Becky's Day Off

Maybe I don't say it enough but I really do love my job. It's generally pretty exciting and I know I am blessed to be where I am. But I have to say, I LOVE having days off. Especially during the week. I haven't had that happen this year (with the exception of two sick days when I couldn't get out of bed and then last Friday when I drove to Roanoke.) At my network, we have an extremely generous vacation policy and I look forward to using more of them. But yesterday, (not technically a vacation day- it was to make up for working on Saturday) I had a great day just off of just hanging out.

I really like those relaxed days where there's nothing I have to do or place to be by a certain time. So I decided to go visit my college roommate who lives in nearby Loudon County. She and her husband, Steve, and I have been great friends ever since freshman year at Tech. They started dating our freshman year and got married after college and just had their first child, Ella, back in October. I appreciate our friendship in so many ways but on the top of the list is that we can just pick up right where we left off the last time we saw each other. And we can just talk about anything. I think that goes back to us being roommates our freshman year and then again our senior year. We also used to have contests about whose hair was bigger. It was a close contest every day! Anyway, fast forward many, many years and I would lose the big hair contest for sure (only because I flat iron my hair. Amy still has the most beautiful curly red hair!) and we can still chat about anything! (Surprising, I know! :)) I went to visit them in the hospital when Ella was born and I was determined to see them again before she started crawling. I got there in plenty of time because she's almost 5 months old and a couple of months away from that milestone. Ella is a happy baby and we had fun playing and chatting! Time slipped away from me and we spent four or five hours just hanging out and having fun just like in college (with the adorable addition of a baby that wasn't there in college!) I also got to see Amy's parents who were visiting who I have always enjoyed being around!

After an afternoon with Amy, I decided to go visit my next friend, Ann Taylor, a.k.a. the store where I tend to stimulate the economy every time I walk in the door. Yesterday was no exception. I decided with all the bad economic news, someone had to spend money so I decided that should be me. I got incredible deals and LOADED up on cute things and saved $215 dollars in the process! I had an internal struggle about getting a cute $200 rain jacket and ended up caving but in the end I got it for $52!! Seriously, I haven't bought clothes in a while but this was such a great experience that I might do it again very soon.

While I was in Leesburg, I decided to call my friends Huyen and Ryan to see if they might be free for dinner. Of course by the time I actually ended up in Leesburg it was 5p. Like I said, yesterday was not much of a planned-out day! But as an added bonus, they actually were able to meet me for dinner and we had such a fun meal. We ate at one of their favorite Vietnamese restaurants (I trust them that they know good Vietnamese food!) and it was completely yummy. The extra added bonus to the bonus was that I got to see their daughter Rasine, who coincidentally turned 2 1/2 yesterday. You've seen Huyen and Rasine in the early days of my blog so you'll remember that I've known Huyen since the 7th grade which means I've known her for more than two decades. Wow, that makes me feel old. But they are in the same boat as Amy and Steve in that we just pick up where we left off and just enjoy spending time together. And Rasine is one cute kid. I don't know what it is but ALL of my friends have cute kids!

Week (and a Half) in Review

Ok, time has been slipping away. I didn't realize that it's been 12 days since I blogged. Please forgive me. I'm a self-admitted slacker. Not really. It's just been fairly busy and nothing earth-shattering to share. But since I've been gone, I will give you an update on the life of Becky in the last 12 days, or at least I'll hit the highlights!

Last Friday I had the day off and I went to Roanoke for the weekend. It was supposed to be a weekend where I saw most of my family (except for Kay and Mark) since I haven't seen them since Thanksgiving. But it turned into a girls weekend with Laura and Cayton. Mom ended up getting MRSA and was in the hospital. (I guess that was a good enough excuse.) So my parents didn't come up from South Carolina. And then George was away playing golf until Sunday afternoon. So Laura and Cayton and I hung out and had a great time enjoying the beautiful weather. I know I've mentioned it before, but Cayton is one cool, funny, and especially cute kid. I'm not even saying that because I'm biased. It's just a fact. We went to the playground and she played with the neighborhood kids outside. We also went to two baby showers. My newest niece, Raygan will arrive on April 8th so Laura loaded up on exceptionally cute outfits for her. It was a really fun weekend and I already miss them and can't wait to see them (and my parents) again in a few weeks when Raygan is born!

Other than that, not a whole lot has been going on. I've been at the White House mostly but haven't seen much of POTUS. I did see him on Wednesday at an event in the East Room. It was for the signing of an executive order creating a council for Women. Not that exciting of an event but I did see the tallest woman I have ever seen in real life. She's a professional basketball player and she towered over POTUS (and obviously me too.) In fact, I think I could have stood on POTUS's shoulders and she still would have been taller. The other interesting thing was that I noticed that the famous Gilbert Stuart paintings in the East Room have been covered up. The Obama administration LOVES to set up the East Room so that the stage is at one end of the room. I personally think the gold curtains with sunlight peaking through looks horrible but they didn't ask me. Anyway, the way they have the room set up, the press has to stand along the long wall of the room. That's where the paintings of George Washington and Dolly Madison are hung. Except I guess they don't trust us or something because they've covered them up with white boxes. To me, it takes away from the room because I like seeing Dolly or George over the shoulder of a world leader but maybe I shouldn't care that much!! I think the best answer is just to set the room up the other way and we'll all be happy!!

(Before/courtesy of the History Channel) (Courtesy me)

Today I'm working because Brazilian President Lula is here to visit POTUS. I've been to his place before when I went to Brazil for less than 24 hours in 2005. I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember me. I actually went to his ranch, kind of like Bush's Crawford ranch. All I really remember is that it was really, really hot and the only Portuguese I knew was the term for "who farted?" (please don't ask why I know this random fact!) but anyway, it came in handy as we were crammed onto a bus with the Brazilian press corps! I don't recognize any of the 40 Brazilian press members that are here today so hopefully we won't need that phrase again today!

BTW, I am considering to start to Twitter. I'm a little bit torn as to what to do. What do you think?

Snow Day at the White House

It's March and I thought that meant that we were inching towards spring. My daffodils are getting ready to bloom. There seems to be just a little bit more daylight. There is a sense of spring being right around the corner. And then, BAM! We get the biggest snowfall of the year (and maybe the last couple of years!) I'm not going to lie, it caught me a little bit off guard!

I remember as a kid looking forward to snow days and playing out in the snow and sledding on the hill next to Mr. Williams house and coming inside for real hot chocolate. AAAAHH! The memories. These days, there is no such thing as a snow day. I've never experienced one during my working career. Even those days that it's liberal leave policy, for some reason someone out there declares I'm an essential employee.

This morning I had to be into work by 5:30a in order to get my correspondent's voice tracked for a piece. So I went out to my car a little bit before 5a and started the process of cleaning off my car. Last night, I had strategically placed my car on the street heading in the right direction and yes, I was one of those freaks who put their windshield wipers up so they didn't get buried in the snow. BTW, I have to say it worked because cleaning off my car was somewhat easier. The tough part was getting my car doors de-iced!! It's not easy to brush snow off and try to pry open frozen car doors while carrying my 40 lbs. work bag. But my car was cleaned in record time and I'm proud to say that I'm pretty sure I was the first person out of my street. Definitely well before the roads had been plowed. The good thing about going into work at that God-forsaken hour is that everyone on the road has to be on the road and even if the roads aren't clear, no one is driving like a maniac. My Jetta did marvelous and was a trailblazer on some of the roads. (I am so thankful that I spent money on 4 brand spanking new tires a few months ago!)

I got to the garage I park in at 5:31 which I have to say, I'm pretty amazed at! And I never slid off the road once! I went straight to being busy- actually I was on the phone trying to coordinate things as I walked through the blizzard into the WH. And the morning was incredibly busy! I'm pretty sure the roads got worse after my trek in because the snow continued to fall, heavy at times, all morning. That's the lucky thing about driving to work before the crack of dawn. But we did a ton of liveshots and I even went out to take these pictures. It really was so peaceful there this morning! I loved the fact that my Uggs (yes, I am just that cool!) were making tracks in the fresh snow at the White House. I almost decided to try to make snow angels on the North Lawn but then I thought better. There are snipers on the roof and even though I was wearing a white coat, they would have spotted me and likely shot me!

Oh by the way, today marked my 11th anniversary at my network. That's rather unbelievable to me! That's more than a decade! What the heck!?! If that doesn't make me feel old, I'm not sure what does!!

Semper Fi

OOOO-Rah! Many of you know that my brother-in-law, George, was a Marine (or is a Marine because once a Marine, always a Marine?). Everything I have ever really known about Marines has come from him. When he met my sister Laura (which is a great story in itself), I was in the 5th grade and he was stationed at Cherry Point, NC and he served in the first Persian Gulf War. I remember when we went to see him off to war in August 1990. (I think that's the right date when he left but seeing how I think I have the best memory in my family, no one can correct me!) The whole family went down to Jacksonville, NC to say goodbye as he went off to serve our country far away. I remember some of the emotions of the day and how proud of him we were. But the thing that also sticks out in my mind was how nasty the hotel room was where we stayed. I've stayed in a lot of hotel rooms in my life and that by far was the grossest place I have ever been in. I don't remember the name of it but I can picture almost every detail of the scary room. I remember that none of us slept well that night at all and it was some place that I was glad we were leaving the next day. That has been my impression of Jacksonville, NC ever since.

Well yesterday I got to go back to Jacksonville, NC with POTUS. I was telling my colleague about the nasty hotel room from 1990 and he said he thinks he stayed in the exact same place! I have no idea if that was actually true but we swapped stories about our similar experiences. I don't think I saw the hotel in question but I was glad to see that the town now has some nicer options.

Anyway, I wish I could tell you about all the fun adventures of being on a Marine base and getting to visit with Marines as they were preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. I wish I could tell you about POTUS being received by the Marines. But alas, I was so incredibly busy that not only did I never see POTUS, I never had the chance to find my camera in my bag to take any pictures. Even if I had found my camera, I wouldn't have had time to take any pictures because I was sooooo busy. I won't bore you with going into the weeds because seriously, it's not that exciting. But yesterday we had an extremely limited amount of time to do liveshots, write and track a piece, tape standups, etc. On top of that there were about 25 fires to put out (figuratively speaking of course!) including the fact that the Secretary of Defense offered to do an interview with us. Normally, I (or a colleague) have to hound the press people to interview the 6th or 7th in command and yesterday, Numero Uno was asking us? And I really didn't have time for him. But you can't blow off the guy who is running the entire military. So somehow in the middle of all the madness, we squeezed him in and talked to him for a few minutes. My reporter did a great little interview and somehow we finished the enormous amount of work in a very, very limited time. We almost missed the buses but we convinced them to hold them while we cleaned up our equipment. No offense but Jacksonville was just not the place I wanted to get stuck in, even with their nicer accommodations since my last trip. It wasn't until we were on the bus and we had done all we could do, that I realized that we had been interviewing/talking to the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two important dudes in the grand scheme of things and I hadn't even had time to take it all in! I don't get stressed at work all that often but yesterday was certainly a day that I felt the pressure! The only thing that kept me going was knowing that it would soon be over for the day and that last night I was going to see "Medea Goes to Jail" with some friends from church. AAAhhh, nothing like a little entertainment to take your mind off a completely insane day!

One-third through the First 100 Days

The first 100 days are supposed to say a lot about a new administration and how the entire term will be. It's also supposed to be the point when the craziness will somewhat die down. We'll see about that but we are officially 33.3333333% of the way to the magic day of April 29th. But who's counting. Me, that's who! So we've survived the first month and honestly I can say that while it's been a ton of work and a lot of insanity, it really hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. (Time for the proverbial knock on wood!) Of course the busy-ness of the past month has prevented me blogging as much as I wanted to. So this week I'll do a week in review!

Monday was President's Day and what better place to spend the day than at POTUS's house. President's Day is one of those that always sneak up on me and I can't figure out if everyone in the entire country has off or if it's just a DC thing. The only reason that it usually matters is figuring out if the parking garages downtown are opened. I don't get any holidays off so working on them doesn't bother me any more. Having to suddenly discover that it is indeed a holiday and I'll have to find street parking does. Luckily, my favorite garage was opened and the crisis was avoided! As far as work goes, POTUS and the First Family (FF) were returning from Chicago for the weekend. So it was the first time I had seen the girls since Inauguration Day. They didn't seem to recognize me. Neither did Michelle for that matter. They individually bounded off the helicopter, carrying their own bags I might add, and ran into the residence. The Obamas are not big wavers, at least not yet. Sometimes POTUS waves once (no low wave for me yet) but the rest of them just ran off the helicopter and ran inside. Not even Grandma waved even though I waved at each of them. Oh well, we still have several years and my goal is to get a wave from one of the female members of the FF.

Tuesday, POTUS hit the road and had a big signing ceremony for the stimulus in Denver. I stayed home but I was privileged enough to see his departure from the WH. It was fairly cold from what I remember and I'm pretty sure he didn't wave. Anyway, I remember being busy on Tuesday but quite honestly I can't remember what was the main culprit but I'll just blame POTUS and liveshots. Wednesday, he moved on to Phoenix and gave a speech about the housing crisis. And then I got to see yet another helicopter landing but this time it was freezing and cold and rainy. Not a glamorous day at the WH at all!

Thursday, it was Oh Canada!! I went with POTUS to Canada for the day. A long day in fact. It was his first international trip and instead of going to Mexico like Bush did, he went north where it was incredibly freezing. We went on the press charter (thank God it's back in my life!) and got to snowy Ottawa about 8:00a. You would have thought the flight to another country would take longer than 65 minutes but it didn't and I barely had enough time to eat breakfast on the plane! Definitely not enough time to sleep! Anyway, the moment we landed I realized two things. 1) It was incredibly incredibly cold and I was thankful I had worn multiple layers. (BTW, by the end of the day when it was -15 degrees, the four layers didn't work and I was as frozen as a popsicle.) And 2) I was wearing the wrong shoes to walk around in snow. I'm not sure why I didn't think about that but I'm guessing that at 4:00a, I just wasn't thinking clearly.

I wish I could say I have some exciting stories from Ottawa but alas, I was so incredibly busy with liveshots, that I didn't have time for exciting stories. I never saw POTUS in person and I think we did about 18 liveshots and filed a package and we were only there for 10 hours. That might not mean a lot to you but trust me, it was a lot of work!!! I didn't ever even have time to find a bathroom. This might be filed under the category of TMI (too much information for those old fogies out there) but I didn't go to the bathroom from the time I woke up at 4:00a until the plane landed at 10:00p. That's not healthy because I thought I might explode and when the flight attendants asked us to sit down during landing and stay seated until we stopped taxiing, normally I would have complied but I couldn't. I might have actually exploded if I hadn't run down the aisle the very second we touched down.

I'm sure Friday was busy with something but honestly I can't remember with what. I blame the POTUS and liveshots once again. This weekend I was able to completely disconnect from work (which is why I don't remember many of the details of last week!) and spend with a lot of friends. On Friday night and all day Saturday, I was able to attend the women's retreat with my church and it was a ton of fun- one of the best ever! Plus, I was able to have lunch with Julie G. and Marta and Evan and their daughter Kate, and some of their friends. It was great to spend just a little bit of time with some of my college friends and I just love those friends that you can just pick up right where you left off, no matter how long it's been since you've seen them. Then Saturday night, I had a great time celebrating Jessica's birthday! It was so much fun!!

So today, which technically starts the next week, I of course spent most of the afternoon after church catching up on sleep! I'm fairly certain I wouldn't make it until possibly Tuesday if today's nap wasn't possible!

Will it play in Peoria?

Yesterday was my first trip on Air Force One with the new POTUS and boy, what a crazy day it was! It's a good thing I'm not completely intimidated by pool duty on AF1 since I've done it a few times before. I was soooo busy that I would have crumbled if I had not done it before. And traveling with Obama is a totally different experience than with Bush (although I completely missed my Bush friends like Karen and Rachael yesterday!)

My day in travel pool was a trip to Peoria, IL to speak to employees at the Caterpillar plant about the economic stimulus. Next on the schedule was a stop in Springfield, IL to celebrate Abe's birthday. Luckily it wasn't a really early start so I was able to sleep in and catch up on a little sleep. That was important because I needed all the energy I could get. Back in the Bush days, oh the Bush days, things were rather predictable. He never came back to the press cabin. He always ran on time or early and generally stuck to the schedule and there weren't many surprises. Usually the biggest surprise was what was for lunch on the plane. Yesterday was so incredibly crazy compared to that!

First of all, the new POTUS *LOVES* to shake hands with people. In my humble opinion, he is just eating all of this attention up. I can't say that I blame him. If I had a crowd around me everywhere I went screaming "Becky, BECKY, BECKY" I think I would shake their hands too. That hasn't ever happened before but if it does, I'm making the pledge to do a ropeline! Anyway, I digress. Back to new POTUS. After he arrived by motorcade instead of helicopter (due to the high winds), he got out of the limo or "the Beast" as is its official nickname, and walked across the tarmac. He shook hands along the ropeline with about 40 screaming ROTC cadets. I heard sounds and shrills like I had never heard before. I was a little scared at one point. Then he walked back to the plane while his limo was following him. I think they just idled their way the hundred feet or so. I don't think they wasted too much gas. Anyway, before we knew it we were up, up, and away on our way to Peoria and it was really really bumpy, even on AF1! Press Secretary Gibbs came back to gaggle during the last few minutes of the flight. That made for some stressful times of trying to keep the audio recorder steady, take good notes, and balance myself during a very bumpy landing. Thank God I have mad blackberry typing skills as I was able to type up most of the notes in a very short amount of time and send them out to everyone in the press.

Once we got to the Caterpillar plant, we found out that Judd Gregg had withdrawn his nomination to be Commerce Secretary. I don't really care about the politics behind it (well I do but that's not appropriate for my blog) but immediately I knew that my day had just become destined to be insane. And it wasn't a letdown. Our next leg of the trip was from Peoria to Springfield. Now forgive me for not being more familiar with my Illinois geography but I kind of thought we would probably chopper there but we were scheduled to get back on Air Force One for a 15 minute flight. But after about 10 minutes I looked out the window and saw that we were really high up if we were supposed to be landing in 5 minutes and the AF guys were offering chips and queso and drinks for a snack. I knew that wasn't a good sign. So we spent the next hour or so circling over Springfield, Illinois. I thought that since we were with the leader of the free world, we could land whenever and wherever we wanted. But apparently not. Something about how we couldn't get to the event early because not everyone had gone through the magnetometers. Then right before we landed, Gibbs came back once again and gaggled about the Gregg situation, again as we were landing.

And if that wasn't crazy enough, when we landed, we got off the plane to wait for POTUS to exit, like we always do. Except this time, one of the WH staffers comes running to me saying, "get back on the plane, POTUS is going to talk." Of course I immediately run back up to my seat on the plane. But I quickly realized I didn't have my camera crew with me. So I went up to the Press Secretary and begged him to make POTUS wait until I got back on the plane with our camera crew. So I run down the steps again and try to get my crew's attention over the roar of the jet engines from AF1 and to no avail. I think I screamed my heart out and they finally saw me screaming and ran upstairs bypassing the AF security guy checking our names off the list. We pushed our way to get into position and literally five seconds later, the leader of the free world shows up to make some comments about Gregg. I quickly realized that I didn't have a tape recorder or even a pen to take notes and I couldn't reach my bag through the twenty people standing on top of me. So again, I thanked the good Lord for my awesome blackberry skills and hoped that my notes would be somewhat intelligible. While POTUS was talking, I was literally less than foot from him. I don't think you can see my blond head in the photos or video because people behind me kept tapping me on the shoulder telling me I was too tall. I've never had anyone tell me that before. It was kind of stunning. I wish, oh I wish, that I had had a moment to take a picture of it but I was too busy typing like mad on my crackberry. So while I didn't officially meet the man, I did get up close and personal for a few moments.

Then in Springfield, IL we went to a dinner for Abraham Lincoln's birthday. My network seemed to be obsessed with the comparisons between Obama and Lincoln and so there was quite a bit of interest in this event. By this point in the night, I was done. I had put out about 50 fires and was exhausted. I sort of listened to 44 talk about 16 but I'm not going to lie to you, I was tuning much of it out. Sorry Abe!!

We left Springfield and arrived back at Andrews by about 11pm. Thankfully I just got to sit in my seat and watch a movie, oh and eat dinner. It wouldn't be a blog post about AF1 without mention of food! (For lunch it was cheese tortellini and strawberry tiramisu. For dinner it was sweet and sour beef tips and rice and cheesecake!) Don't worry, in all the hustle and bustle, of course I took the time to eat!! That's definitely not changed in the new administration!

Prime Time Presser

I'm sorry I've been MIA. I was sick for several days last week and I thought I would spare you the details of having the flu despite having the flu shot. I generally try not to call in sick, especially if I'm scheduled to be at the White House. (I don't want to miss anything and there are only a very small pool of people who can replace me. It's not that I'm irreplaceable but there are only a few of us that are there on a regular basis!) But sometimes when you can't actually get out of bed, it's generally frowned upon to go to work and sit in a very small closet-sized booth with three other people and sharing germs. So instead, I spent several days on my couch sleeping and watching mindless TV.

But this is a new week and I'm feeling much, much better! And it's already a busy week. POTUS is traveling three days this week (I'm only traveling one) and last night was his first prime time press conference. Now that I think about it, it was my first prime time press conference too. I don't think Bush did one at night while I've been on the beat. At least I was scheduled to work during one. But anyway, I digress. The fact that yesterday was day 20 of the administration and POTUS's first presser, I knew it was already going to be a mess. But the pressure was really on yesterday! Added to that is that I still had about 1000 e-mails to catch up on reading from when I was sick so I felt like I was swimming upstream in information. But it seemed to all go off without any glitches. Oh with the exception that my new friends in the new POTUS administration still don't quite know what they are doing and literally an hour before the presser, they ditched the finalized seating chart that they had taken 30 hours to create. It seemed that they took all the names and put them in a hat and spilled them out onto a table and wherever they landed is where that person sat. In the past, there is some rhyme and reason as to who sits where but an hour before the presser, we were moved from the front row to the middle of the third row. Whatever, not a huge deal but it was just a hassle to move everything that we had wired up to the middle of the third row. And a blogger sat in our original seat. I know these things are not ones that the average American is concerned about but for about five minutes last night, it was a huge deal! :)

I stood in the back of the room and I was on the phone with the control room in NY. The problem was that I didn't have my hands-free device and so I held the phone to my ear for about ninety minutes. I thought POTUS kept staring at me while he was speaking but really it was just because I was directly behind his teleprompter and in his direct line of sight. And apparently I was within the cuts camera range so I was getting e-mails from friends who saw me on TV. I tried not to outwardly yawn after I got the first message. I didn't get to take notes or anything that would have made me look like I was paying attention but I assure you I was. I'm pretty sure I could have passed a pop quiz afterwards!