Saturday in the Basement

So I didn't go to the presidential debate in Mississippi like planned. And I was really looking forward to the Comfort Inn in Batesville, MS- NOT! I've gladly slept in my own bed and stayed in DC to deal with this bailout. It's not like I'm personally doing anything with "dealing" with it but we are covering it from the White House. So last night, I watched the debate from home like most Americans. And like other Americans I had my priorities. I was also trying to get caught up on watching "The Office" since I missed it on Thursday night. (I actually just forgot it was Thursday night. I am a little mixed up on my days of the week!) So I watched as much as I could before the debate started. Then I flipped over to my network to watch the debate and then as soon as they shook hands, watched the rest of the show. I might need to re-watch it without interruption of a silly presidential debate. That show cracks me up!!

So today I am in our booth in the basement of the White House. Every once in a while, I go upstairs to see the outside world. There are a ton of tourists here and they think the briefing room is the coolest place in the world. I am trying to figure out at what point I lost that sense of awe in being here. Now I'm part of the tour. Anyway, back on topic... you used to be able to take your picture behind the podium but now they have it roped off so people just stand in front of the platform/podium. I am sitting at my desk in the basement and watching our in-house feed of the cameras upstairs and I'm spying on people smiling for photos. A few are rebels and go behind the ropes. As long as they don't come downstairs to my office, I think it's quite entertaining to watch.

We'll be here until there's a bailout deal or 8p when the Hokies are playing football. I've set an arbitrary deadline for the Congress to make a deal. Let's hope they come through before 8p. Or tomorrow because I'm not working and really don't care when they come up with a deal. I'll be going to church and taking my Sunday afternoon nap!

A Zoo at the White House

I woke up this morning in NYC and took the train back to DC so we could work out of the White House since today was such a big day. Plus my network was travel pool and there was a lot on POTUS's sked. We came directly to the WH which meant that I brought my enormous suitcase through the NW gate. The USSS asked if I was moving in and I said, "Sure! I've got enough clothes for about two weeks but I'm going to need someone to do my laundry at some point." I think they thought I was serious.

Anyway, this place was sooooo hopping today! I think the last day it was like this was when the Pope came to town in April. I'm not saying that a visit by Obama and McCain would equate to the Pope but EVERYONE was back at the WH from campaign trail! It was like a little reunion! POTUS met with three different world leaders today which literally no one cared about. One of them was Palestinian President Abbas. Eight months ago, that would have been the biggest stir but today literally no one was paying attention.

The big moment of the day was when McCain and Obama were here. They brought their own travel pools with them but the WH travel pool (us) were the only ones allowed in the room for the big meeting. The press briefing room, where they all waited, was PACKED with people. I was the one in charge of coordinating the playing/feeding of the tape so that all 5 networks could air the tape at the same time. It was a bit of pressure because I knew soooo many people were counting on us. I am pleased to say that my coworker/friend Greg and I were a perfect team. I won't bore you with all the details of how the sausage is made but let's just say the process was flawless!!

The afternoon was just a zoo. Or maybe a circus is a better way to describe it. Three rings- one for POTUS, one for WHOTUS-R, and one for WHOTUS-D. It was just hopping. I was at the WH just for pool duties and my colleague Jamie was here for my network's liveshots and other needs and there were not many moments that weren't hectic. I haven't seen so many people at a stakeout as today's scene waiting to see if Obama and McCain would come out to talk. They didn't.

The final event of the day was a meeting in the Oval Office with the Prime Minister of India. I admit that I'm not completely up on all the latest Indian issues but I had some really good Indian food last night for dinner. But I digress. This was my first time I went into the Oval as the one and only TV representative. Usually we have a correspondent do it but with all the craziness going on, it just worked best for me to do it. I was standing in the Oval Office but was so busy trying to write down every word that was said that I really didn't get to take it all in. I was just praying that POTUS didn't call on me with a question. Thankfully it was clear he didn't want to talk to the press at all so I felt relieved. He did keep staring at me but I think it was because I somehow got stuck in the middle of the Indian press corps and the Indian PM went on and on about whatever. I guess a petite blond girl really stands out in the Indian press corps!! You can't actually see me in the picture below because I'm blocked by an Indian cameraman. But I promise I'm there.

It looks like I might not be going to Oxford, MS for the debates after all. The story is here in DC with the bailout so that's where we'll be at least for tomorrow. Too bad because I was really looking forward to the Comfort Inn in Batesville, Mississippi. But that's okay because I'll get to sleep in my own bed and I'll actually get 8 hours of sleep!!

Random Thoughts by Becky

Today was my last day in NYC and it was a busy as ever. Lots of stuff going on. I won't recap the whole day but between Bush, McCain, Palin, and Obama there is plenty going on. Check the news. All I know is that I don't really know where I'm headed except that I think tomorrow morning I will get on a train and go back to DC and work at the White House. Then I will get to sleep in my own bed as an extra surprise. After that, I have no idea what's going on. I think I'm going to Mississippi for the debate but who knows!!

Anyway, there weren't any really good behind the scenes stories today so I thought I would share some random thoughts. In no particular order.

1) The W is a nice hotel. Very expensive and a small room but very chic. I appreciate chic and actually feel pretty cool staying here. However, I've run into a few problems. I am too short to stay here. The mirrors in the bathroom start at about 58 inches from the floor. I am 60 inches from the floor so I can only see my eyebrows and above when looking in the mirror in the bathroom. That has proven to be a slight problem when getting ready in the morning. Also the shower is so cool that there is no shower curtain/door. I guess it's designed that way for a reason. However, each morning that I've gotten out of the shower, there has been an enormous puddle of water outside the shower. Just a bit strange that they didn't think that part through. The last odd thing that I will mention is that the picture on the wall/headboard is that of the backside of a naked woman. That is just not what I want to see as the first thing I look at when I open my eyes and try to figure out where the heck I am. But like I said, somehow I feel pretty cool staying here. Go figure.

2) I am completely over my crush on Lance Armstrong. It's official. I won't go into the whole history of my former love of Lance but suffice it to say that I loved Lance before most people had ever heard of him. Anyway, I'm completely over him. And this is how I know. I didn't do the early morning liveshots this morning and went in a little bit later but I was watching our morning show on TV and who was on there but Lance Armstrong. From the NY bureau. Where I have spent the majority of hours in the last three days. And the best part was when I realized I would have gotten to see him again if I had been at work and I didn't care!!! It was over for me when I read reports that he had gone out with one of the Olsen twins. Today's events just confirmed that.

3) Despite my slight incident the other night in the cab, I have gotten pretty good at catching and riding in a cab. Each time I get in a van, I've been hoping it would be the Cash Cab as seen on Discovery Channel. But I haven't found it yet. But then I started thinking. I don't think that show is real because I don't feel like it's safe for cab drivers to be distracted from their driving with hosting a game show. I feel like the driver needs to pay 100% attention while he/she is driving so as not to be sideswiped or just creamed into. Especially in this traffic here.

4) I'm really trying to like the new Facebook but I just don't. In a way, it's a good thing I've been so busy so I haven't had as much time to be frustrated with it. Seriously, why did they have to "fix" something that wasn't broken??

5) I'm still figuring out what to give my friend Maugurita. I like the gift card thing. That can go in the thank-you card that I will eventually write!! But I'm still not sure... I'm still taking suggestions. For the record, I have not left anything else behind in a cab. I've been super careful.

Ok, I am positive I had more random thoughts than that but at this hour after a frazzling day, I can't think of them. I'll be on a train tomorrow morning and can amend my blogpost if I am so inspired.

The Good Samartian

Or in this case, the Good New Yorker.

As you know, I'm in the Big Apple for a few days for the UN. I do like staying in the same place for more than one night even though I had to change rooms last night and my room is MUCH smaller and MUCH MORE expensive than Sunday night's room which I don't understand. Last night it ended up being crucial to spend more than 8 hours in one place. Anyway, once again I digress. On to the story and it might be a little long. Don't say I didn't warn you! Stick with me here.

Last night after working for 12 hours, I got to go to dinner with a friend from DC and her co-workers. I thought I was a little closer to where they were than I actually was but I eventually found them and had a great time hanging out. So at the end of the night, I decided against walking the mile back to my hotel and I jumped in a cab. I love the NY cabs, by the way, because it's soooo convenient to pay by credit card. Anyway, I'm riding back to my hotel and the roads are all blocked off due to the fact that I'm across the street from the Waldorf and that is where every world leader and their mother, literally, are staying. So we get to the point where he couldn't go any further and instead of, I don't know, stopping at a corner, he just says "you need to get out now!" There were still cars coming on either side of the cab. Anyway, I felt like he wasn't going to move until I got out of the cab in the middle of the street so I paid and ran out of the cab as quickly as possible. Just as soon as I actually made it to the sidewalk, I realized that I had lost my driver's license out of my pocket. I turned around and in those five seconds, the cabbie was long gone. I had no receipt or any way of telling which of the two bazillion NYC cabs I had just been in.

So I resigned myself to the fact that I had lost my license forever. I called the restaurant to see if by chance I had left it behind but I knew that it had just fallen out in the cab. I actually didn't freak out too much because I immediately remembered that I travel with my passport and I could just use that for the airports and that I would have the rental car in my correspondent's name and he could drive! But it was still going to be a pain to get a new one and I wasn't sure when the next time I would a) have a day off and b) be in Virginia. I still wasn't freaking though. I guess being in the news business for over a decade makes me deal with stress fairly well. I went back to my hotel room and was just going to go to bed since I had to be up in several hours for early morning liveshots anyway.

Then here's the amazing part of the story. At 11:30pm, the phone in my hotel room rings which usually that is just the hotel people making sure you don't need anything. But it wasn't them. A lady on the phone said, "Hi Rebecca. You don't know me but I found your drivers license in the cab I was riding in tonight and thought you might want it back." I couldn't believe it!! I would have said it was an answer to prayer except that I never really prayed that I would find it. I was praying more along the lines that I would be okay until I could get to the DMV back home. Obviously God knew more than me of what I needed (without me asking any way!) and orchestrated my path to cross with this God-sent woman! I asked how she had found me and she said that in addition to leaving behind my license, I also had left behind my hotel key and it was in a sleeve with my room number on it. So she called the W and asked for my room and I was there!!

So this morning, I went over to her office building which was many blocks away. The NY bureau courier drove me (I guess the assignment desk was leery to put me in another cab!) and he got me over there in record time. New York traffic is always crazy but it's even crazier with every world leader here and it was truly amazing how quickly the process was. We made it over there and back in under 30 minutes in the middle of rush hour traffic on UN General Assembly day. I got to meet Margarita for a few minutes in the middle. She's an architect on Park Ave. and an incredibly lovely and obviously very busy person.

The bureau courier, whose name is Angel (I don't think his name was by chance!) told me I was so lucky. I said it wasn't luck. It was obviously God watching over me. It could have been a horrible situation and God prevented it. If someone else had picked it up, they could have taken my identity and hotel key and come and killed me if they had wanted to!! Instead, I end up meeting two incredibly lovely people (Margarita and Angel). On a side note, as I mentioned earlier traffic was insane. We seriously came very very close to getting hit by a tour bus at one point and Angel (I just love his name!) swerved and avoided it all together. I truly believe this did not happen by chance or luck!

Last night and this morning, I thanked Margarita profusely but "thanks" didn't seem to be enough. She's a very busy person who is in meetings all day today so I didn't get to talk to her for long but I did give her a hug. I have to come up some other way to thank her. I can give her a hat with my company's logo on it but that doesn't seem like nearly enough! So I'm open to any suggestions of things to send her even though she said she wouldn't accept anything in return. It truly warmed my heart to see that there are still good and decent people in this world and even in New York City, which doesn't give me the general impression of being a warm and friendly place (even though I have several nice friends here!) I do know that I will pay it forward in some way in the near future! I will be looking for opportunities!!! I will also be taking extra precautions not to leave anything else in a cab over the next couple of days!

Start Spreading the News!

I'm in the Big Apple for the next few days and I couldn't be happier. Not the New York part. The few days part. I love the fact that I won't get on another plane for maybe two days! We're staying at the W for the next few days and while it's not like the Waldorf Astoria from last year, I will manage sleeping there for three nights. I stayed there last year and it was very nice. Small but nice. I tried to get a room at the Waldorf through a last minute offer by the WH. They sent out an e-mail last Wednesday saying they had three extra rooms there and the first three people to e-mail back would get them. I e-mailed back in approximately 10.4 seconds. I lost. It was a valiant effort but we're at the W. It's not like we're stuck at the Super 8!

So we're here to cover the McCain-Palin campaign and she'll be meeting with a bunch of world leaders and dignitaries like Bono. I think she just like U2 and wants to meet him. But POTUS is actually in town. Remember him? I'm really glad to see him except that I won't actually see him in person. I just love having the details of what he's doing and not spending half the day figuring out what is going on. I'm not in travel pool at all during the UN trip this year so I will just get to spend quality time at the NY bureau and watch it on the TV feeds. The bureau is at Columbus Circle and the best thing about this place is the cafeteria upstairs. In DC, the bureau has a small deli downstairs and then we are walking distance to Union Station. At the WH, there is a snack machine. In NY, there is this huge cafeteria with all these stations and choices. I was a bite overwhelmed. It appears half of the DC bureau is up here today because I ran into Wolf Blitzer at lunch today and I hadn't seen him in person in quite a while. I also met correspondent Ali Velshi in person. He's a Facebook friend that I actually have never met in person but he came up to me and recognized me! I just love Facebook!!

Another Overnight Nap

Once again, I'm a couple of days behind in the blog world. That means it's been waaaaaay too busy. We spent a day and a half in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. There was a big rally at another airport hangar, similar to the one in Ohio just a couple of days before. This is the town where there was some major flooding a couple of months ago. It's also near where my friend Jessica (I met her in London in August) goes to school so I was sooooo excited that I got to see her again on home turf!

For the rally, there were several thousand people there including some hidden war protesters who interrupted the speeches several times. I had a great vantage point when they started their screaming the first time. The other people around them were true Americans. One woman grabbed one of the girls so hard that I thought her arm was going to come out of the socket. She dragged her for many yards until she kind of threw her on the ground. I wouldn't ever mess with that chick!!

Half of our day was spent trying to figure out what our travel plans would be for last night and today. It ended up that after our liveshots (which ended at 8p), we drove from Cedar Rapids to Chicago. That was a four hour drive which the idea of sounded a lot worse than the actual drive. My correspondent and I split the drive and I can now I saw a lot of Iowa. Except that I didn't because it was very dark and flat. I think I saw a lot of cornfields but I just can't be sure!!

We got into downtown Chicago this morning at about 12:30am and we had to be up to do liveshots at 6a which meant getting to work by 5:30a at the absolute latest. If you do the math, you'll figure out that I only got to sleep less than four hours. About 3 1/2 by the time the alarm went off. It was another morning where the alarm clock in the room was set to an hour starting with "3". Not good. So I had another overnight nap because it was the same people at the desk when I checked in and checked out. This nap cost about $100 an hour.

Now I'm home for a couple of day, thank God!! I need a small break and some quality down time. I'm realizing that I don't think I'm cut out for this lifestyle for long periods of time! I was only gone from Saturday night until Friday afternoon and it felt like three weeks had passed!! So I will spend the weekend rejuvenating and sleeping so I can do it all again for the entire next week!!

Please forgive how bad this blogpost is. I am having a major case of writer's block. That coupled with being completely exhausted is preventing me from being clever!! :)

State of Confusion

I'm sorry I didn't get to post anything yesterday but holy moley, I was sooooo busy! We've been in a different state every day and sometimes I actually forget where we are. Yesterday I know we were in Vienna, OH or was it Youngstown? We were actually at the Youngstown airport in tiny Vienna and my network insisted on referring to it as Vienna. But the local people said it didn't matter. On top of that, they don't say Vienna like the city in Austria (or Virginia) or even the sausage. It's pronounced VIE-anna. I mean come on. Have these people never heard of at least the sausage? Luckily, someone told Palin the right pronunciation so she looked waaaay smart when she said it. VIE-anna was tiny but friendly and the chili from the Yankee Kitchen (one of the only restaurants) really hit the spot while freezing at the liveshot location.


The McCain-Palin rally was in an airport hangar and there were probably 7000-8000 people there... packed in there like sardines and I'm sure it had to have been some sort of fire code violation in place. We were busy doing liveshots, filing a piece, etc. all while trying to concentrate over the high school band playing the songs from their fall show. I don't know if you've ever sat right next to a high school band INSIDE a hangar but suffice it to say, it's quite loud. I'm pretty sure my hearing declined yesterday even more than it already has. And I'm pretty sure that I recognized the songs they played from my days in the high school band. (Yes, I'm aware that I just geeked myself out big time. But it's true!)


I'm amazed at how many people just LOVE Palin and really don't care much about McCain. Yesterday, I couldn't count the number of people (mostly women) who just left the rally when Sarah finished talking. They didn't even stay for the nominee for POTUS!! I'm not here to cast any political views because I'm an independent-minded journalist but I had to point out that it was quite an amazing sight to see!


We had liveshots every hour (sometimes twice an hour) all the way until 10pm and boy did it get cold once the sun went down. It was an incredibly busy afternoon and pretty much spent my time dealing with "crisis" after "crisis". These situations always seem to be huge at the moment but after it's all said and done, we always survive. For example, we were doing a liveshot at 6pm and they were breaking down the stage, risers, etc. So right in the middle of my liveshot, they were taking down the huge "Country First" sign that was our background of our shot, so I had to run over there and negotiate, BEG for them to leave it be for a few minutes. I won the first part of the argument but then lost the part when I asked them to wait for another 15 minutes for our next shot. So we had to hustle and set up a new liveshot location (which is not enough time!) We succeeded and it was all good in the end but with other "crises", it made for a very stressful few hours. Oh, nothing everything survived. In the said breakdown of the stage, the tearer-downers through away my blackberry holster. So now my precious crackberry is naked without any holder. But thank God it still works the same! Anyway, that might be TMI into some of what goes on and it might confuse you to what is my actual job. Don't worry, even my mom doesn't quite understand what it is that I actually do.


Speaking of Mom, she suggests a new acronym... actually two... we've got PLOTUS (Potential Leader of the United States) or WHOTUS (Wannabe Head of the United States)... I kind of like WHOTUS so we'll give that a try.

After the rally and all our liveshots, we drove the hour back to Cleveland only to find out that our reservations at the Marriott were cancelled (long story) and the only rooms we could find were at the Ritz Carlton. It's where Palin was staying and I was hoping to run into her this morning but we left really early to do some more liveshots. Let's just say it's never a good thing when the same girl at the front desk checks you in and checks you out. When that happens, I call that an overnight nap. So I enjoyed my room for about 5 hours total. However, and I realize that I might come across incredibly snobby when I say this, but the Ritz wasn't all that. I mean, I'm sure there are humongous suites but my room was just a standard room with really nice shampoo and conditioner. Don't worry, I survived "slumming" it.

We're now on our way to the international hotspot of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I'm really getting to see the coolest places in America on this trip!

BTW, my camera died... at some point I need to recharge the batteries but I didn't bring the charger... So sorry. I feel like I've let my blog readers down!! Just watch the news or read the paper and that will be what it looks like. Maybe when I have more time, I'll sift through friends Facebook photos and steal them! :)