the bird flu personified

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays - can you call it a holiday? - of the year, and much thought and care goes into my costumes. Often, women tend to throw clever out the window and use Halloween as an opportunity to dress slutty (Meangirls, anyone?) by donning some fishnets, a bustier, and maybe some ears or horns. Guys on the other hand usually just slap on a fake mustache and polyester jacket and call themselves a pimp, or this year, Ron Burgundy.

That's not really my speed. Like the good, nerdy journalist I am, I like to look to the headlines for inspiration.

This year, my friend CK and I dressed as the bird flu. We crafted chicken wings tied to our arms and an orange feather plume and tail. Then we wrapped ourselves in bathrobes, slid on a pair of slippers and made a necklace of flu medication labels. The kicker was wearing medicine bottles around our necks with the word Tamiflu scrawled over it.

Most folks got it, and thought it was hysterical. One guy who didn't revealed he hadn't read a newspaper since 2001 (that was the end of that conversation) and another girl stared at me blankly and then said quite frankly she had never heard of the bird flu and had no idea what I was talking about. (My screaming, "But it's a pandemic!" - our catch phrase for the night - did little to jog her memory.)

Other amazing costumes of the night included donning a homemade pair of waders (you know, those tall rubber boots for fishing) and carrying an oar to be Roe v. Wade. Another friend of mine wore a hot black dress with a red bow and a tag that read "To: Men, From: God")

getting in touch with my inner grandma

I have turned over a new leaf. I have decided to take those goals I have in the back of my mind (and on a piece of notebook paper, titled "Things to do before I die, or sooner"), and get to work.

I started a jogging regimen. Regimen might be a strong word, as today was the first day of running, if you could call it that.

I plan to sign up for a black and white darkroom developing class starting next week.

And perhaps most exciting - I learned to knit. That's right folks. I have been wanting to for a long time. I was even given a how-to book for Christmas last year, but in classic Sara fashion I would pick it up, try a couple stitches, mess up and put the needles away. (Kind of like the time, at age 13, I wanted to be drummer Lars Ulrich, got a set, took lessons, and realized my brother was perhaps more musically inclined than I, and quit. Or the figure skating: I was struggling on the axle (that's a jump, people), got bored and quit.)

I digress. Again, new leaf. And so far, the knitting was really fun. It's not quite relaxing yet, though, as I am finding I am clenching my jaw in concentration as I knit, but I expect that to change. I managed to stitch a ten-row patch. At this rate, everyone in my family is getting 3-inch pot holders for Christmas. "Oh, ignore the holes and the stray loops sticking out on the side - it's for holding a tiny, thin pot handle!"

But I am determined not to throw in the needle this time. Before you know it, Martha Stewart is going to have me on her show for segment on scarves, stockings, sweaters....

sad state of journalism affairs

Here are a couple not-so-encouraging media-related news items today, courtesy the SPJ daily email. Wow.

Newspaper columnist Ann Coulter confessed in a speech that she's "not a big fan of the First Amendment," according to E&P. She apparently "criticized the media for being liberal and Democrats for whining about their rights under the First Amendment. 'They're always accusing us of repressing their speech,' she said. 'I say let's do it. Let's repress them.'"

The Newark Weekly News has entered a $100,000 contract with the city council to publish only positive news about the city. The owner says he is providing the city a service. "Do we have invesigative reporters? No. Our niche is the good stuff," he said, according to The Star-Ledger. The paper can only generate stories based on ledes from the council and the mayor's office.

what the listserv issue was really about

More important than the ensuing debate on the appropriate "netiquette" for blogs and listservs was the topic of the initial post, which made it in the Chicago Tribune today.

See, if you'll recall, a woman had posted a note looking for a media consultant. Little did she realize, I suppose, she was sending this request out to a bunch of news-hungry sharks who jumped on the story. Sure, this CEO who needs image help may not be a big honcho, but now we are all fiercely looking out for him.

As the Tribune's Phil Rosenthal puts it:

"Unfortunately for Pamela Cramer, whose name was on the request--and for the unnamed CEO--it turns out Medill has produced a fair number of actual reporters and editors, some of whom were more interested in uncovering more about the pending tax case than in helping to buff up the accused's image. Shocking, no?"

Oops, Pamela.

OK that is the last I will mention this little listserv debacle. ... Unless something else interesting comes up.

One more thing - As we all remember the Internet is in no way anonymous, also remember that no one cares. It is a massive, massive web of billions of people writing about billions of things posting billions of stories, musings, pictures. In the end, no one cares. In the end, no one (except perhaps journos and those on the listserv) really cares about Pamela or about my own words on the topic.

I kind of wish I cared about baseball

So the Chicago White Sox are going to the World Series, and people here are just nuts over it.

I know a kid who got tickets to Game 1 this weekend. Apparently his roommate knows someone. I read today that one guy wanting tickets offered to give up his kidney - you're choice, right or left - for tickets. One woman offered nudie pictures. Some tickets were reselling for $15,000. They sold out in 18 minutes. Crazy, I tell you.

I wonder, is there anything in this world I would pay that much money - or at least the few hundred dollars others are paying - to see? My max was dishing out $100 for Prince show in Atlanta, and shoot, I'd do that again, and maybe even double it. I was close to paying out that much to see Bon Jovi, but came to my senses.

Perhaps if I was more of a sports fan, I would understand. My inaugural baseball game was the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park when I was in college. As amazing and historic and yadda, yadda, yadda as that park was, I recall it being an excruciatingly boring game. And that was even after drinking a 40 oz. of malt liquor before the game. Gross.

A few years later (this summer) I went to a Nationals game in DC, and surprisingly had a blast - and I think it was more than the beer and the company that made it fun. The game was actually entertaining. But would I pay $100 or $300 or $15,000 to see it? Give up a kidney? Not a chance.

the joys of the journalists' listserv

A request was sent out on Medill's alumni listserv today, seeking a media consultant to develop a Martha Stewart-style plan for a top Chicago CEO facing a federal tax indictment later this week.

What ensued was more than two dozen responses from Medill alumni, some suggesting what the CEO should do ("how about coming clean?"), but most debating what is appropriate for a listserv.

One respondent said it should NOT be a "forum for glib pronouncements," and reminding everyone that it is an indictment, not a conviction.

Another suggested the listserv not be used for the "the recruitment of hired hands to massage the image of those facing federal indictment." This promptly stoked the fire of the debate with alumni weighing in on what, if any, rules govern the listserv. One person reminded the list we are journalists, and stifling free speech is "repulsive."

Most responses after that agreed, saying they enjoyed the spirited debate, as I certainly did. (Especially considering these are some hot-shot Chicago journalists.) At one point, the conversation veered back to the lecture at hand - the CEO - and several agreed to keep an eye on the morning papers to see just who this person is. Interestingly, one respondent even mused who would get the story first, considering that the listserv was essentially a tip, and just what path that tip took before it reached the papers.

a few things I learned from being home

So I spent a few days in the 'Ham, and here are a few things I learned:

1. Yard sales are ten times more fun when you follow your 8 a.m. cup of coffee with four beers, all before noon ... But items marked for $5 quickly become, "Oh I don't care, you can have it."

2. Everyone I know from my high school years is engaged or married... (except for one friend who is about to be divorced). Although it makes me feel a little old and scared, it's nice to see said friends and realize nothing has changed.

3. My step-sister and I may never be best friends, but she did look me in the eye this time, which, sadly, is progress.

4. Our siblings will always know just what buttons to push to make us completely lose our ever-loving mind. And they will do so, often unwittingly, for the rest of our lives.

5. It is essential in life to surround yourself with people that make you laugh and that bring out the funniest in you. (You know you're doing good when you find yourself thinking, 'Man, we should have our own show.')

6. Sunday night steak dinners, eaten while sitting on the front porch drinking wine and telling stories, is one of the greatest parts of my trips home.

7. It's true what they say - You can take the girl out of the South, but you can never take the South out of the girl.

I gave in

I was sitting at the kitchen counter with my brother the other day, and he looks at me, touches his hair, and says, "Hey can you see my gray hairs?"

Me: "Did you just say that because you can see mine?"

Brother: "Yea, a little."

So I finally gave in. I marched down to CVS and bought a box of Clairol hair color - the low ammonia kind, though, that washes out in a month... I am still new at this, kind of... at least as a grown-up - and dyed my hair a deep brown. Really, it looks exactly the same, but without those stubborn grays peeking out.

While my step-mother was applying the docile brown color and I was feeling generally just old, she reminded me of the day I stripped my hair to near-white with bleach and then dyed it purple (which really turned out to be this pink-violet on top and deep burgundy underneath). Or that time I went bright red and then let it grow out with my black roots. Ah those were the days. More than a decade later (save for another bleach-blond-to-red disaster in college), I am dying again.

So I have given in, and there is really no turning back. Sad.

advice from the pros

On my visit home to see friends and family, I met with the Executive Editor and the Editorial Editor of The Birmingham News. I figured any hand-shaking and networking I can do in the newspaper world can only help me.

Here's some of what I took away:

First, the Editorial Editor loved my plan to become fluent in Spanish. I hadn't really considered how much that might boost my marketability, but when I told him how I was heading to Honduras, his eyes lit up, and he said that is the best thing I could do right now. In fact, they had been looking to hire a Spanish-speaking reporter, and had a tough time finding one. Then on my way out, he told me to keep in touch when I get back to the States...

The main man of the newsroom had such a fresh perspective on the path of a new reporter. Six months ago, he would have told a recent grad to follow the traditional path that we all have ingrained in our heads: start at a small-town daily, then move up to a mid-sized paper then on to the big times. Any experience other than daily experience is "discounted," it doesn't mean as much, if anything at all.

But that has all changed just in the last few months. He said he couldn't believe he was telling me this, but while I am pursuing a job at a mid-size daily, consider other outlets - Web sites, alternative weeklies. You don't have to take the traditional route anymore, because the newspaper world is changing so rapidly and by the time we make it to the "big times," that will mean something completely different. Newspapers might not look like they do now or approach stories as they do now. A diverse and unique career approach might make a reporter more attractive, showing that she anticipates the changes at papers, can take a different approach at reaching an audience, for example.

That kind of experience is no longer "discounted." Where he once would look at an applicant and write her off is she spent time at an alternative weekly, for example, he now would be much more inclined to see what she can bring to the daily paper.

As someone conditioned to take the traditional route - and coming from a strong grad school where the pressure is on to land a job at a respected (and big) daily paper, while veering from that path gets scoffs and disappointing "maybe she can't handle a daily" head shakes - this forced me to look at it differently. Although, when I close my eyes and think of where I want to be, I can picture the buzz and chaos of a daily newsroom, there isn't just one single path to get there. I think that was the point he was trying to make. Keep trying for that job, he said, but while you are, consider a less traditional route. No longer is that likely to hurt you - and may help - in the long run, and ever-changing world of news.

He also reminded me that I am in my mid-20s and I should enjoy myself and live somewhere I am happy (which often times is not the small town in middle America with a small daily paper).

Now I wonder if other editors are thinking that way, or if I veer from the mapped out path, stepping up the stairs of circulation size, I would find myself scoffed out of the running for a job at a daily. I admit I am a little nervous about considering it and in my own snobby way don't equate other jobs with daily papers, but now have it in my mind to ask other editors I meet. What would you say if my work experience included two years at an alternative weekly or a news web-site, rather than say, the 50,000 circulation Po Dunk Daily News?

Then I have to really look at my own desires. Do I picture a daily newsroom because I really want that pace, lifestyle, pay, stress? Or do I picture it because I am supposed to, because I think that has more cred than other outlets and that I need to do that to be a "legitimate" reporter? If I love writing and reporting (truthfully more than I love news itself), do I have to be at a daily newspaper (especially considering that fewer and fewer people even read their dailies, and rather are turning to said Web sites and alternative weeklies)?

The editor told me that although newspaper jobs are tight right now, it's not a bad time to be looking for reporting jobs. It's just a different time, and you have to be open to the different paths. Again, I am back to the fact that we are given so much choice that it's often stifling.

[Sidebar: Another thing he told me was that he used to be staunch about the paper's 3 to 5 years experience requirement for hiring new reporters. He said that is beginning to relax across the industry as papers are realizing we young reporters are the ones that are often key to reaching a younger more diverse audience. Duh. Now give us jobs, people. (And in the toot-my-own-horn category...) He also said wherever I look for work, just get an interview. I come across well - passionate, experienced, eager, personable - in the interview, he said, where on paper I could get lost among candidates with more requisite years of work under their belts.]

and we even found time to squeeze in a lecture

So on Friday, I woke up too early, as usual, with a 5 p.m. deadline on a story I hadn't started, a hangover, and my friend CK sleeping on my floor.

I had every intention of having an omelet at Melrose diner and then seriously hunkering down to do this ultra-complicated story on the joys of neonatal bioethics (yikes!). But since I am easily persuaded and convinced myself I would get more done, I joined CK for a trip to an Internet cafe.

Halfway there, we ingeniously decided to instead just go to our old stomping grounds for free Internet, printer, stapler, the works.

I was feeling a little crunched for time as we giggled our way to get coffee and a cookie and meandered to what felt like every computer lab in the entire university (all occupied). But the hangover was keeping any panic about my story at bay.

We finally settle in, having successfully dodged my good ol' Econ professor and found an empty lab (save for the young man who informed us that it might a little strange but he was going to change clothes right then and there if that's OK with us.... "Oh it's not just a little strange," CK tells him, "it's a lot strange" and we proceed to talk incessantly and nervously for the next three minutes.) We are working away for a whopping 20 minutes before CK's very important appointment (hair cut), when who should walk into the computer lab? Ellen, our professor from DC, in town doing some general university brown-nosing. Ten minutes later, we had somehow agreed to speak to the new Intro class about the wonders of DC reporting. It was noon and I had barely a lede.

"But I haven't taken a shower!" CK tells Ellen. And I, eyes-swollen and feeling roughly like a pile of poop with a looming deadline and nary a clue about the complexities of neonatal ethics, was rocking a danky camo T-shirt from high school and dirty jeans. That didn't stop us. Nope. We stood up there and urged those fresh faces to surrender to the DC pull. I gave my shpiel about how I had no intention of going back to that god awful swamp, but that Ellen showed me the light it completely changed my Medill experience and my life.

We answered questions about how to find stories, what to do about housing, what our client papers were like. The wildest part was that she introduced us as alums. Yowza.

So by 12:30 we were out of there and racing to the car, just so we could sit painfully in traffic for the next 45 minutes, making CK late for her appointment and my head pound ever-so-slightly with dread, phrases like "moral consensus" and "hubris of the intelligencia" swirling around my mind. I could feel the time slipping through my fingers.

I finally got home, was visited by my muse and miraculously hammered out the story (haven't seen the edits yet, so not sure it was of the greatest caliber) and even had time for nap before heading to the airport to meet the BF.

Como se dice "holy crap I'm going to Honduras, bitches"?

It's official. I booked the flight to go to Honduras in January for a month to get my Spanish on.

Can't wait.

Now I just have to figure out how to pay for it.

I am beginning to think....

... that Harry Connick Jr.'s constant appearances from New Orleans on day time television is becoming less about raising awareness after the hurricane and more about shameless self-promotion.

... freelancing is so much more efficient than spending the day in an office. Chances are, I am spending almost as much time on stories as I did as a staffer, but less time staring at a computer screen or the fuzzy wall of a cubicle.

... that despite that, I miss the newsroom, and I find myself browsing Journalism Jobs and stalking the listings of a few newspapers.

... that my friend working in Venezuela isn't living in the safest environment in the world, but I am certain it will make him a better journalist and person.

... that it is a sad state of affairs when more Americans are overweight (55 percent)than read the newspaper (42 percent).

... that the Ten Commandments judge Roy Moore in Alabama actually has a fighting chance to be governor of that state, an ambition he just announced, which I find to be frightening.

... that I should start a love advice column because I like to act like (and think) I know what I am talking about when my friends unload to me.

... that given too many choices in life, I may never be satisfied and will live in a perpetual state of Limbo wondering if I have made the right move or what it would be like if I did something differently.

Honduras here I come?

Now that I have faced the reality of my life as an unempl - I mean, a freelance writer, at least temporarily, it is now time to make some plans. My friend Lauren called me yesterday and basically brought me back to reality - time will fly if you don't get it together, and are you in or out?

She was referring to Honduras, where she is heading in January for a Spanish language immersion program . Part of my feet-dragging on a full-time job was the possibility of either going with her or doing my own venture there or in Costa Rica (I am still really itching to go to CR, so perhaps I can roll the two into one trip?).

So I'm in. Just as the thermometer hits the negatives here in Chicago, I will be heading down to tropical Honduras to perfect my shoddy Spanish skills and breathe in the exotic life of Central America. Haven't fully budgeted for it, or really signed up yet, but as GI Joe said, "Knowing is the half the battle," ... and, well, I know I want to do it.

people are crazy ... continued

I think I might be one of those people that welcomes strange interactions with others.

Case in point: While I was at a bar the other night, I went up the bar and was pulling out a stool when I met a woman sitting next to me. I don't remember who initiated the conversation, but she said her name was Sara, I asked if she had an 'h' at the end, and she said of course not. I laughed, and said I was also Sara without an 'h' and she screamed and said, "Yay BFF." So naturally, I was like this girl is hysterical and awesome.

Then I realized she was potentially a crazy psycho stalker or perhaps just an overeager friend. Throughout the night she kept tapping my shoulder and introducing me to all her friends. I met her roommate, her roommate's boyfriend, some other dude and that guy. At one point, I heard her holler my name from across the bar. At the end of the night, I walked outside of the bar and was standing on the sidewalk when she comes bounding out of the bar. "You're leaving? But don't you want my number? Don't you want to hang out." I don't remember how I dodged it, but somehow got away... I think it was when she said something about being unemployed and hanging out all the time that I just bailed. Yikes. (Note: One of the things I love about Chicago is how nice and outgoing people are, but seriously folks, this was a little much.)

Then, the other day Mo and I were walking down Broadway when we saw a young woman on a bike get clocked by a guy opening his Jeep door. She biffed, hit the pavement, and almost the second her Schwinn 10-speed went down did the profanities begin flying from her mouth. I am too much of a lady to repeat the things she was saying (or I just don't have the space here). Yelling at the top of her lungs, shaking her fist at the man, creating an entire scene. The man asked if she was OK (she was going maybe 0.3 miles per hour and didn't even wrinkle her pants in the fall), and kind of in shock, wandered off. She continued to scream for another few minutes, sat on the curb, still cussing. People are crazy.

Random: Today I was walking down the street with Cindy when a black SUV drove by, and the passenger rolled down his window and yelled something about me looking like Winona Ryder. Who knew?

In other news, I went to see my friend Joe's band play last night and since Mo and I got special amazing privileged all-access passes that basically meant we could do whatever we wanted and spit on people while we were doing it, we got something of a glance of the rockstar lifestyle. Besides getting to drink PBR from cans in the lunch-meat-and-sweat-smelling basement of the club, we watched the headliners from a sidestage door. The best part was looking out into crowd and seeing what they see - a massive sea of sweaty teenagers pumping their fists and singing every word. I swear one guy was crying with this they-know-my-pain look on his face. Amazing. People are crazy. (And yes, I fully understand that ten years ago, I was there.) But it's strange to me as a non-rockstar that these people who, while being amazing musicians and performers, are people. Just normal, very nice people. But from the look of the pulsating crowd, these guys were gods. What a life.

Speaking of that rockstar life, it seems massively exhausting. My friend has been on the road for months on end, working his way down a list of tour cities printed on a card on his keychain. They crash on random people's floors and drive for hours in a van. My friend Joe was married two months ago and soon after left for tour and it will be four weeks until he sees his newlywed wife again.

So it made me think about how I just don't think I could do that. I don't think I could live that life and be away from the person I love. Then I realized something. I may not perform to screaming crowds of teenagers or wonder where I am sleeping that night, but I am living away from the person I love. I understand I made my bed, but you know, they say home is where the heart is. What about if you're home is somewhere (that you chose and adore and want to be) but your heart is somewhere else, in this case half way across the damn country? I do know that it doesn't matter where you are physically... but it is massively exhausting.

no longer unemployed

Well, before you get too excited.... it's not that I got a full time job. See, I have just decided to change my perspective and embrace the life I'm living.

From now on, I am a freelance writer.

None of this "I don't have a job" business. In fact, I have kept quite busy with work.

I have started calling the three square foot space in my tiny apartment where my desk and phone are "the office." Sometimes I pretend I have a secretary and that she just called off of work today.

The next step is getting business cards, which I fully intend to do.

A freelance writer. It's actually quite liberating.

a half ton

I stayed up last night watching a special on TLC about a man who weighed a half of a ton. That's more than 1,000 pounds, people. He hadn't been out of his house in seven years.

When the paramedics arrived, he was just minutes from death. He was literally suffocating himself with his fat. He couldn't roll over on his back, and if he did, he would crush his lungs under the extra weight. His skin had stretched so much that he had these pockets of tissue that had gathered and were seeping fluids onto his bedsheets. I think it was called weeping tissues.... He had blood and probably fecal matter under his finger nails.

No words can describe what he looked like and how he must have been suffering.

The doctors put him on this crash diet of 1/10 of his calories (still more than I eat in a day) to get him down to a weight that was safe enough to do a stomach-stapling surgery. After a while, he was able to roll over and sit up with help.

He was married (when he was roughly 700 pounds; the marriage was never consummated), his wife would just feed him and feed him and give him whatever he wanted. One person on the show said it was bordering on assisted suicide. She said she just didn't realize how bad it had gotten. (!!)

Well I am not really sure why I am sharing this, except that I just can't stop thinking about him. It's so sad to me that there are people like that that just can't control themselves. Allegedly they don't have some hormone or something that lets them know they are full... Combine that with today's bad eating habits and lack of exercise and you have a man who weighs a half of a ton.

a year ago

I had been living in Chicago - in an apartment alone for the first time after having shared a place with my BF and a house with four college girlfriends before that - for about a week when my oven exploded.

Exploded may be a little much. Technically, it was something of an oven blast. Call it what you will, it sent me to the hospital with third degree burns on my face.

I had just gotten home from the gym and I was cooking enchiladas. As I was sauteeing veggies in a pan on the stovetop, I preheated the oven to the bake the enchiladas for a few minutes. For the record, I hate cooking. I am bad at it, it stresses me out, and I rarely did it. When it was my turn to cook, the choices were enchiladas or ... well... that's it.

A few minutes after turning on the oven, I wasn't sure it was getting warm, and like an idiot, opened the oven door and held my face close to see if it was heating up. Upon opening the door, I was met with a massive blue fireball that whooshed out at me, directly into my face.

I half-screamed, slammed the door, and patted my face down. That's right, I f-ing had to pat my damn face down. I could smell the rancid stench of burned hair. That was part of my bangs and the tips of my eyebrows and eyelashes.

I turned off the burner and oven, threw water on my face and ran to the bathroom mirror, just in time to see a thin film of skin on my nose roll up and slide off. I put a wet towel on my face - it was beginning to hurt like hell - and proceeded to panic. I called my BF, who hundreds of miles away in New York was really helpless, and I think at one point I ran downstairs and banged on the building engineer's door.

I had no idea what to do. I was alone and hurt. Finally, I called the one friend I had in Chicago, who - thank the heavens - came over immediately and drove me about three blocks to the ER. She spent the evening there with me as my face reddened and tightened and stung. She assured me it wasn't that bad and the doctors would see me soon, and even distracted me by flirting with a ER-regular in this time for a broken wrist.

The doctor kindly told me what I knew, cleaned off the burns and gave me an antibiotic cream. It could have been so much worse, we all said, and it's true. I was immensely lucky. This was my face for chrissake, where my eyes and mouth and nose and other vital things are located. That and my dashing good looks....




Just in case, I took a bunch of pictures of the burns. Minimal, I know. In fact, I realized it wasn't the burns that were so bad, it was the recurring horror of that flame jumping from my oven directly into my face.


I suppose the gas lit and the pilot light as out. Opening a door of bottled up gas, which lit from the stove flame, sent a massive but short-lived fireball into my face. Although it was a new stove, I ordered the building engineer replace it, and after threatening to sue (I was mad the management company seemed to disregard what had happened), the company finally agreed to pay my minimal doctors bills.

A week later, the thin scabs fell from my face revealing new, pink skin. But only after days of stares and feeling ugly and uncomfortable. And as a journalist, I was surprised that none of my peers asked what happened or if I had some kind of condition. I guess the newness of school and the people overrode the curiosity of a journalist...

Today, I have no scars. My hair and eyelashes and eyebrows are back, and I even laugh about the whole incident. But about two months after it happened, I tried to bake cookies and cried the entire time. I still refuse to turn on the oven and every time I leave the apartment, I check and double check that the burners are off, even if I haven't cooked anything in days.

we were 'those girls'

First let me say to any doubters out there, karaoke with a live band is much, much harder. There is no monitor, no speaker blaring your voice back at you, and the back-up music is loud and not exactly like what you hear when you are singing over the CD track at home.

I went to the Pontiac last night for said live band karaoke. After careful consideration about the crowd, our own singing abilities and the general mood, Mo and I selected Madonna's Borderline. Anything old Madonna is safe and always a crowd-pleaser. Many songs and many drinks later, our turn is up, and we march to the stage. Here the tragedy begins.

The bassist - who, by the way, so strangely commented that I have his eyes... what does that mean? Are we related? Is that a complement? - said they couldn't do that song, and so why (in a you-are-an-idiot-and-drunk-and-just-don't-understand-how-this-works voice) don't we just choose from the list. Um, I thought we did, dude. So I say, fine, you play whatever you want and we'll sing. We settle on Material Girl.

Meanwhile, some guy who either works there as the MC's sidekick or just loves karaoke way too much, is standing at the foot of the stage, walking us through the song, lyric by lyric. In hindsight, I am sure he was trying to be helpful, but he was just annoying and it was everything in my power not to kick him with my steel-toed cowboy boot.

Half-way through the song, we both knew we should have just jumped ship right then. It was horrid. We couldn't hear ourselves. We didn't know the words (I know there are about three words, so perhaps it was the timing that was off). We weren't cute enough to pull it off. Just drunk. And singing horribly. At one point, I look into the not-so-thrilled crowd and see a woman with her hand over her mouth making that face we have all made when faced with a karaoke tragedy. So, into the microphone I say, pointing at her, "Don't make that face! I know that face, dude! Stop it!" She promptly drops her hand and says something to the dude next to her, with a "Dang that woman is wasted and crazy!" look on her face.

Somehow, the songs finally ends and I am sure the crowd was as elated as we were. The MC takes back the mic, and says into it, "Well if they were really material girls, they would have the money to buy clothes to cover their ... "

Really? Did you just call us sluts? Allow me to pause and describe outfits. Me: short skirt, T-shirt and boots. Mo: jeans and slightly low-cut sparkley shirt. We looked dressed for church compared to some of the women there. Our reactions to the comment were vastly different. Mo blew it off and laughed. I was absolutely humiliated, insulted and fuming, made more so by the number of drinks I had had that evening.

With smoke coming from my ears, I tried - I think - to call him out on stage. He had the mic and before I knew it we were off the stage and he was introducing the next act. So instead, I just grabbed the sheet we chose the song from (to prove I am not an idiot and we HAD selected from the list), and waved in front of the face of Karaoke Cheerleader. "See! We had picked from the damn list you jerks!" He then picks up an entirely different list on the same table and shows it to me. Identical except for one thing: No Madonna. I threw the list down and yelled something to him about organizing their damn lists and not having the asshole list and the correct list.

It was certainly time to go after that.

Not only will I never do live-band karaoke again (which is a bold statement for the All-star American Karaoke Champion five years running), but I am sure I can even show my face in that bar again.

being a grown-up is the pits

OK so I have just spent the past 20 minutes taking deep breaths and trying, oh trying, to keep it all into perspective.

You may recall in my last post I was without Internet, courtesy the not-so-bright folks at RCN, who programmed my modem for a service I did not order and then, as I found out this afternoon, signed me up for a service I did order without scheduling the technician to come. So I will spare you the boring and gorey details of being royally screwed by RCN, except to say I waited for someone to come today to hook up a phone, and they did not come. Now, I am more than 80 minutes over my cell phone limit (and being charged a lovely 40 cents per minute until Saturday), and without home phone (and with a host of interviews set up for the next couple of days).

I do realize all of this is petty and silly and probably not even worth the post on my blog. But I also have come to realize that this so-called life of luxury has some hidden fees I didn't bank on. For example, since I am working from home (the good news here is that I do have a few freelance assignments), I have tons of free quiet time to contemplate stupid matters and get worked up over situations in which I am powerless. Without worthy human distractions, the Internet and phone travails are suddenly a huge, insurmountable issue that will no doubt drain me of my last pennies, turn my hair grey and up my blood pressure. I just close my eyes and I see dollar signs whizzing past. Then I open them to look around my apartment, contemplating what I might be able to see for quick cash.

(Note: I am clearly my father's daughter here. The likely truth is more that I am not headed for the poor house just yet, it's just that I am too damn frugal and get way stressed about money.)

Now, I fully understand that I made my bed, and now I have to lie in it. This is what I chose, at least for now, when I went with LEP. But I am finding I am having to worry about making ends meet, and I haven't really tailored my lifestyle accordingly.

Then at the height of my come-apart over damn RCN, I decided to walk outside, get some fresh air and put it into perspective. I am still eating. I still have a place to sleep at night. So my cell phone bill will be a solid $100 or so more this month, and I have a whopping day-long persistent headache courtesy telecommunications, but let's just reevaluate here. Worse things have happened. My needs and even most of my wants are all taken care of.

And most of all, I have not lost my home, my family or my life to a hurricane or massive flooding. I should be thanking my lucky stars that RCN has been my biggest problem in the past couple days.

I am struggling to hold on to that zen-like, carefree, roll-with-the-punches attitude that I gained from living abroad and seem to have lost in the mess of daily American life. And I guess I am adjusting to this lifestyle that lacks outside structure, regular paychecks and constant social diversions.

life without the Internet

[Writer's note: First, let me apologize for the heavy previous post. It's never a fun topic, but I had to write about it.... And after I posted it, I realized no one would comment on that - except k.m., thanks! - and really, what does a girl have to do to get a damn comment here?!]

Living abroad changed my perspective in many ways, made me a lot less stressed about little things and more carefree, able to roll with the punches. In the Czech Republic, telecommunications are not the country's strong suit, and getting anything done - especially the smallest, most mundane things - take ages. So I learned to let go of the high-strung, everything-must-go-my-way part of myself.

Or so I thought.

I seem to have regained that part of me, and I felt it amplified this weekend.

On Friday, I called the cable company because I found they were overcharging me. A half hour later, they agree to fix it. No big deal. Then, perhaps just coincidentally, my Internet (same company) goes out. Another 40 minutes on the line (that's precious cell phone minutes too, mind you) and they say they have to send a technician out. Monday afternoon.

So this is life without the Internet. I threw a fit, got frustrated, picked fights with a few unrelated people, stressed about how I am going to get any work done and now I am sitting in the Internet cafe trying to accept my fate.

It was just part of a comedy of errors that has been my weekend so far. Frustrated, I told my friend L on the phone that I hate being a grown-up - too much damn responsibility and logistics and worries. But she reminded me that being a grown-up is the greatest: I can lay around naked all day, drink wine in the bathtub while blaring music, have beer for breakfast and generally do what I want without getting clearance. Can't argue there.

The good news is I did get a couple freelance assignments. The bad news is I am spending money faster than I am making it. And this so-called life of leisure isn't all fun and games. As you can probably see, without other things to get me out and busy, little issues like the Internet connection, the pogo-stick-jumping sound that keeps shaking me awake before 7 a.m. and the neighbor's creepy cat that initiates staring contests with me between our windows, get me all worked up. Really, I need to keep things into perspective. And maybe actually do something else with myself - volunteer, learn to knit, paint, re-read the classics from high school (I did just pick up The Sound and the Fury from the library)... things of that nature.

And in other news, I discovered yet another amazing bar in Chicago: Carrol's. It's a county western bar complete with a live band, authentically red-necky clientele and cheap beers by the pitcher. I went there last night after the Liar's Club (always a good dance party) and the bar was packed with regulars and hipsters all dancing to covers of Sweet Home Alabama and the like.

On a more sobering note, my friend E and I met this guy there who had just returned from Iraq where he spent a year. For someone who did not grow up in a military family and has no direct ties to the war, it was sobering to say the least. At one point, he looked at us and said, "You guys have no idea." And he was right. We will never have any idea. This kid - he was 24 - spent a year in Hell where he watched friends die and, in his words, spent every minute not knowing if he was going to live or die. He said the media has been getting it all wrong (he claimed they did find some evidence of weapons of mass destruction) and that no one knows the real work they are doing, rebuilding schools and setting up water and electricity. Those stories don't make the paper, he said, and the ones that do are wrong.

I don't doubt that, and his words didn't change how I feel about this mess of a war, but it was humbling to hear him talk about it. He still supports the war, thinks we should stay and even add more troops (he would return in a heartbeat), which I am both completely baffled by and disagree with, but respect. Because we have no idea. I will never fully understand what is happening over there.

caution: this one is (more) personal

The October issue of Vanity Fair (the one with the hot picture of Paris Hilton on the cover) has a memoir by writer Marjorie Williams who battled liver cancer for more than three years. She died at 47, with two young children, 12 and 9.

Williams recounts the symptoms that brought her to the doctor, the diagnosis, the range of concern, callous, fear and gloom from doctors and nurses, the unyielding support of her husband - who she said took care of the living part while she focused on preparing to die, and her own fight with and acceptance of this disease.

As someone who lost her own mother to cancer when I was 11 and she only about 40, Williams' words offered a glimpse into some of the thoughts I imagine my mother having when she was sick. And some of the questions Williams asks have come from my own lips at times. The story also made me think of one of my best friends who recently lost her mother to cancer, and the all-too-many young people I have met who have suffered similar fates.

Williams writes of her "lesser fears" of what will happen after she dies:

"That no one will ever really brush [my daughter]'s fine, long hair all the way through.... That no one will ever put up the curtains in my dining room, the way I've been meaning to for the last three years."

And the deeper ones, which rang so true for me:

"Who will talk to my darling girl when she gets her period? Will my son sustain that sweet enthusiasm he seems to beam most often at me? There are days I can't look at them - literally not a single time - without wondering what it will do to them to grow up without a mother. What if they can't remember what I was like? What if they remember, and grieve, all the time? What if they don't?"

And a passage that really brought my mother's face to my mind:

"But from almost the first instant, my terror and grief were tinged with an odd relief. I was so lucky, I thought, that this was happening to me as late as 43, not in my 30s or my 20s. If I died soon there would be some things I'd regret not having done, and I would feel fathomless anguish at leaving my children so young. But I had a powerful sense that, for my own part, I had had every chance to flourish. I had a loving marriage. I'd known the sweet, rock-breaking, irreplaceable labor of parenthood, and would leave two marvelous being in my place. I had known rapture, adventure, and rest."

Anyway, the story is poignant and well-written and heart-wrenching, and would likely be so for anyone who has suffered loss. I think today of my mother, who, from what I know, did get to live a full life as a mother, wife, poet, best friend, "bull in a china shop." And though not a day goes by without me wishing she were still alive, I take comfort in knowing that I have become what she taught me to be, and that she is indeed all around me.

Monday

7 a.m. - Woke up to some random loud-ass jackhammer construction sound in my apartment building. No worries. Turned on Today's show and brewed some coffee.

9 - 10:30 a.m. - Tooled around on the Internet sending emails, reading friends' blogs and looking for freelance gigs.

10:30 a.m. - Wandered aimlessly to TJMaxx until got a call from Kirsten summoning me to the beach.

1 p.m. - Went to the beach, stopping at the lakeside restaurant for the strongest margarita ever (c'mon it was after noon!) and a non-booze-absorbing salad.

2 - 4 p.m. - Laid around at beach. Nap interrupted by Chicago Fire Department and police action and a crowd rushing over to the rocky ledge. Rumors circulate about a man lying face down or maybe he was naked or maybe he jumped. Started feeling really bad. Couldn't find any information on the incident later.

4:30 - 6:30 p.m. - Sat outside at a tavern near Kirsten's drinking The Coldest Beer(s) in Chicago. Nice.

Tomorrow, I find freelance work. I swear. Oh and health insurance, too.

Clearly, I have chosen LEP [Life Experiences Plan], version I or II - that decision is for a later time. Had editor/mentor/friend Ron email me this advice "go with your heart" (Shit, Ron if it were that clear, I wouldn't be panicking!) But he was encouraging about taking my time and said 6 months or so won't hurt. He also said to keep my mind open in the mean time and not to close any doors. So, it's settled.

just another night at the Roller Derby

I attended my first Roller Derby last night.

Picture two teams of mean, tattooed, punk girls with names like Dee Stroya, Sharon Needles and Juanna Rumble skating around a circle, pushing, elbowing and body-slamming each other. I first thought it resembled WWF wrestling with the exaggerated personas and staged violence, until I saw one skater drag another down by reaching up and grabbing her skate - then throwing a punch at her when she was down. I realized these women are tough, a little scary, and certainly having a blast.

The rules are easy enough for a newcomer (myself) to follow and get into. The whistle blows, and the pack of skaters begins slowly moving around the track. A second whistle blows and a skater from each team, known as the jammers, then take off, skating - or trying to skate - through the pack once; then on the second time around they get a point for each opposing skater they pass. Throw in some pushing, blocking, and lots of falls and slides and you've got Roller Derby. Last night there were two games, with four teams total on the Windy City Rollers league.

I was hooked. The undefeated Hells Belles barely held on to their title against the Manic Attackers in a neck-and-neck action-packed game, and the Fury took a severe beating from the Double Crossers.

It drew a huge crowd at the Congress Theater, with people drinking beer from cans, holding "Manic Attackers" signs and yelling things like "Get a body bag" when a girl would go down. There were relay games for audience members to win prizes at half time, a long table of judges for the game and even an announcer dressed in a dark suit. And of course, a team of medics waiting on the sidelines.

Talking to a bartender at a bar later that night, he said he knows some of these women, and they are teachers and cocktail waitresses and normal women with a kick-ass hobby. And looking into it today, I found there are dozens of leagues all over the country, each complete with clever mean-girl personas and sexy derby uniforms.

In Chicago, they play the second Sunday of each month, and the championships are in November. I think I'm rooting for the Hells Belles.

a woman of leisure

Without a job or any substantial plans for the near future, I am certainly living the life of leisure. This morning I woke up, read for a couple hours, had some cereal, went to a spinning class.... I am contemplating a nap.

So, I have given myself until Monday to make a plan. Without a deadline, I fear that I will become all too comfortable with this lifestyle. And for those who know me, making decisions is not my forte.

Here are the potential plans on the table, in no particular order: (For those that actually read my blog, I welcome votes, amendments and suggestions.)

1. The Responsible Plan -- Come Monday morning, I will hit the pavement in search of a steady newspaper job anywhere in the country, complete with health insurance and 401 K. I would then get said job and move, hopefully soon.

2. The Life Experiences Plan (a.k.a. the Delayed Responsibility Plan) -- Here I would stay in lovely Chicago for a couple months, freelance writing as much as possible and generally having fun. Then in, say, November, I would jet-set off to Costa Rica for a Spanish immersion program for a month. RP would likely follow, as a job is inevitable, and this plan is also contingent on my finances and how much freelancing will keep me afloat. I would also have to suck it up and get health insurance.

3. The Life Experiences Plan II -- This is a version of the previous plan, but the delay would be longer, and the Central American excursion would be in January so I could accompany a friend there. This would mean more freelancing, and then eventually revisiting RP. Also to take into account is the fact that when I return, though I will be freshly fluent in Spanish, student loans will be knocking on my door.

a few pictures to keep you interested

I appreciate that I tend to be a little text-heavy on the ol' blog (scroll down 'cause there are two brand-spankin' new entries after this one), so here are a couple pictures from last weekend. I spent it in NYC, celebrating my birthday with some college buddies.



This is Ash and I sipping our lychee martinis. Yum.










Spontaneous dance party in the bar with random wasted friend-of-a-friend.

And finally this is Ashley after she crushed a ladybug with her glass of screwdriver. The next one is of her cheering after she saw that tough bug come back to life and crawl again.

another end of another era

At the end of August, I finished grad school. Dang. The year flew by, and now I have moved again and am jobless, left to blog a lot and reflect on what I chose to do for the last year.

Was it worth it?

I met with a financial aid person this morning to find out just how much I will be writing a check for each month for the next ten years. It hurts a little. So financially, I can't yet answer the question of whether it was worth it.

Professionally, that will be tough too, as I don't yet have a sweet job to show for it. But I do know that I got to report on things that would have likely taken me years to do and I got great clips. In Chicago, I wrote about women's issues (yawn, I know, but I reached out into minority and health issues) and telecom (c'mon, wake up, it wasn't that boring... In fact, I got a strong background for business writing should I decide to do that one day.)

Then onto Prague. There, I struggled personally and professionally, trying to fit into a city where I didn't speak the language and didn't fully understand the intricacies of the culture. I went to interviews where my source claimed to speak English and then couldn't understand any of my questions. I covered stories with sources that were skeptical of the press and wanted to guide me on how to do the story. Everything that would take a day in the States took three. But I learned aggressiveness and bravery and determination I am not sure I would have gotten staying the States. I forced myself to explore, take day trips, order meat from the clerk at the grocery store, and call people for stories not know just what I would hear on the other end.

Spending the summer in DC turned out to be the perfect capstone to the year. I covered some really neat stories - rural broadband, rising obesity rates, CAFTA, a pork-filled transportation bill - with some interesting sources - of note was Twinkle Cavinaugh, the state GOP chair. I landed several front page stories, and successfully covered Capitol Hill for my Alabama audience.

I also made some good friends along the way at Medill. Although I often felt like much of an outsider, not quite fully in the loop, I feel lucky to have spent the time with these folks. (Granted, there were a couple folks that I wanted to punch in the face on a regular basis, but you can't get along with everyone, right?) However, answering whether it was worth it personally is perhaps the hardest question (knowing full well, though, that going back to school wasn't intended to be a social adventure but an academic one). Medill felt like high school. At Medill High there is peer pressure, gossip, hook-ups, competition and a lot of who-am-I, what-do-I-want-with-my-life questions. I got caught up in a lot of that, losing sight of myself in many ways, which I had worked so hard for coming out of real high school ten years ago. Toward the end and even a little now, I find that my mind is all over the place, I don't feel as comfortable in my own skin or as sure of the decisions I am making. The uncertainties filtered into my life outside of Medill, leading to even more confusion and angst.

Even just a few days after leaving Medill, my head began to feel clearer and I am beginning to put it all into perspective.

Things I have to remember: I am the only one who can make me happy, and what works for some won't necessarily work for me. People will always judge you, your career, your writing and even your look, but you have to be comfortable with who you are and make choices for you, not them.

I guess that is a roundabout explanation, and I don't think I have really answered the question. I do know that I do not regret going back to school and I learned so much and grew so much personally and professionally. I am sad it's over, a little sad to know I may never see some of these folks again in my life, and very anxious about my next step.

I ripped this photo from a fellow Medillian's blog. (Frosty) It's a good one, and shows a handful of the folks who shared the blood, sweat and tears - or maybe beer, sweat and tears? just beer? - of Medill. (And a shout out to the ladies of The Island, pictured here, one of whom just joined the world of blogging with her own)

a word on New Orleans

It's been a while since I have written, and so much has happened, I do not know where to begin. But I don't feel right writing anything about myself without a slice of my thoughts on New Orleans.

I am so angry, sad and frustrated about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and these feelings well up when I see the images on the television, read the horror stories and open debate with anyone willing to bat the issues around.

Here are some of my thoughts, disjointed as they may be.

This shouldn't have happened. This many people shouldn't have been left behind, overlooked, unaccounted for when the storm hit and when the flooding began days later. I understand there will be plenty of time to see what went wrong, but my guess is so many things were wrong on so many levels.

The state government didn't do enough to make sure these people had the means to evacuate. There was not a strong plan in place - which, by the way, is inexcusable this long after Sept. 11 and in a city that pretty much knew this was going to happen eventually.

That said, I do appreciate that you don't build for the worst case scenario. You build (you being the Army Corps of Engineers in this case) for probable scenarios. Money doesn't permit us to prepare for the worst, and the worst will change the second a disaster happens. So they knew the levees were likely not up for handling a storm like this. But here is where there should have been some plan, some way to deal with the possibility of such a disaster.

Then, the feds took their time getting down there to rescue people. Why? Perhaps because the National Guard are halfway across the world fighting George Bush's absurd war in Iraq. Perhaps because the people were those that we as a country have so readily ignored anyway - poor and black.

There is no escaping that this is a class story. The people who could not get out, and perhaps that did not want to leave behind the homes they have lived in all their lives with the possessions they worked so hard to get, were at the bottom of the economic ladder. They didn't have the gassed up SUV in the driveway ready to pack and cruise up to relatives' houses farther North. They couldn't leave and many didn't want to.

But in America, it's rarely a class issue without being a race issue. Who knows whether the feds would have responded quicker if the Superdome had been packed with white people. The fact is it wasn't. In a city that is mostly black, and the blacks are mostly poor, the reality was they were the ones who were trapped and dying. And our federal government were the ones slow to help.

Here are just a few things that make my blood boil and bring tears to my eyes with this story:

- Barbara Bush's comment that many of the people sheltered at the Houston Astrodome were poor folks who had nothing before and are better off here than there.

- Michael Brown as the head of FEMA. Who the fuck thought for a second that he was qualified for the job with a resume that recently had him heading some Arabian Horse association? Oh, right, Bush did. Because he was a friend of a friend, no doubt.

- Bush failing to visit the Superdome on his first visit there. He has no idea the devastation. The day after Sept. 11, he was standing on a mound at Ground Zero. Where is he when there is a greater loss of life and land but there isn't an enemy to shake his fist at?

- The thought that an entire city was destroyed; entire communities that were built around this city with a social fabric stretching decades are now dispersed across the country, never to be reconnected in the same way again.

I know all these thoughts aren't new. We have been yelling and crying over it for more than a week. I just wanted to give my two cents. As someone who grew up in Alabama, the poor black South was indirectly an influencing piece of my childhood and a part of me now that I find myself feeling strong connections to.

real life You Got Served

Well kind of. There were no dueling dance crews - one white, one black - but at times I did feel like I was in a movie this weekend.

My best friends from home and I went to Memphis for the weekend. One of our long-time girlfriends was getting married on a riverboat on the Mississippi River, which is probably one of the greatest ideas ever. Despite the excruciating heat and the initial feeling of seasickness as the giant Memphis Queen III left the dock, the entire party - from the vows on the bow of the boat to the R&B goodness of the band - was a blast. Sure, parts of it were a logistical mess, such as us being told about two hours before the event that they had not planned for a cake cutter or plates (which they of course had but we managed to borrow a foot-long knife from the Marriott for the evening), not being able to actually hear the vows being exchanged without a mic and the bride's sister walking up to the top deck late after not being alerted that the ceremony was in fact starting. Hey it happens, but all in all, it was a stellar crowd enjoying every minute of the night.

But I digress. The boat docked about 10-ish, at which point my girlfriends and I promptly, and drunkly, chucked every last flower we had labored all day cutting, wiring and arranging in vases. We downed the last drop of our gin and tonics, loaded the car with the vases and left over cake and headed for the dance club, Plush, on Beale Street.

We walk in - all still dressed to the nines - and the two men were frisked for weapons and related contraband. I'm not sure if that made me feel good or kind of scared. Either way, we got in and ordered a few drinks and then unabashedly hit the dance floor. I quickly realized we were the only white (and multi-racial) folks in the crowd, and having had a not-so-welcoming experience in an all-black club in Birmingham, I was a little skeptical. (Picture three ladies walking on to the dance floor at Platinum, promptly clearing the place out. I'm saying people slap walked off the dance floor, with ladies throwing us eat-shit-and-die looks. Some of the men, however, loved the White Girls and bought us Long Island ice teas in massive mason jars.)

But we certainly weren't too worried about the reaction, as we danced pretty much all night. You know it's good if you get there when it's not too full and leave after the floor clears out. Well, there were a few guys there that seemed to be part of a dance crew of sorts and every once in a while they would break into these routines. It was unlike anything I have ever seen, except of course on You Got Served (act like you have never seen that movie) without the acrobatics. But these guys were so good, and crowds would gather around them.

At one point, the song Set It Off came on - a personal favorite - and I was all excited and went to dance again. Then I realized everyone was doing the same dance. Pretty much everyone in the club was moving the same way, something like the electric slide but without all the dumb hopping and cha-cha-cha. It was a sea of people, moving, and smiling and having a damn good time. Only, the white girl didn't the memo and was left standing on the sidelines wide-eyed.

Other highlights of the night include: drinking Remy Martin after some of the groom's friends bought a bottle from the bar; being filmed for some show on BET - the camera crew was taping people dancing and had a friend of mine and I say some shit like "You're watching what you're watching" or "What's on is what's you're watching" or something. There were also these two girls dancing in another area behind the bar, and they were so good we went right up to them and started dancing with them. I have literally never seen an ass do that before. I complemented her, and she said "as long as you're on beat, girl." Easier said than done, friend. So my girl bought them some tequila sunrises and we quickly departed when the women next to them rudely said "excuse me," making it apparent we were not welcome near them. That's fine. Oh and there were the gentlemen that wanted to "holla at us." One told my girl he wanted to "scratch her scalp," whatever that's supposed to mean.

The night ended back at the Comfort in where A and I found ourselves trying, with the help of the guy behind the hotel front desk, to pry into a bottle of Cabernet. He jammed a three-inch screw into the cork and struggled it out with a pair of pliers. After about 45 minutes, he was proud at the success of his project, and we were too drunk and tired to drink the wine.

my best dean face

So my dad is in this funny portrait in the School of Public Health. I think it was for an anniversary for the school and they got all the past deans and him, the current dean, together to sit for this absurd and stodgy painting, which I know just makes him gag.

(This is academia, remember, where people call him Dean So-and-so and when I come around they say, Oh you must me Dean So-and-so's daughter. My dad just humbly wants to be treated like a human and called by his first name.)

So since one of my girlfriends works a few floors up, she recently took me to the conference room where this masterpiece hangs. Of course Pops would never show this off. After giggling hysterically and being generally incredulous that this is my dad, we thought it fitting to take a picture of me alongside the serious-looking academics. (Truth be told, I am unspeakably proud of him.)

This, friends, is my best dean face.

batten the hatches, Chicago

I am coming back.

Just rented a place - right across the street from my old studio. Because I am crazed and all amess due to my last-minute plans to come to DC and then my inability to decide where I want to be next, I gave up my apartment in Chicago. But luckily, I got a place nearby and can move in a couple weeks.

Even if it's for a couple months, I am so excited about returning to Chicago.

One less thing to wake me up at night.

girl crushes

A story today in the NYT prompted this post. More on my thoughts on the story later.

It happens. As a straight woman in her mid-20s I have certainly had what some call a girl crush on other women I meet. And although I sounds like a sexual thing, or a romantic love thing, it's just the excitement of meeting a new woman who is cool, funny, smart, and sometimes kind of hot.

The first time I heard the term, I was standing in the bathroom line in a bar in my hometown a couple years ago. I had met this girl who was the girlfriend of a high school friend. I remember she seemed very nice and was wearing really cute, black, pointy shoes. We chatted a little, drunkenly complemented each other on our clothes and shoes, and she said she had girl crush on me. It was super flattering and not creepy at all. I took it to mean she thought I was cute and funny and a good potential friend (although I can't say I have seen her since).

Since then I have recognized a few times when I will meet a woman, get to know her a little, and become - to use a word in the NYT article - smitten. Not in an obsessive way, or as I said before, a sexual way. It's just that there is a connection, and I really enjoy spending time with her. And as I have gotten older, those connections are a little more frequent - though most women then turn catty or competitive or a little nuts, but that's a post for another day - and stronger.

I think the article is a little misleading. The writer ledes with a scene in a bar with one woman attracted to a dark-haired dancing beauty. Right there, it makes the crush thing sound sexual. And it's not about being physically attracted - in fact, it's more like the crush develops after a certain amount of dishing or witty banter. And I can't say I have ever had such a crush that I got nervous or stammered or sweated in her presence. That makes the whole phenomenon seem silly and childish when indeed it's quite fulfilling and exciting.

and now for some good news

In the toot-my-own-horn category, I just found out that a story I pitched and wrote for my papers ran on two papers' front pages. One of them was the lead news story right under the masthead. Hard to appreciate without seeing it on the page, but it's pretty awesome.

Makes me think the headache and logistical mess of moving to DC for the summer was worth it.

just one of them days

So I am having one of those low self-esteem days. We all have 'em (though mine seem to be more frequent these days) and they are usually for silly reasons.

Here are my excuses.

Just had an interview with the Gannett recruiter... I wasn't exactly the star reporter I meant to be. Questions like "What separates you from other candidates?"
and "What is the role of a journalist?" always mess me up. When I am not feeling like the sharpest knife in the drawer, it's hard to talk up my stellar qualities. I am not even sure today why someone should hire me over one of my colleagues. And I am not confident that my best skills and attributes come across in a 20-minute chat.

Congress is out of session, but we are still reporting.... Considering I cover Capitol Hill, what, pray tell, are you writing about, you may ask. Good question. This week and last - not much of anything. I am digging around for studies, trends, unusual happenings. Then I try to see if anyone in West or North Alabama cares. I am convinced my editor thinks I am a slacker or not enterprising enough and that eats away at the competitive part of me. Boredom breeds more boredom, and slow days make me lazy, restless, anxious, and all-too-pensive.

I have no where to live and no job come Aug. 31. That keeps me up at night.

I just got my hair cut and I look something like a brunette Annie Lennox. No kidding.

Just covered a panel discussion on the housing boom. Riiight. The only reason I understood half of what they were talking about was because I had the lovely pleasure of covering real estate for the Prague Post. Surprisingly some of the same concepts came up, and perhaps not surprisingly, the folks today could have been speaking in Czech and I would have understood just as much.

reflections

I realized today that I have been so consumed with assimilating back into American life, keeping my head above water reporting in DC, and losing sleep over my next move that I have not given proper time to reflecting on my time in Prague.

This became clear to me when a former globalite who spent a quarter in Prague emailed me, asking how I felt about Prague in retrospect. I wrote a couple sentences about how I miss it, and she writes back this tear-jerking account of her post-Prague musings. As I read it, I felt a lump rise in my throat and it made me begin my own process of fond reflection. Her account of feeling utterly isolated but totally alive rang true for me.

Though it might not be as meaningful to those who have not spent time in Prague, I have pasted it below (slightly edited) for all to read. I also plan on beginning to articulate my own thoughts on the city one of these days...

And I have been planning and thinking of ways to get me back Europe. I
fell in love with Prague, with that area of Europe. I want to go back to Prague to work as a journalist some day, if only for a year.

I really loved that apartment, too.

I'd heard both positive and negative things about The Post from past beat reports, residency students, and people who worked at The Post (both in the past and at the time I was in Prague).
Disorder was the word that was used most often. And while my residency was a bit different, something of an experiment with online media that died after I left, I did enjoy the living experience.

And that's what I miss most. I try to explain to people this way: I was learning 24/7. At work, one thing and in English mostly. But after I got outside of the work bubble of English, I was paddling furiously to learn Czech, to learn about other people. Not through classes, but by building on what little words and verbs I'd picked up from work and then trying to get people to talk to me.

And despite being linguistically and culturally locked out for a while, I never felt more like a person in my entire life. There was this one moment where I about lost it, early in my stay. I was exiting the Muzeum station and heard a child laughing, saw a couple kissing. It hit hard that laughter was something I could understand, and that kissing was universal. Language without words.

I miss that after hours learning. I miss the shock in the shop keeper's faces when I'd build on my sentences and words. I miss the sour-faced woman at the butcher shop who always rolled her eyes at me when I'd close my eyes at her writing down the price of my ribs. I wanted to hear it and see if I could finally, finally make out the numbers she was calling out.

I miss the slower pace of life but in a city. I miss the walking. I miss the sound of the trams. I miss the rain and dew on the cobblestones in the morning, the autumnal leaves (I was there in the autumn). I miss looking out of the living room window (where I slept) at the night time skies. The tea pot in the mornings, the oven in the evenings.

So everything I'm doing right now, right now as I am making the final rounds of interviews for a few new media positions (I graduated in June and have been looking since), everything is in line with what I want to do in my life. And I hope that the skill set I'm looking to build and experience I'm gonna get will help me get back to Prague. I'm giving myself five years. I want to live in Prague again sometime in the next five years. The experience feels incomplete to me still.

And next time hopefully not as a starving student. And maybe then it'll be with someone to share it with. Because for all that I am an I-can-do-it-myself kinda girl, I realize now that I have this box of memories and nostalgia for one.

best. show. ever. ...

... besides the O.C., of course.

The show: So You Think You Can Dance.
A Fox creation, but against my better judgment and overall disgust with that network, I watched it and loved it.
Something about hundreds of contestants - dancers of all stripes ranging from Irish dance, to break dancing to interpretive (some dude "danced" with a mattress) - auditioning for the ultimate spot on who-knows-what. Not sure what the grand prize is, but the chosen ones then take classes in salsa, hip hop, contemporary, etc... Then the requisite elimination round.

Who knows (or cares) about the logistics. All Fox shows are the same - there is some activity, harsh judges saying horrible things, some tears, a few elimination rounds, more tears, more narrowing down, and then America votes.

The show reawakened my desire to become a professional dancer. Lack of skills or baseline talent aside, that is what I sometimes think I am truly meant to do. And if I hadn't already committed to being a reporter, I just might have done it....

too much moving around

On an evening walk in my neighborhood yesterday - in DC, don't forget - I walked by a sign advertising a new condo building planned for an empty lot. The sign read Lincoln Park condos. My first reaction was - Lincoln Park? Are they confused? This is North Capitol Hill - a far cry from the posh lakefront neighborhood of Lincoln Park. And just because you dress it up with a name like Lincoln Park it's won't stop being the ghetto.

Then I realized I don't live in Chicago, where the other Lincoln Park neighborhood is. Oops. I guess I have been moving around too much in the past year. I don't even remember where I live.

Also of interest during my little jaunt:

In a small yard in front of a rowhouse, my neighbor has planted, alongside the lush greenery and pansies, a dirty bouquet of silk yellow roses. Silk. Fake roses. Planted into the ground right next to the bushes.

In other news, I learned a priceless laundry lesson last night. After turning my only white shirt light blue (this is why I shy from wearing white), I promptly called my father. I realize I moved away from home nearly a decade ago (yikes) but sometimes you just need to call in the experts. He passed me on to my step-mother, who then referred me to her mother.

So I called who I guess you could call my step-grandmother, who is an ultra-Southern, God-fearing, Republican wife of a former minister. If anyone knows laundry, she does. In the thickest, kindest, most bourgeois (as opposed to rednecky) Southern accent, she instructs me to fill the washer with water, half-cup of bleach and detergent.

"Then you let it churn a little, and put your garment in and let it soak over night," she tells me. "Then run the wash again in the morning. I do this every week with all my whites."

It worked. This woman knows her laundry.

musings on DC living

People don't seem to understand why I don't love DC. Most folks - whether they have lived here or not - seem to love this place. It occurred to me this weekend why they love it and I don't, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they haven't lived in the DC I have lived in.

I shared a cab home Saturday night with a guy who was heading to Capitol Hill but lived in Alexandria. He worked at the US Patent and Trademark Office, and since I used to cover the USPTO for a technology pub, I was interested in what he did and what his career plans were. We chatted for a bit, and then he stopped and said: "This is why I love DC. Only here can you have a conversation like this riding home from the bar at 2 in the morning."

I will give him that. I had spent the evening at a bar where walking to the bathroom I overheard the phrase "profit margin" or some shit.

Then somehow we came back to how I live in a shady neighborhood, once again verified by my cab driver. I agreed with my backseat partner that only in DC do you find such a civic-minded, driven group of young people - but, I argued, also only here do you have such a stark dichotomy of class and race. Well-to-do, educated, affluent people sharing the city with the destitute, disaffected, isolated, angry. There seems to be little middle ground and these two opposite ends of the spectrum fuel the city's tension.

One night I ride home in a cab talking about patent fees. The night before I take the bus, listening to a man holler out nonsense like "Everybody in the bus say 'I love ya.' I love ya!" and "If you man, be a man; if you a mouse, stay in the house."

I told the guy riding with me that I actually like living in this neighborhood, that it gives me a small picture in another world and teaches me so much about race, class, politics, crime. He agreed, and said he was a minority in his apartment building in Alexandria, that there were people from all over the world, particularly Africa.

But it's different. And the cab driver articulated it the best. And his assessment seemed to sum up how many people can live in a different DC.

He said: "No, I live in Alexandria, and I am one of those people. But we are different. These people from other countries are here because they chose to be here and they are working hard or studying or making a better life. The people in this [North Capitol Hill] neighborhood are Americans. They are stuck here, and they are poor and angry and killing each other."

It's true. And my argument is that many people don't experience the latter. They may know about it - the crime rate is hard to ignore anywhere in the city - but they don't go home to it or wake up in the middle of the night to it or fear the bus ride home because of it. They experience the affluent, educated residents; the fun bars and great restaurants filled with like-minded people. They even see the racial diversity and feel the vibes of an international city. But they are missing something. They are missing what I think is the other part of the real DC. They are missing the elements that make me both love and hate this city.

do I really live here?

I opened the refrigerator in my house the other morning and was greeted by three neon-colored bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 (oh, how I miss my old roommate Ricky who sure loved him some MD) and three bottles - one a toxic blue color - of Boons Farm wine.

Now, we all have our MD 20/20 and Boons Farm memories. If you're not overflowing with stories of those sordid nights, then perhaps you were too inebriated to remember. Just the mere sight of the screw-top, white-labeled, fruity Boons Farm bottles brings me right back to high school, schwilling from the bottle with my girlfriends atop Winn-Dixie Hill (a.k.a. Make-out Hill) on the golf course (sorry, Dad). Boons Farm was the only booze we could stomach, and as I got older, I found maybe 85 percent of the women I met got drunk for the first time on BF.

And MD 20/20 made frequent appearances at my college house, though I am proud (and honest) in saying I never partook. Ricky loved it and shamelessly toted the bright bottles to parties. And I think he did it mainly as a joke, a party trick, a novelty kind of like the Alize poster we had taped up in the living room. We only wish we had street cred.

Herein lies my point. I am no longer in college and high school is a distant (OK not that distant) memory. And those two beverages had been so far from my beverage repertoire - until now.

Excuse me while I climb up on my high horse.

Really, I just saw the bottles, asked one of my roommates if I was seeing things, and laughed out loud at the absurdity that is my living situation. Enter my sense of humor.

I live with five other people, most of them only a little younger than myself, but it is very much a group house. Grimy countertops, garbage piling up in the kitchen next to a cooler of warm beer from beach trip two weeks ago, six jugs of milk in the fridge (three of them expired) and a random pile of white sheets near the washer that no one will claim.

For a while, every other day I would come home to a new roommate. Justin (the roommate I really like) called it the revolving door apartment. He's funny - drinks a lot of coffee, is always high and giggling after work, loves karaoke. Then there is a girl who is always - and I mean always - in her housepants and has two caged birds in her room (don't even get me started). Some other dude who doesn't say much. Ever. Then the dude who owns the house, who seems to have a horror movie obsession with African art. Seriously, we have 17 carved wood salad spoons with giraffes on the handles, maybe 43 masks and safari animal statues all laid obsessively on the tables of every room. I think he did a semester at sea. He, the 23-year-old kid who just bought a 5-bedroom house in Washington - again, don't even get me started.

This place is awesome.

adventures in reporting

Yesterday I was writing a story on the Central American Free Trade Agreement for the three Alabama newspapers I write for.

The challenge was to make a convoluted and excrutiatingly boring issue interesting to my readers, many of whom live in small, rural towns. And I would say that when reporters are writing national stories for a local audience, all we want is a good anecdote to lead with. Why should people in West Alabama care about CAFTA.

Enter Betty Sparks. One local judge gave me her name and number (after my colorful, ultra-quoteworthy conversation with him) saying she worked in a local cotton mill most of her life but was laid off two years ago thanks to NAFTA (and CAFTA would have the same affect, he said... Stay with me here).

Here's how the call went:

Me: Hi Ms. Sparks? This is Sara, I am with the Tuscaloosa News.

Betty: Oh now I don't need to by the paper, hon, I don't even have a job!

Me: Oh no ma'am I am not calling to sell you the paper. I am a reporter and I want to talk to you about the old cotton mill.

After about three minutes of me trying to explain why I was calling (without getting mired in words like CAFTA and trade agreement and global competition) and dropping the judge's name, she finally decided to talk with me. I think it was that I talked to the judge, because when she realized that she eased up and chatted. I got my lede for the story and a great quote about how her town now is a "tumbleweed town."

Writing for Alabama papers, I have some of the most interesting sources. They say colorful things and they are so kind (or at least they sound nice with the thick Southern drawl). One woman's name was Twinkle - and she was the state GOP chair! No kidding.

please tell me those were fireworks

Last night at about 1 a.m., I was awoken by a series of loud bangs. It shook me out of sleep and before I even sat up I knew it must have been gun shots.

I appreciate that I tend to think every loud pop in our neighborhood is a gun firing, but this sound - followed my that of a car speeding away - was definitely gun shots.

I peaked out the window and saw nothing, and laid back in bed, thinking surely it was nothing. A few minutes later, I see the reflection of police car headlights blinking on my ceiling and I can hear the characteristic police issued car engine pull up the street and stop. Spitting distance from my window.

For the next few minutes I watched as several cops patted down two young men, who clearly were just walking by and had nothing to do with the shooting minutes before. After a while, the police let them go, peering around the street with a flashlight, and eventually driving off.

I guess I will never know what happened. Instead I went back to sleep asking myself, do I really live here? Sure, that scene could have played out on any other block in Washington, DC, but there is something extra shady about this neighborhood. The potential for crime - or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time - is palpable.

women journalist bad asses

This weekend, I went to a party for the Journalism and Women Symposium, a.k.a. JAWS, and I have never seen a such a large collection of bad asses in one place.

JAWS is basically a group for women journalists to come together and support each other, offer job advice and guidance, discuss the journalism issue d'jour, and just generally be total bad asses. At this party, I was in total awe of these women from some of the most respected media outlets in the country. I met women whose bylines I recognized, and was impressed by their humility, generosity and openness.

One woman in particular, a Washington Post reporter named Jackie Spinner, spoke to the group. She is one book leave from the paper to write about her time in Iraq. She looked my age (but was clearly older, since she said she was at the Post for ten years before heading to Iraq), and had started as a financial reporter before being at the right time in the right place. If my memory serves me correctly, she broke a story about the prison abuse at Abu Graib and lobbied her editors to send her to Baghdad.

They finally did and she spent about a year there. Three days before she left, one of their informants who was basically being paid to make sure none of the reporters got killed told her that he had been offered $5,000 to tell the insurgents where she was. She knew then it was time to leave.

The book she is writing is a joint venture with her twin sister, who is an essayist, called "Tell them I didn't cry." It refers to the time she was almost kidnapped. One day she was approached by these men who started yelling at her in Arabic. When she didn't respond immediately, they grabbed at her, tearing her scarf and dress away to see she was wearing a Kevlar vest. They then tried to abduct her, until she was saved by several Marines. She was shaking and crazed, but she didn't cry - a point she urged the Marines to back her up on when they returned to the office.

One of the other things she said that stuck with me was the fact that she never identified herself as an American - always Canadian or Ukrainian - and she never reported directly - always working through a translator, which meant her standing by as he conducted the interviews, trusting that what he relays is the truth. Also, if they did say they were reporters, they always identified themselves as being from some fake Iraqi newspaper, never the Washington Post. When asked if that made her uncomfortable, considering the shaky state of journalism ethics these days, she said of course it makes her uncomfortable, but that basically she is more effective alive.

Good point. After all that, she is returning in September. What a bad ass.

right when you thought all cops were jerks

Walking home tonight from Capitol Hill, I stumbled upon a handful of cops pulling cars over about a block from my house. Now cops in this area aren't a common site, unless they are cruising H Street, which seems to be the dividing line between the nicer area and the, well, less nice area (my neighborhood). South of H Street is newly paved roads, renovated row houses, playgrounds. H Street is run-down strip malls and liquor stores and on the way to my lovely abode is a somewhat shadier scene that posh Capitol Hill.

Anyway, being the sharp reporter I am, I asked one of the cops what they were up to. He (kindly - rare for Metro cops) said they were doing safety checks to make sure people had driver's licenses, buckled seatbelts and insurance. Surely this neighborhood has bigger fish to fry, but I guess showing some kind of police presence counts, and perhaps they knew that.

So the officer was very nice, and he asked me what I thought of the neighborhood. I told him my assessment of the H Street division, and how when I first moved here I was nervous. But less and less do I feel like a total outsider. Save for the occasional incidents that make me want to crawl into a hole, apologizing profusely on the way down for being white, I am beginning to feel more a part of this neighborhood. I am less afraid of walking home from the bust stop at night. I see the same women standing with me at the corner in the morning, the same young men wheeling around on Schwinn 10-speeds or hanging out on the corner in their white T-shirts. The same group of old men is always sitting in fold out chairs and on steps near H Street. And the same woman - thought mean as fire - is walking her tiny puppy each morning.

I just make a point of looking people in the eye and saying hello, and I feel like once the shady folks see that I am unfazed by them and that I live here too, the tension is diffused. And almost every time they are kind back to me.

After chatting with the cop for a few minutes, I thanked him and told him I appreciated seeing them out on the streets. In a city like DC, it shouldn't be so rare.

In other news, I went to a Congressman's home for some Northwestern dinner party thing (free food) and the highlight - besides the gorgeous home with original floors and window shutters that folded into the wall - was him running out before the party was over. After answering the phone, he came lumbering down the stairs, suit jacket in hand, sweat dripping from his forehead. He said he had to run out for a vote. And he was gone. Now that's exciting - democracy in action, folks.

my gripes on cell phone users

I think people with cell phone headsets that plug invisibly into their ears, save for a thin black wire draped down their shoulders, look ridiculous.

You see them walking down the street, wandering in the airport, waiting for the bus. They are talking out loud into thin air. And right when you either think the person is telling you about taking the chicken out of the freezer or telling Jim about rescheduling the meeting - or right as you are convinced said person has entirely lost his mind talking loud and clear to himself - you spot the earpiece. And if on the off chance they are addressing you, that is inevitably the one time you assume they are on the phone and you stare at them blankly.

But these hands-free phone folks are never using their hands. They are not typing or making dinner or fixing the carburetor. They are not even driving - which if you ask me is the only time the hands-free accessory is acceptable. So why, if both hands are free, are you using this ear plug? Do you really think at any given moment you might have to catch a football? Maybe you'll suddenly need to bend down and tie your shoe? Chances are that's not the case, you're hands are free and will stay free and all you are doing is looking ridiculous.

Even more ridiculous are the people who have an ear piece in, but are HOLDING the damn cell phone in their hand, often right out in front of their face like a baby in need of a diaper change or a lit match. Or there are those who hold just the wire, where there is positioned a tiny microphone, gingerly between two fingers inches away from the mouth. Is that really better than just holding the entire cell phone to your ear?

weekend in the 'Ham

I came home for a much needed weekend of gorging on BBQ, drinking martinis with my two best friends and falling asleep at random intervals in the middle of the day. Despite being deathly ill with SARS - or maybe it's just a cold - it's been a nice relaxing couple of days.

Here are the highlights:

One of my best friend's threw a birthday party for her mother who passed away in the spring from ovarian cancer (Curses, Cancer!). I appreciate that may sound a little strange, but it felt perfectly normal to be in her home and celebrate her life - not by sitting around holding hands, sharing stories and singing Kumbaya - but by getting drunk on gin and tonics, eating ham biscuits and feeling Ann's presence all around us. (And we did pour one out for her... right on the kitchen floor if I do recall correctly.) It made me miss her dearly, think of my own mother, and thank my lucky stars for my amazing best friends.

We (five girls) finished the night by going dancing. We were the first to arrive and the last to leave. L told one woman she had great breasts (she did), and which point the woman shouted "they're mine!" We stumbled home at 3 a.m. and I woke up with a hangover and a cold.

At her hair appointment Saturday, my friend was chatting with her hairdresser Melissa who was just shocked and appalled at the London bombings. But what really stuck in her craw was that those bombers actually assembled the bomb in Leeds, Alabama (small town outside of B'ham for those who aren't familiar with this lovely state). "I mean, Leeds!" she says, "Can you believe it!?" My friend: "Um, I am not so sure about that, I think it's Leeds UK since they did bomb London..." Hairdresser: "Oh no, hon, I saw it on the news. They were in Leeds!" I think my friend dropped it at that point.

I took an Ambien the other night hoping to sleep more than five hours without waking up to toss and turn. Problem was I took it at 3 a.m. and woke up at 11 a.m. thinking it was 7 and the damn pill didn't work. It took two hours for the grogginess to wear off, but after last night I wish I had taken it again.

Among the things that keep me up at night:
1. getting a job
2. figuring out where I will be in a few months
3. the fear that I have SARS or lung cancer or bacterial meningitis rather than just the common cold
4. the news of a woman giving birth to a 15-pound child and wondering if my health insurance will cover an operation to end my own childbearing chances

rebirth of the blog

I told myself that I had no intention of continuing the blog once I returned from overseas. My issue with blogs is they seem so arrogant, assuming people care what I have to say or that my life is important enough to throw up on the Internet. But I guess I am rethinking that... not the "my life is important" part, but the continuing my blog part. See, it was suggested to me by a friend and fellow blogger (actually I'm not sure I am prepared to claim fellowship.... he's DC at http://journalscape.com/Dickie_Cronkite/ ... oh God did I just give a shout-out to another blog ... save us all.)

Anyway, I realized people love reading about other people's lives no matter how banal they may be, and I do enjoy writing, even if no one - or random sketchers - reads it. So welcome (back).