So I might be addicted to doing races now, but whatever, most of them are for good causes. And now I’ve signed up for one of the best causes of all–the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and its National Race for the Cure. If you want to help out a cause that’s near and dear to too many people head to my donation page.
Want to join me in running, or want more info? Go here.
And because there aren’t enough links already…my story is here.
Of course, I must start with a show link. (April 13) Last one of the year. Don’t cry too hard.
And the goods.
Yesterday Jason and I went to the golf course down the street. We wanted to play a quick morning 9 holes, which at 13 bucks was a pretty good deal. Turns out on Wednesdays, you get to play 18 holes for that 13 dollars. Sweet.
We play about 13 holes with these two other random guys, Bob and Bruce. Bruce then leaves, and the FUN begins.
The three of us remaining are putting on the next hole. We look back and see this very impatient-looking woman standing 100 yards away like she’s about to hit a ball at us. After we tee off on the next hole, we ask if she would like to either play through (pass us), or join our group. Thankfully, she decided to join us. Not two seconds into announcing her decision, she tells us that she’s “pretty hot right now,” which I mistakenly thought was a reference to the warm weather.
Turns out, she was actually quite pissed. At her husband. And his “recording equipment on a golf course.” Um. What? I thought she saying her husband had some sort of bluetooth earpiece deal and was rudely taking calls on the course. No no. She said he was taping their conversations. He also apparently could say whatever he wanted, but the second she started trying to add her own opinion to a conversation, he would simply ignore her. Like when she was telling him about what Jane Fonda said “on the TV the other night” about how it was better to have pain in your knees than anywhere else. Um. What?
She told us ALL of that before taking her first shot. Bob, who was a very nice older guy–probably a good 70 years old and a better golfer than Jason or I–looked the woman square in the eye and said “Miss, take your shot.” At this command, the woman took several steps toward the tee box. But apparently she wasn’t done and came right back to us and said she was going to move to Canada and find someone who would treat her right. Um. What?
The husband was apparently also taping everything at home. There was recording equipment all over the house and in her car. The information has already been used against her, and her neighbors have already done her wrong. Um. What?
Things go OK for a couple of holes. She steams quietly to herself while we play and wait for the next treasure trove of information. Nothing new until the end of the round. Typically, after everyone finishes you have this little shake hands nice playing with you routine that takes 20 seconds and you all part ways and continue with your lives. The woman says “I’m sorry if I brought my negativity and situation to your day.” We all say that’s no problem and exchange pleasantries with the others. But the woman didn’t stop there. She went on about how she was ashamed of having a sister-in-law who had the name of Senator Benson and about how she has already tried going to court against her husband, but since she didn’t have a lawyer she didn’t have a chance.
So Jason and I pack up our stuff and get into the car. We mention the possibility of waiting around in the parking lot to see this husband come off the course and a big confrontation to go down. But then another possibility strikes us. What if it was all made up? At this point I’m about 75 percent sure none of that ever happened to her. But I’m also 100 percent certain she brought some added enjoyment to my day.
The last day of the Maryland Legislature was yesterday. No more bills. No more voting. Over. But one lasting question lingers: Why does the last day have to “end” at midnight?
If a bill doesn’t get passed by midnight, it’s dead, that’s it. But why can’t that drop-dead time be like 5 pm? They spent 90 days working on stuff. They met over the weekend. They met all day on Monday. What good does that extra 7 hours do? They don’t have a set number of hours to meet, it’s just a span of days. Let’s amend the system.
After all, by the time midnight hits, all of the legislators are tired, and I can attest that the journalists covering the last day are pretty darn spent as well. I also heard one legislator, who is also a doctor, say at about 1 am that he had to be in surgery at 6:30 am. Now I don’t know about you, but I would rather have my doctor out at 5 pm than 1 am the night before being involved in slicing me open. Maybe that’s just me.
In other news, it appears that I have made it into the Boston Globe. Now you won’t see my byline there, or really any mention of my name. BUT there is a reference to an article I wrote two years ago in The Crusader about some shady things going on with the student government elections.
First: had my last stint of being an anchor this week. (April 6). Not too bad of a show, and I got to experience my first riot AND do a story from the White House.
And now the goods…
Ok, so if you know me, you know that I have a little knowledge about shoes. Well, make that more than is practically necessary for a human being to function in everyday life. So when a customer begins to question whether I know what I’m doing, I get slightly peeved at that and wish I could go Jack Bauer on them and chokeslam them into the floor, followed by pressing a gun to their head and demanding to know where the nerve gas is….or something like that…
So on Saturday I’m helping this one woman with shoes. I’m in the middle of a conversation with her when an older gentleman walks up and just starts talking to me. He says he has “the New Balance, umm, 700 something” and wants a new pair. Normally, this is not a hard situation. A few questions from me and I can figure out which one of the 10 different “700 something” models they might have, and thus what has replaced it. (Since most often these are older people who keep the same shoes for 10 years and don’t understand that they change every year).
I ask him ONE question, the natural first one of “do you know what kind of shoe it is?” There are only so many answers to this question, and the answer is the easiest way to help him get what he wants–remember, he came into the store looking for help.
Not only does he refuse to answer my question, he immediately asks if I’m familiar with the numbers of the shoes. I can’t finish my reply to his question before he asks where the manager is. Knowing that he doesn’t like to listen to my responses, I simply point to the manager, who was sitting on the floor on the other side of the store helping a customer. The man looks at her, looks back at me, then walks out of the store.
Once I finish grad school and have some free time, I’m totally writing a book about my experience selling shoes. Too. Freaking. Bizarre.
Shooting a story on the cherry blossoms in DC today…I was standing on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial getting shots of the Tidal Basin and the White House with the cherry trees.
Everything was going great, we had all the shots we needed for a little different story on how people abuse the trees, let kids climb all over them, break off branches, that kind of stuff. Then a security official walks over to me and says “Excuse me, do you have a permit?”
Now I assumed he wanted some kind of permit for shooting on the mall, or shooting at a monument. No no. He wanted to see my tripod permit. That’s right, another person wanting me to have a permit to use a tripod. What is this world coming to.
You would blog too if it happened to you.
Moving on. First of all, NEW SHOW (March 30). Pretty Good one I think.
Two news items caught my eye this week. The first, Rep. Cynthia McKinney running afoul of the Capitol Police. Glad to see I’m not the only one they’re out to get. Though I’m not black and not a woman, so I guess their “motives” differ in our cases. For the record, I was wearing my credentials BOTH times I was questioned by Capitol Police officers, and NEITHER time did I hit one of them.
The other article that got the noodle going was about Indiana finally joining the rest of the country–except Hawaii and Arizona–in observing daylight savings this year.
That got me thinking all about time zones and time differences. You know, how it’s like 8 am here on the East Coast, but in Sydney it’s like 3 pm tomorrow. At some point someone came up with a system and said “startiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing NOW!” right? Turns out some Canadian fellow came up with the idea for world time zones back in the day, but being Canadian, he also threw in that there should be a central clock located at the center of the Earth…
So my question is, if there was a point in time where someone just hit “Go” on this system, how did the people at the very front of the time zones feel about basically losing time, while the people at the back got to have that one day almost twice? I know I’d be pissed. Just think about how you feel each Spring when you “lose” just one hour, which you get back in the fall. Those people in Japan lost an entire day on “Go,” one they’ll never get back.
I’m pretty sure Giant Food is spying on me.
Today I went to load up on a bunch of food for the coming weeks. I usually eat pretty much the same stuff, mainly hot dogs and pasta. So today I had both of those at the top of the list to replenish the bare cabinets that occupy my territory in the kitchen.
I grab my $1 hot dogs. Check. Next is an immediate left turn into the pasta isle, where I spot my brand of pasta on sale for 50 cents a box. That’s pretty sweet in my book.
After picking up a few other choice items, including the beyond-fantastic Propel water, I headed to the bread isle for some hot dog buns. Now on the list I had written “2” next to this item. You see, the hot dogs I get come in packs of 10, thus requiring me to grab more buns than dogs to eventually even things out. Much to my surprise, the Giant brand hot dog buns in packs of 8 were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a new item, the Giant brand 12-pack appeared in their place. My life is now complete. One package now satisfies my need for “get more than 8” hot dog buns.
Giant must be paying special attention to my purchases and food needs. There is no other explanation for the windfall that befell me today.
In other news, I managed to get through the last two weeks without running afoul of the U.S. Capitol Police. So I’ve got that going for me. I’m also officially addicted to those little peppermint, um, mints like you snag leaving a restaurant. My mom gave me a bag last time I was home, and they are now dangerously within arms-reach on my desk. I hope you can’t OD on them.
And I’ve seen the site statistics, and by my calculations you haven’t been to the new world of Ert. Don’t know what Ert is? HA. Got you again. Go to the site, learn, laugh, jump onto the message board and chat away with some cool kids like me. Still have questions? Hit the “contact” button, and I’ll get the message and respond at my earliest convenience…or something like that…
If I suddenly go missing, you should probably call the U.S. Capitol Police. For the second consecutive Thursday, I went down to D.C. to cover a story for Maryland Newsline.
You’ll recall that last week I was stopped and given a talking-to for not having a tripod permit for shooting on the Capitol grounds. Well, this week I was in Southeast D.C. at the site where they are going to build the new Nationals stadium. There’s nothing down there. It’s desolate, dusty and pretty much abandoned–the last place where I expected to talk to anyone, let alone police.
So I am doing this sort of wide shot of this street, then turn to get a closeup of this one building. As I’m doing the closer shot, a white SUV pulls up behind me and I hear “What are you doing” in a quite-stern voice. I explained what I was doing, and the kind U.S. Capitol police officer kindly informed me that during that wide shot, I had managed to shoot his “secure facility.” Whoops. He asked for my ID and all of my info and asked me to erase that portion of my tape–which of course I did since I am pretty sure that next time I go to D.C., I’m going to run afoul of them again and I really don’t want to go to jail.
But fortunately this situation ended amicably, and I was able to anchor a pretty rockin’ show. Check it out. It’s the March 9th episode.
This is slightly out of date, but I was tired yesterday (and out late covering a really boring event). I did a story on new proposals for ignition interlock systems for drunk drivers in Maryland. These devices are basically breathalizers hook to your ignition. Too much alcohol on your breath, and the car won’t start.
I picked up a memo from AAA outside the hearing room where the bill was being discussed. Sure enough, 3/4ths down the page in the bullet points: “While interlocks are not a panacea, they certainly keep the roads safer while these devices are in place.”
On the same day, I covered a press conference with Sarah Brady, wife of James Brady of Reagan-assassination-attempt fame. She was supposed to be accompanied by Dr. C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the United States. To my incredible dismay, he couldn’t make it. I wanted to be able to say I was in the same room as that beard, but now, my dreams will have to adjust to a slightly less-fulfilling life.
Want to see me screw up on TV? Here’s your chance. March 2nd is obviously the newest one, and the best for my flubs…
