Try this in your morning coffee

The weather here in Texas has been overcast and downright mild, making me excited about the change of season. One of my favorite ways to celebrate the change? Peppermint coffee.

When the weather is cooler, I'm able to find peppermint-flavored coffee beans at the store, or I'll drink peppermint-flavored mochas at Starbucks when I have to. In warmer weather (read: most of the year), the combination is hard to find. Then I thought, What if that useless bottle of peppermint extract I have in the cabinet would work?

It does! Just put a couple of drops right into your brew, and there you have it folks. A yummy, steamy juxtaposition of hot and cool, right in your morning cup.

Find peppermint extract at the grocery store on the baking aisle, alongside the vanilla extract and other flavors.

Jimmy Carter is the man

No rocking chair for this senior citizen. Love this man. When most ex-presidents reach his age (especially of the defeated, one-term variety), they're not hauling their passion for peace and human rights around the globe to his particular intensity.

For me personally, it's heartening to see a powerful, fellow Christian taking stances on sexism, racism and the death penalty because his relationship with Christ compels him to, even though it won't boost his stock in the evangelical Christian world.

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As detailed in the video above, Pres. Carter is not content to pretend the South doesn't have the problems with which it's still plagued — it's an elder's job to chastise the younger generations' errant ways, is it not? He doesn't neglect the duty. He points out what most of us already know but are too timid and in denial to admit. The South is still mired in latent racism. Anyone who a) lives in Texas/the South, and b) doesn't operate in a state of willful blindness knows this.

You know when you're in Wal-Mart, and there's a toddler in the same aisle who's pitching a wild-eyed fit, but all the mom does is silently detach or, to the most, lamely request, "Now, now, Breanna; please try to be quiet for mommy"? That's not Jimmy Carter. But he's not the opposite, either — we've already seen how much change the take-no-prisoners cowboy routine actually affects. It's his sound, gentle, yet unapologetic rebuke of the world's pink elephants that makes him such a national treasure.

The man is 84 years old. 84. Still sharp as a blade, crazily articulate, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, AND he's a deacon and life-long Baptist Sunday school teacher. (Totally irrelevant trivia: He's Elvis Presley's fifth cousin and is related to Motown founder Barry Gordy, Jr. on his mom's side.) And let's talk about this man's IQ. He's one of the top five most intelligent U.S. presidents, just below John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and just above the smart likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. For perspective, George W. Bush's IQ, based on his highest score, is in the bottom two, just above Grant. Just sayin'.

He's thought to be one of only two U.S. presidents (along with Nixon) who's been faithful to his wife (I think that came from the book White House Confidential; let me know if I'm wrong). He's simply one of the most respectable statesmen this country has.

Yet he continually endures insults of "irrelevant," even though he's made it his life's purpose to do nothing but work on the most relevant issues of our time. Instead of his detractors attempting to reach his intellectual plane and form legit counters to his views, you're likely to hear that "Jimmy Carter's officially senile!" from too many of them. He's constantly chided to quietly fade into the past like a good, elderly ex-president should.

Well, not this grandpa.

I hope to be half as fearless and active when I reach his age.

Viva las old folks who refuse to diminish!!

Jimmy Carter primer:
• Jimmy Carter topic page on NYT
• Losing my religion for equality: Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God
• An ex-president like no other: Jimmy Carter, the passionate feminist
• Carter sees racism in Wilson outburst
• The Carter Center
• His wiki page
• An Amazon list of his books

Year One: Marriage

Yesterday Brian and I marked one year of marriage. I have many things to learn yet, but I've gathered a few gems along the way.

• Men are better at housekeeping than women give them credit for.
• The storied "honeymoon phase" is fiction. The whole first six months, if not the whole year, is an extended adjustment period. I went through plenty of negative but necessary emotions: fear, grief over the loss my former self as I knew her, anger, confusion. It was all part of transforming from a single individual to a married team member.
• The change that I didn't expect to have such an impact: sleeping in the same bed with another person every night. It seems so insignificant. But after 32 years of sleeping alone, it was quite a shock to my mind and body.
• It's frighteningly easy to forgo all social life in lieu of just slumming it at home with your spouse in front of the TV.
• Getting married does not, in fact, cause a supernatural mind meld that seamlessly merges your two sets of ideas, hopes, tastes and values. Intellectually, I knew this. But in my subconscious, where all the world's subtle suggestions about what women should expect from life are buried, I felt we would automatically snap to the same page beginning Aug. 23, 2008. Not so.
• It's cliche because it's true: If both spouses don't actively participate in frequent, open, honest communication, the marriage is either doomed for misery or for failure.
  

And that's why I'm glad Brian is willing more than any man on earth to work against the grain of his sex: he tries his blessed best to communicate, and he does the dishes. While we still battle the realness of marriage from time to time, these two qualities let me know everything's going to be all right.

Love you, babe.

Dallas restaurants, please don't listen to the new restaurant critic

The Dallas Morning News' restaurant critic, Leslie Brenner, has been here all of six months. And she's got our dining scene all figured out.

She came from L.A., and I agree with parts of her assessment about how Dallas can become a better restaurant city, like using more local produce and offering more fruit desserts alongside all the chocolate. She says a few nice things about our scene and starts off by ticking off the main Dallas hoods — "Uptown, downtown, Oak Lawn, the Arts District, the Park Cities, Bishop Arts District" — to show that she knows us, complimenting our "vibrancy" because we eat out for lunch.

I am not a critic and I am not a foodie. But I laughed while I read this column, because it screams, "Why isn't Dallas doing things the way I'm used to?" It's all the funnier because it's written by a fresh-from-the-airport transplant from L.A. Her big gripe, that our chefs and restaurateurs are giving Dallasites what they want.

Counter: Dallas restaurateurs, do not listen to her; please continue giving me what I want: good food, not high art. I will simply stop visiting you if this changes.

I want to believe she only means that we should look to other cities to emulate how they've carved out a reputation for themselves. But the column reads like she's suggesting we actually de-Dallas ourselves. I don't know why in the world we'd want to do that.

Leslie sounds like a bad American tourist in a foreign city, wondering why everyone's doing things differently and upsetting her comfort cart. I've never heard a critic come out and say quite as straight as she does that a city should, essentially, study other large cities' restaurants and copy them. That wouldn't make us better; that would make us lame.

She seems to be experiencing a bit of lost-in-translation culture confusion. She says servers at sushi restaurants here are confused when she wants to order directly from the chef. Perhaps they're confused because that's not a thing here. The chef wouldn't have conveyed to your server which fish is good? Maybe that's customary in sushi restaurants elsewhere, but from a local's perspective, it's seems like a big waste of everyone's time. We can be pretty pretentious here, but I can't imagine my boring question of "What fish is good today?" as being so important that I would need to drag the chef away from his or her work of conjuring up the exciting, New York-flavored dishes you admonish them to provide us, when I could simply ask my waiter.

She also gets offended when she's left food on her plate and the server doesn't ask her what's up with that. Maybe I can lend a regional lesson here as well. Sure, some servers will subtly inquire, but generally they don't ask why you've left food on your plate because it's none of their business. Maybe you became full before finishing, maybe you're trying to lose weight, maybe you get gas if you consume too much wheat flour, maybe the portions are simply too large to prudently complete. Consider it regional manners that they're not asking. We tend to be a little more independent here, so if a meal is that bad, don't be a wallflower about it. Leslie does remind us that diners have a responsibility to say something if the food isn't working for them, but she says this right after boo-hooing that servers don't do the asking. She advises servers, "Pay attention to what diners are silently telling you." Honey, we don't silently tell anyone anything. Restaurateurs know this.

She also says our chefs should travel (could she be more condescending. Why does she assume they don't travel? Because we're in Texas and Texans don't travel?) and that creme brulee is so 1994 (if we enjoy a dessert and it works, we're not going to care if it's from 1884 or 3004).

My gripe about the Dallas dining (and nightlife) scene is that it wants to be L.A. and New York so badly. It takes itself a little too seriously and behaves like a wealthy yet self-conscious teenager at NorthPark, constantly wondering who's looking at her and trying too hard. Dallas needs to do Dallas and stop trying so desperately to be somewhere else. It's not charming and erodes regional identity. Let's explore (the so 1980s) Southwestern cuisine further. Let's make ourselves known for the Dallas flavor we blend with other styles, too, like vegan, Asian, Brazilian, Italian.

When my mother made spaghetti and other pasta growing up, the sauce contained ground hamburger meat and jalapenos with a side of garlic Texas toast and salad with Ranch dressing. Borrow from a region's ratatouille, and the people will love you. Borrowing too heavily from another region only further prevents Dallas from forming a unique identity outside of that dang-blasted TV show we're known for. Being innovative means exploring regional spins on established cuisines. I imagine that travelers visiting with us would like to experience how Dallas does Korean, not how another city does Korean.

Along with regional spins, I'm down with classic, authentic flavors of French, Italian, etc., and I'm not going to fault a restaurant that doesn't get freaky with the tapas and paella. When I eat Spanish, that's what I want.

But mostly you're going to find me at very North Texas eateries, like El Ranchito, Manny's Tex-Mex, Joe T.'s and Spiral Diner. They give me what I want, which is a mix of comfort and new experiences.

A life geography lesson for us wanderlusters

On a spiritual tip ...

Lately I've been dealing with an issue that I've struggled with off and on since I was very young. It's not an issue unique to me. Depression slyly tricks someone into thinking that THIS particular bout of melancholy affects only me, magnifying the suckiness. But many of you have wrestled with this.

I'm talking about spiritual wanderlust. That feeling that you've missed the bus of your life's calling. You'd be more than glad to get on, but you have no idea when the bus is coming back around, what other part of town to run to so you can catch it there, or if there's an alternate bus you can take that will route you to your heaven-prescribed destination.

So this post on one of my favorite blogs, Stuff Christians Like, was a balm to read today.

I grew up in a faith tradition that taught God has a divine purpose for each and every person on earth, partly based on Jeremiah 1:5 and 29:11:
• Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart, I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.
• "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

God was speaking specifically to Jeremiah and to Israel here, yes. But we were taught that God's plans extend to the individual, and that he has a special mission for anyone who believes. Words and phrases from the keyword cloud of my religious upbringing include "pursue God's will for your life," "purpose," "your calling," "divine appointment." What has God called you to do with your life?

The filters on my young ears picked up these messages as a direct message from God: "Christy, you're kind of a big deal. One day you're going to do something so spectacular, so significant, there's not even going to be room for your awesomeness on this planet. I'll have to move you to another planet just to fit all of your crazy-massive works of ending hunger, stopping deforestation, discovering unknown tribes through your jungle adventures and providing them medical care and clean water. I'll name the planet 'St. Christicus,' because you'll have the LEAD ROLE in my grand, eternal scheme. Big plans, Christy — BIG PLANS."

I wanted my divine itinerary, stat! Move out of the way — me and God are going to do things! But as the years passed, I never discovered God's specific will for my life or or heard from him in the miraculous, direct way I imagined about what, exactly, I should be doing with this existence he gave me.

Fast-forward to now. I've since decided that God uses you where you are and that our contributions can, in fact, be small and impactful at the same time. God isn't a giant project manager in the sky handing out assignments and deadlines, writing you up for missing meetings that he never put on your Outlook calendar. We don't have to actually do anything, in the sense that we control God's calling on our lives. Just serve him, be open and he will direct the show.

Still. My mom and dad used to be foreign missionaries and pastors, and my mom just recently retired from 25+ years of being an elementary teacher at Christian schools. My sister works in the field of social work, heading the mental health division of a local children's home. My brother and sister-in-law have pastored the same church for 25 years and have touched countless of lives in their community.

My upbringing, my relationship with God today, my family, and maybe even my temperament, to an extent, have all conspired to "set eternity in my heart." This is a wonderful thing — if I knew what to do with it. Don't get me wrong; I've done good things in my life, but nothing compared with the "big deal" dream of my adolescence. Recurring residual tugs in my heart periodically whisper, "There's something else you should be doing, you trite web producer, you."

When I'm sorting through this over-eternalizing invasion of the mind, I focus on training my perspective back to street-level instead of constantly viewing the world from a spiritual perch somewhere in outerspace, like I'm trying to do now. That's why what Prodigal John said today over on Stuff Christians Like grabbed my attention:

The idea of "place" has been something I've been wrestling with a lot lately. I've got this overwhelming feeling that God wants me somewhere else. Whether that's a product of immaturity or selfishness, there's a part of me that loves to focus on there instead of here. ... It's always sexier to think your mission in life is going to involve some sort of adventure with a rope ladder over a ranging river full of piranha as you carry a vaccine and the hope of the gospel to a lost tribe of people that will eventually give you a wicked cool village nickname (mine would be Rik-Rok) and perhaps your own machete. It's a lot less fun to think that maybe you're already in a mission field and the annoying guy who you pass TPS reports to, the guy who sits near you in a sea of cubicles, the sniffler, yeah that guy, he needs to know about the love of God.

I get caught up in that attitude and when I do, I eventually start peppering God with geography questions. ... Where do you want me? This doesn't feel like where I'm supposed to be God, can you please give me a sign? Can you tell me where you want me to go? Is this job, is this relationship, is this church, is this city where you want me to be?

.. Do you know the first answer God always gives when we say, "God where do you want me to go?"

"In my presence. ... I've got other destinations planned for you, far off places and close to home addresses that you can't even imagine, but every destination, every adventure begins with the same starting location, in my presence."

- end -

Good Dallas jernts to take the laptop + work

Since starting to work from "home" in July, I've discovered some good spots suitable for working, with free wifi that fulfills the "gotta get out of this kitchen chair or my butt is going to fall off" objective. Notice that Starbucks is nowhere on this list ($10 to fire up my laptop each time? I'm trying to make money here).

• Beckley Brewhouse
1111 N. Beckley Ave (Beckley at Zang Blvd), N. Oak Cliff. Next door to Sprial Diner.

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One of the Cliff's best gems, and it's not even in the Bishop Arts District. Very neighborhood. The small converted crack house is now an adorable restaurant, coffee bar and regular (alkie) bar, all in a space the size of your living room. Best cheese fries, good burgers. A motley mix of normal folks. Heavy on post-shift nurses and doctors from nearby Methodist hospital. Great patio. Short story — I came in this evening for a coffee and to get some work done. No dice. Sitting in the cushy chairs across from me were two older black men who just got off work, Arthur and Bernie. Surrounded by piles of Miller Lite bottles. They immediately started talking to me like we all go way back. I'm always initially shy in situations like this, plus I was, um, trying to work. This did not deter them. I heard all about their world travels together throughout the decades, about growing up in separate but equal days of East Texas, about chasing women in the '60s, about the prostate cancer Arthur's been beating for the past 30 years. People coming in said hi and asked where they'd been lately. That kind of place.

• The Pearl Cup Espresso Bar
North Henderson and McMillan
Off Central Expressway, exit Knox/Henderson and go east. Keep going til you reach McMillan; you'll see it on the left.

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This is a hot spot for coffee right now in an area that used to be considered the grittier cousin of chichi Knox Street but is slowly becoming just as Knoxy as the west side of Central. Thankfully, "hot spot" in this case doesn't mean "filled with that famous, loathesome, Uptown douchebag vibe." The owners, workers and clientele are a mixture of urban, soccer-dad, unpretentious and friendly. Can't beat that combo in these here parts. They're really friendly to the laptop crowd; there's like 15 electrical outlets per customer. Supposedly they've got a latte that'll freak you out, but I haven't had it yet (I'm a black coffee or Americano girl). Right now a small construction crew is doing something to the patio (expanding, hopefully), so it appears like there's no parking. Just go around back, where there's plenty.

• It's a Grind Coffee House
2901 Indiana Blvd, Deep Ellum. It's located on the ground level of the Ambrose apartment buidling. Just park inside.

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It's a chain, but this one's in Deep Ellum. Now hold up, chain snobs; this ain't no Buck Star Inc. It's a Grind is part of the Demeter Project. That essentially means it treats its employees well — livable pay, benefits. As the Observer puts it in this story from July, it employs "asylum seekers, immigrants, victims of domestic violence, ex-convicts, reformed prostitutes, former drug users, pretty much anyone in dire need of a second chance." Totally worthy, even if the coffee isn't great, which it's not. Atmosphere is better: large paintings of jazz greats decorate the wall, like Ella Fitzgerald and others I can't remember the name of in spite of wanting to be cool for knowing them. Fireplace. Coffee refills are 50 cents, but that's ok. Smart placement: It's located directly on the about-to-blow-up DART Green Line.

There are other places, like Murray Street Coffee in Deep Ellum. But I haven't been there recently enough to comment on it. Any other suggestions?

My Mayborn weekend

I'm talking about the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in Grapevine, sponsored by UNT's Mayborn Graduate School of Journalism. I attended Friday and Saturday's events, but I decided to skip Sunday for a variety of reasons, among which were not because the conference itself lacked gems and good times.

The conference came at a great time in my professional life. I quit my web production job at a magazine about two weeks ago to venture back into writing, and the 31 hours of lectures, literary ambiance, old friends, new contacts and an always-available supply of coffee and cheeses gave me a needed shot in my writing hand (and my brain's motivation lobe).

Highlights. This is from memory — my personal notes are over there in the dining room.

Friday night's Southwest Soiree kicked things off. Well, for most of us it did — friends Marissa and Joanna spent the day at writing workshops getting feedback on their contest entries, and friend Stella traveled to Archer City with a Mayborn entourage to spend time with Larry McMurtry. Later at the soiree, the opening comments of "Welcome to Texas!" clued me in that this conference now drew writers from a much wider geographic boundary than last time I attended, back when it was still a little North Texas gathering.

The night's keynote: Paul Theroux, a big deal in travel writing and author of books like Mosquito Coast (I vaguely remember the '80s movie made of it starring Harrison Ford). Things he said about himself, his travels and writing-in-general that grabbed me:

• Growing up as a Boy Scout in rural Massachusetts made him as much of a writer as reading books did.
• His father taking him and his six siblings to places of local historical interest gave him a sense of place and belonging.
  
• Spending most of the '60s in Africa with the Peace Corps gave him an extraordinary view of the U.S. during that tumultuous decade.
• When people don't travel, they can end up with a perverse idea of what is normal.
• Writers are deeply-affected people. Conferences like the Mayborn are often like "Mental Illness Theater."
• Writing the truth is prophetic. When he was in China, he simply wrote about the feelings, effects, and the players in the scenes of what he experienced. The truth. A year later, Tiananmen Square happened. Looking back, it reads as if he was writing the opening chapter of this time in Chinese history. In a way, he was. Truth will do that.

Time with the girls — Marissa, Stella, Beth, Joanna, Leila — at the Hilton's Bonnie & Clyde bar. We tried to get the DJ to play "Smooth Criminal" but apparently it was against Bonnie & Clyde policy. Split a big, comfy room with Beth.

On Saturday I only woke up in time to be late to the third of 10 lectures of the day. DMN's Alfredo Corchado and Dianne Solis. Their beats render fiction completely unnecessary. Notable:

• Alfredo and photog Erich Schlegel had a bet about who could find the most interesting story from the Texas/Mexico border. Erich later called Alfredo on the phone, trying to communicate against loud singing in the background. Alfredo told Erich to turn the radio down. Erich replied, "Man, that's the damn story!" Story: Nov. 2007, The Dallas Morning News — Mexican balladeer sings to save vanishing village
• Alfredo talked a lot about the drug trade between Mexico and the U.S. He showed a photo of a man in one village kneeling at a shrine to Santa Muerte, which communicated everything about the danger and death Mexican drug culture has created.
• He told about being in a village eatery and hearing what sounded like two men discussing their next murder, in Spanish. It dawned on him that it was someone's cell phone. He thought it was someone's sick, isolated idea of a funny ringtone. The next time he went to Mexico City, he heard the exact same ringtone on another person's phone. Drugs are affecting Mexican life and culture in some unexpected ways.
• The headline to a similarly-themed story he wrote for DMN read "Wasting Away in Margaritaville," which one attendee pointed out during the Q&A as evidence that the media still isn't taking this topic seriously, and that it's even evidence of latent racism.
• Alfredo said about a half-dozen sources for his stories have been assassinated. That weighs heavily on him.

A lighter respite: Houston Chronicle's beauty and fashion writer, Joy Sewing. She talked about how fashion is a decision everyone makes every day, and how newspaper journalists have gone from feeling like we're selling out to advertisers to giving up and just selling out. Documentary filmmakers Allen and Cynthia Mondell showed footage from a doc that tells the story of how Dallas, despite of its lackluster contribution to state history, scored the Texas State Fair, thanks to the Lone Star can-do (and money) of Mayor R.L. Thornton. The doc also reminds us of another state mystery: The fond place deep in our hearts for the Creepiest Texan Ever — Big Tex.

Skip Hollandsworth and Mike Hall of Texas Monthly. They were entertaining, but really only one nugget jumped out at me. Mike, a music writer, told how someone asked him why he also writes about ex-cons and other stories from the criminal justice system. His answer made sense: As a music writer, he enjoys doing stories about lost causes, like DJ Screw and Townes Van Zandt. It was natural to be interested in lost-cause people caught up in the criminal justice system, too.

Stephanie Elizondo Griest — what a trip. She's a gorgeous vagabond memoirist (with a journalist's standards, JAMES FREY) who's excitable by nature, smiles freely and has traveled and written more in her young life more than most people — shoot, writers — will during their entire lives. Bullets:

• Being a memoirist means you'll lose friends.
• It also means you'll lose your privacy. You're bearing your life to the world, so readers think they know you. Like, really know-know you.
• As a memorist, you become a really good expert at ... you. It's hard to specialize in any one topic like most other writers/journalists.
• "All writers need to do their 'New York' time."
• She always jumps on an opportunity. Fodder for memoirs comes from the stuff of life. She's always thinking in terms of "this would be great for a memoir."
  
• She ended with a really funny, high-strung story that involved her naked, the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, a fire, her laptop, a stairwell, Ira Glass, her copious hair going berserk right along with her, and her assessment in a robe that this was "going to make a really great story."

Next was the sleeper of the conference, I think: Roger Thurow, foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Wrote the book Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. His lecture was called "Consumed by Hunger" — and he is. A fairly subdued temperament couldn't suppress the missionary spirit inside this author. I'll have to do a whole post alone on this lecture and the ways in which it struck me. He didn't talk much about the mechanics of writing but about the conviction he felt to reverse the injustice of hunger. The desire to change the world for the better through writing — we as journalists get that. He's bleeding-heart + hard-core — a powerful combination. His mission to expose the causes of world hunger is an example of what this journalism thing is all about. It's exactly what earned him the only standing ovation of the day.

Vogue/Newsweek contributing editor Julia Reed and Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Roy Blount Jr. — folksy, fun, insightful lectures.

• She said that all disasters in the South happen to guys named either Donnie or Dwayne. She keeps a "Dwayne" file for literary anecdotes in her Southern writing.
• It's ok to digress. Sometimes you have to. Once she had to write about iceberg lettuce, and it would have been boring as all get-out if she hadn't included an old funny anecdote that had only slightly something to do with iceberg lettuce.
• Southerners have an interesting penchant for accepting life as a mysterious force that doles out unexplained happenings. Like, instead of a man having a heart attack because he didn't take care of himself, it's because "His blood just up-and-backed-up on him." It's a subtle, almost charming evasion of responsibility. (She could say these things. She's from Mississippi and has the drawl to prove it.)
• Roy Blount was a riot. Heavy accent, too, ("we were standing there in our tux-ee-duhs"), but paired with a heady subject: give your readers' mental tongues something pleasant to caress, to play with. Something with texture.
• He gave the word "piss" as a good example of how a word's phonetic sound and the sound of the word's active experience feel interrelated. The physicality of words — give readers something mentally crunchy, something to wrestle with. That was fine and well, but then the point devolved from there. The adorable elderly man with the thick accent went on and on with it — "piss" this and "piss" that and vividly describing orifices and sphincters and the audience cracking up into giggles and me wondering "OMG are we really talking about this?" He didn't bore while making his point, for sure.

Then a trip to the hotel room for a quick rinse and change for the Literary Lights Dinner. Sleeveless black satin cocktail dress with slight boat neck that shortened when I sat down (forgot to do the sit-down test in the dressing room, ugh). Good thing I paired it with flats. Heels would have turned me into the Literary Tramp Fest.

Squealing-, screaming-girl moment of the night: the announcement that Marissa won first place in the writing competition's research and reporting category for her Blue Angels story. I'm really proud of her.

The keynote: Ira Glass of "This American Life" fame. Yes, he's a radio guy, but we didn't care. We love his show. Hearing that famous voice in person was so ... pleasantly weird. He told some great stories, gave some great insight.

Later during the author book signing, I stood in line with Leila so she could get his sig (latest book, The New Kings of Nonfiction). I was struck by how warm he was with each and every person, chatting them up, offering a story, writing lengthy, personal ditties in every book. And I was surprised about how hot he is, too. Don't tell Brian I said that.

We spent the rest of the evening at Bonnie & Clyde's. I talked with DMN arts/lifestyles editor Mike Merschel about the paper, family, adoption. Marissa and I got upside-down outside, trying to find her cell phone underneath the driver's side seat of her car. I resisted calls to share a bottle of champagne with the girls (I needed to leave!). I announced to the table on multiple occasions that "Yes, I'm coming back tomorrow — I'm saying this out loud, so I have to do it."

It's been a great weekend, even if I did cut it short. Looking forward to reading the two books I bought: Mosquito Coast and Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.

Shoutout to my sweet husband for driving my new business cards that just came in all the way to Grapevine for me Saturday. Mwah.