also fairly awkward. I find myself thinking that even one day when I'm married, I may still want to spend breaks on my parents' couch, reading books and watching reruns.

Take That!

Reporters who work for the Associated Press have been in a byline stroke, not allowing their names to be run on their stories.

Oh, silly reporters. Nice thought, though.

I've continued being slightly frenzied, working to get out of here without having to write stories from home, and right now it looks like I'll only have one story to write while I'm at home (a special pub coming to bite me in the ass again, I should have seen it coming). Today I'll write my two stories this Dec. 22, and on Friday I wrote two for the 29, and today I even did two interviews for the Jan. 5 issue. Amazing! I'm sort of proud of myself.

This weekend I also blew my eardrums out at the Eagles of Death Metal concert in Dallas (I would link to their website but I think it has some annoying background sound on it that was irritating the hell out of me last week), got guilted into buying books for Toys for Tots, got a hair cut, made cookies, ate a lot of cookies, saw Adrian for the first time in months, got a tour of the wedding gifts Adrian and April got, and pretty much wrapped up Christmas shopping.

I'm so ready to sit on my parents' couch and have them buy me stuff now. I have my eye on this book bag from Barnes and Noble (so many pockets!), and I need more socks.

Also, I've got some things going on over the time at home, so I'll probably blog about those. I may even blog about the anticipated drama regarding my sister (still doesn't have a full-time job) and my parents (who don't want to p ay her rent anymore).

I hope everyone enjoys their vacations!

Glorious Daze

Thursday afternoon, 3:38 p.m., and I have hit boredom. Hooray!

This week has been really busy; I've had tons of interviews scheduled, trying to get ahead on work for our holiday deadline schedule and so I don't have too much to take home with me next week when I use up the rest of my vacation days. I've felt anxious a few times at how much stuff stuff stuff has to be done, and I've walked around all week loudly saying, "I had four back-to-back interviews scheduled this afternoon. I'm just so busy!" and "I had to be here at 7:30 this morning to get an interview done! I'm so tired!" It's basically just making myself feel better about the fact that yes, I'm being productive, but that I should probably be this productive ALL the time. Every week should be busy. I should always be working ahead. But I don't, so I pat myself (loudly) on the back when I do.

I'm expecting that I will probably have to take some work home with me next week, but with any luck it won't be too much. I fly out Wednesday late morning and arrive in D.C. around 4 p.m. or so, and Thursday is deadline day, so I'm hoping to get everything done for that week ahead of time. Then I'll have one story for the week of Christmas due by Friday, and I might end up working on that one Thursday at home, but I hope not. I've got all the reporting done for that story, so I hope I can keep myself motivated enough to make the final push here so I can be more relaxed there, but we'll see.

This week it got seriously cold here, with snow in Dallas on Tuesday night (it was just sleet in the Arlington/Mansfield area, where I was at the barn, and I don't know what happened in Fort Worth because it quickly passed). I went out for a long, cold run last night, digging my running tights out and putting some short sweats over them. It felt really, really good, and I'd go out today but I don't have anything with me. I also don't have any barn clothes with me. I think I'm just going to go home, take a nap, read my book, watching TV and go to bed early for my interview tomorrow morning.

I always feel guilty when I go home after work and don't do anything. I feel like I should be at the barn, be running, be seeing someone, but today? Fuck that. I'm rewarding myself for such a hard week.

The Sky Is Falling

When the Chicago Tribune and LA Times parent company is filing for bankruptcy, it makes journalists everywhere feel nauseous.

Does anyone else find it strange that they filed in a court in Delaware? Delaware? This seems like the first time I've ever heard of the state being referenced in a national news story.

The whole thing also shocks me just because of the scale of the debts the company had--$900 million in interest payments in the next year? A $69.55 million junior debt payment due today that they couldn't pay? And I stress out about a couple of thousand on my credit card from moving back and forth across the country.

This weekend, when I was down with the grandparents and other assorted extended family members, we talked a bit about the state of journalism. I said it was a precarious industry, and I knew things were bad, but I didn't know they were this bad. This is taken from the story:

A note on an internal Tribune Company Web site said, “All ongoing severance payments, deferred compensation and other payments to former employees have been discontinued and will be the subject of later proceedings before the court.” That made it apparent that employees who recently were laid off or took buyouts would join the long list of unsecured creditors.

That means reporters, mid-level editors, designers, copy editors, sales reps, whatever, people who got laid off and screwed over before are now not even going to get the money to get them through as they look for a new job any time soon. That's tremendously shitty, affecting their lives and their families, especially in the winter when expenses are higher---and no, I'm not talking about paying for Christmas gifts. I'm talking about heating homes, stuff like that.

(As an aside with a pet peeve of mine--WHY does the AP Stylebook dictate that newspapers should still make Web site into two words, one of which is capitalized? It's retarded looking and makes it look like it's some new-fangled technology that no one's ever heard of. People are smarter and more tech-savvy than that, AP. Get with it. Update this shit for 2009, I beg of you.)

Supposedly there's going to be reorganizing in the papers, which just means more people will get laid off. They won't even be getting a severance package at the moment, either.

It just makes me sad, angry and afraid. I'm someone with a decent, secure job that I enjoy, so I can't even imagine what those in the company are feeling. If you know a journalist, show them some love. We would be incredibly grateful.

Clean

Last weekend Dan made me promise to start tidying up my bedroom. Oy freaking vey.

It's not that Dan was being pushy or anything. It's just that my room is a freaking disaster. The only reason I'm in my bedroom is to be in my bed--I don't have a TV in there, and it's not very big so there's no place to sit or anything, so bedroom=bed in my mind.

My bedroom also has a miniscule closet, and for the longest time I didn't have a chest of drawers or dresser or anything. I shipped most of my clothes from Boston here to Fort Worth, and they arrived in giant cardboard boxes that I never totally unpacked. I picked up more clothes from my parents in DC, who shipped them in smaller cardboard boxes that I never totally unpacked. Even after I got some rinky-dink drawer things (because I am cheap and poor), it wasn't doing a lot of good. The drawers of one would fall out even if the drawer was only open two inches.

So anyway. All my clothes were basically in heaps, flowing out of boxes and those pop-up laundry bags. Lots were on the floor in heaps. Lots were also in the back of my car, another thing still not unpacked from the move. (YES, I realize I've been here two years now, but stick with me here.)

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend I started mowing through my clothes--lots of washing; three cycles in our dryer, which doesn't have much power; lots of folding and hanging and carefully making stacks of clothing. Dan promised me an old dresser with working drawers from his parents' place. My room all of the sudden has a floor. I have two garbage bags full of clothes and shoes and whatnot to donate to Goodwill. I suddenly have a lovely bedroom, even found some superglue to fix some of the art pieces I had to hang on the walls.

I love my bedroom now. I hope I can keep it relatively clean. I'm still not spending any time in there, though.

Well-Rested And Working Ahead

It's December, and I'm officially stressed out about work. I'm stressed out because I'm taking significant time off for the holidays to see my family in DC, and so I'm working ahead on top of the working ahead we're supposed to be doing anyway. Add that to the fact that half of my sources are trying to leave on vacation too, and that jack shit happens on the local health care scene during December and January, and I feel fucked.

Despite my anxiety, things appear to be going (I'm hoping this doesn't jinx it) ok. I've been able to call and schedule things, and I've even had a few people call with story ideas. I'm working ahead, which hardly ever happens. I'm not programmed to work ahead; it almost makes me as nervous as procrastinating, but I'm familiar with procrastination. It's an old friend. We get along well. I'm not sure I really need new friends like working ahead right now.

The real thing that's ticked me off lately was one of these PR people in a major city across the country who's repping a local company and just CANNOT leave me alone. Yesterday and today included bouts of really spiteful comments, just because I was so angry and couldn't take my frustrations out directly on this person.

I fantasize about bitching out a bad PR person some day. But then, I also fantasize about bitching out my sister and other people who tick me off, and it never really happens. I don't have the guts to be as bitchy in person as I am in my imaginary conversations in my head.

I'm sitting on the couch right now, watching House. The couch is my favorite place to be lately, especially when I'm in sweatpants and under two blankets. The living room is the coldest room of the apartment--the hottest in the summer--but I don't have a TV in my room and my internet is sketchy in there. Plus, there's nowhere to sit in my room except on the bed, and if I'm on my bed I'm gonna fall asleep pretty quickly.

Over the Thanksgiving break I spent a lot of time on this couch--reading, watching TV, lots of napping. I really can't stomach TV commercials, so I usually mute the TV during commercial breaks and read my book in 2-minute intervals. It's pretty lame, but that's how I roll. This is how I spend my time during the evenings when I'm done with running and the barn.

I also know this is probably how I'll spend significant time at home with my family. My parents are a fairly quiet bunch--they go out and run errands and go to craft fairs and stuff like that during the day, but they're usually at home in the living room by about 7:30 and in bed by about 9:30. (This makes sense when your idea of sleeping in is to sleep until 5:30 a.m.)

I would worry what my quiet evenings say about me, about how freaking boring I'll be when I'm 40, but then that hopefully I'll be a well-rested 40-year-old instead of one of those perpetually-tired ones, and that makes me feel better.

Thanksgiving

I'm sitting alone in my apartment, the TV on for background noise and Fenway rustling a paper bag on the floor. It's Thanksgiving, and Andrew and I are still going out for tacos tonight, and Dan is at work and then on his way to see his family, and I thought I'd take a few minutes out of my day of doing jack shit to remember what I'm thankful for.

I'm thankful for my family. My parents are halfway across the country, but I'm closer to them than perhaps ever before. My sister lives with me, and sometimes she's too close, but she's still one of my best friends, and she's still there for me, just as she has been our whole lives. I'm lumping Dan into this category too, because sooner or later we'll be a legal family full of animals and bicycles, and he pushes me to become a better person and yet is always there to make me feel safe when I fuck up and don't make it.

I'm thankful for my friends, who run the full spectrum--some frustrate me on a regular basis, some always seem to make my day better, some I only see once or twice a year and some I see almost every day. They're all interesting people who keep me intrigued in the wonderful weirdness of life and keep me from turning into a hermit. Topper and Fenway are being classified here too, because I only have control over them when it comes to food, so they're like my friends that way. I have control over almost everyone when I am offering food.

I'm thankful for being in the right place at the right time. I've heard that gratitude is realizing that a lot of what you have you didn't earn and being thankful for it; I realize that my having a job, my having shelter and clean water, my having ample food, my ability to spend money on things like shoes just because I like them, and even having a government that (usually) gives me rights, having an education and having a family that could provide for me, are all things I don't really deserve more than most people.

(I'm really, really thankful for having a job. Especially as a journalist. And especially a journalism job that I like. Whew!)

I'm thankful for my good health and the good health of most of those I know. This marks the fourth year in a row that there was a Summer Health Scare, as I'm now referring to them, and while the scares aren't fun, it's wonderful to come out the other end being healthy. It's also good to be in the position to get health care if I need it, and I hope I never have to test that theory to its limits.

I'm thankful for the intricate, beautiful world I live in. I marvel at the laws governing the visible and dark matter swirling around us, I am in awe of this planet that has held up with so much shit that we throw at it and continues to somehow survive. I realize that while humans may kill themselves all off someday and cripple the earth, the planet and the universe will probably continue to go on peacefully without us. That's remarkable.

I'm also thankful for today, a day I spent with Topper at the barn in the morning and with Fenway this afternoon on the couch. I'm thankful I didn't have to choke down food that I really don't like or really didn't taste good, just to be polite. I'm thankful for no awkward conversations across someone's holiday table. I'm thankful for spending most of today on my own, because I think people need to spend time alone sometimes and be content. And I am. And it's good.

Strangers

I'm taking off Friday, Dec. 5, so my sister and I can drive down to San Antonio to see all the grandparents--my dad's mother and father, and then my mom's father, who lives in New Braunfels. Dan is working on Thanksgiving and Julie is going to Louisiana with her best friend, so I think I'm spending Thanksgiving with Andrew, drinking beer and eating tacos from some little greasy place where everyone speaks Spanish. My parents live halfway across the country, and it's really only feasible to fly there once a year (hello, long Christmas vacation).

It's all got to do with family, and I've been pondering it a lot for the past two weeks or so. It came up because of this trip down south, and I've known this for a long time but it's still bizarre: My extended family is made up of complete strangers.

I guess it's been like this because my dad was being reassigned every two or three years, and so we were moving all over the place. The grandparents would visit once a year, but I rarely saw the aunts and uncles and cousins. Right before fifth grade my family got moved to San Antonio, and then we were surrounded by all the extended family, and we saw them every other month or so, but it was still weird. I hadn't grown up around these people, I didn't really know then, and I was in that awkward pre-teen/early teenage stage when I didn't really want to be around my family.

After seventh grade, my family moved again and we were back to only seeing the extended family occasionally. My freshman year at TCU I took a train down to San Antonio to spend Thanksgiving with my grandparents, and from what I remember it was all slightly awkward. I love my grandparents--they're lovely, loving people, and my grandmother's family moved to Mexico during the Great Depression and she worked as a nurse and has the cutest accent, and my grandfather got himself out of desperate poverty by joining the military and becoming a highly-respected Air Force officer. But they're still strange to me.

My mom's father is even more of a mystery, and I never really got know my grandmother well because she died when I was in seventh grade. Most of what I know about them I've heard from stories from my mother, and they were sometimes stories I'd eavesdropped on--stories tinted with the issues of the past. My grandfather was a Protestant minister, and never had much money and so could rarely afford to travel to see us.

I'm looking forward to the trip, especially since I am going with my sister. It'll be good. We'll miss out on the extended family, which is a whole other level of strangeness--I know more about celebraties than I know about them--but we'll get to see those people who have seen the most and were the ones with whom my immediate family starts. They're also the people with a good perspective, having seen a lot in life, and it should be an enlightening weekend.

That, and it's a Friday off. What's not to love?

Fat Time

Tomorrow at work we're having a potluck lunch, a sort of pre-Thanksgiving community feasting, and everyone's signing up to bring in food. I'm going to bring in a pasta salad with baked tomatoes in it (I was going to grill them until I realized--duh--I don't have a grill), and Leslie signed up to bring pecan pie, which makes me REALLY excited.

After Thanksgiving will start the fat time of the year here at the big BP. Rather, I hope it's the fat time of year. It's the time when PR companies and business owners start sending us food baskets, filled with cans of smoked salmon and bags of fancy-ass crackers and assorted chocolate junk to thank us for any coverage or to try to subtly bribe us for more. Last year was my first holiday season, and there were lots and lots of elaborate gifts (chocolate covered potato chips from Neiman Marcus? check) sent in, so I hope this year will be the same. I'm afraid that since we're no longer really tied to our former owner and publisher, all the long-time friends he had will no longer feel obliged to feed the poor, hungry journalists.

There are a lot of ethical dilemmas that arise when it comes to journalists accepting free stuff--we need to be unbiased and objective and not do anything that may come off as favoring someone too much--but shit, we love free stuff. Love it. Especially when it's food, because then we don't feel as guilty. When you can share it around the whole office, like the food baskets, and when you don't to stories directly because of it, then most of the ethical problems disappear. But I feel like I'm always scoping for the free food at an event I have to cover. Our publication is holding an event tonight that's not mandatory, but I'm going because there's good, free food and good, free drinks. With any luck I'll find a story idea too, but my mind is on the onion rings and big glasses of beer.

Morbid Jewelry

I get this catalog called Signals, which is full of all kinds of random stuff, a lot of which appeals to middle-aged women who like to read and like cats (I'll totally be there in another 30 years). Of the whole catalog, there's usually like 5 things that I would ever get for myself, but it's amusing enough that I go through it every time I get it.

I just thought I would point out that on a page full of items like a bracelet with tiny bells hanging off it and a silver angel ornament is the Ashes Pendant. Yes--a silver heart pendant with a FUNNEL that you can pour art of your cremated dead husband in to.

They also offer the Pet Ashes Pendant. I love Topper a lot, but somehow I don't think I can carry him around with me on my neck when he dies.

Skulls are a big thing in fashion right now, but Signals magazine totally blows away all the hipsters and goth kids when it comes to ridiculous accessories. I'm constantly amazed at the random shit in catalogs.

Get Away

Last night Dan and I went with Jessica, a Dallas Morning News intern, to the good-bye party being held for Chris Buckle, the man who acted as a recruiter for the paper. Buckle was the paper's recruiter, and the last person he hired was Dan, before the paper went on a hiring freeze. (Before Dan, Buckle hired Erik, who was previously at the Star-Telegram as an editor.)

I'd been to one of these good-bye parties before, but it was about two months after Dan started at the DMN and it was incredibly awkward. I didn't know anyone, and then I tried talking with this one young reporter because she looked nice but she conversed like an idiot 12 year old. It was painful. This time, at least I was going knowing a handful of the other younger reporters, and that helped tremendously, but it still got to be a bit painful when everyone gathered to roast Buckle with a mock front page filled with outrageous stories about him.

Any going away party is going to be like this, probably, filled with inside jokes and shared stories. Those of us who were guests tried to move toward the back of the crowd, out of the way of those who were loud and boisterous. After a while the three of us piled into Dan's vehicle, and I took the wheel to get us back home.

We were about a half-mile down the main road when this suburban next to us swerved into us, knocking the driver's side mirror with its passenger mirror and scaring the shit out of me. I leaned on the horn for a few seconds, and then we both got into a turn lane and put our hazards on. I was a bit shaky (car stuff always makes me shaky), and when I got out this guy climbed out of the suburban and I asked quickly if he was ok. He said yeah, were we ok, and I told him we were and our car was ok. Our mirror was intact, and his was one that folds in, and it was easily snapped out.

Jessica came out to join me (I don't know why Dan didn't get out with us, but that may have been too many of us standing in the road), and the man told us he was driving away from a club because some women put something in his drink to try to get with him. He'd just recently moved to the area, he was really concerned about us calling the cops, and we assured him we wouldn't but he just apologized and kept saying these women were trying to drug him and he needed to get home. He appeared to have had a few drinks, and had something else, because he just kept coming back to the getting away from women part of his story. We were going in circles, and Jessica and I offered to call him a cab but he turned us down. We were concerned that if he could glance us, he could run into someone else--especially if he had been drugged--and we finally convinced him to go to a McDonald's a block away, where we would buy him a coffee and talk for a while so he could sober up.

After driving into the McDonald's parking lot, we found it was closed. Bummer. We didn't get the chance to buy him a coffee, and this time all four of us were standing outside and he went into his spiel of getting away from women again. We couldn't convince him to take a nap in his car. He just wanted to get home. We said we'd follow him, and flash our lights if he was driving erratically, and he promised to pull over if we did this.

He pulled out of the McDonald's parking lot first, and we had to wait for some cars to pass. He was driving fast, we got caught behind lights, and it didn't take long for him to disappear. We talked about whether we should have called the cops. We wondered if he'd hurt himself or others, and if he did, would we be responsible. We wondered why women were trying to jump him.

It was a good long weekend, a nice change from the ordinary. I've got another three-day weekend coming up at the beginning of December, and Julie and I are going to drive to San Antonio and New Braunfels to see all the grandparents. Tonight I got some tacos at Fuel City (so glad John introduced me to them) and headed home, and now I'm just wasting time. I enjoy wasting time on Sunday nights; when I was a kid, I always had this vague sense of dread of Sunday nights, when I'd have to do the calculus homework I'd put off or do reading for some European history course. There was no TV on weeknights as a kid, either (Sunday nights through Thursday nights, although we were allowed to watch ER), so I like to binge on really crappy TV. Right now I'm watching some show that's a British woman interviewing all these polygamists, and later I'll probably watch Gray's Anatomy, which has little redeeming value except it's mindless and on at the right time.

Thankfully, tomorrow should be mindless and is also at the right time of the week.

Fan Club Of Eight Years Olds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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