Appreciation
Unlike last week, I think I've been taking some time this week to appreciate what's been happening for me the last few weeks. I essentially spent the last hour of the Sportsbeat on the air on Friday, which was a really cool experience, because previous to that I'd only been on in short spurts. My parents, of course, thought I did very well, and my uncle, who listens to the station often, called them and told them I did a really good job. I also heard the same from people at the station both right after the show and when I went in for a bit on Saturday. The time at the station has been a really rewarding one for me, and I am sure it will be high atop the list of the things I've done this year, when I compile them, as John did last year.

I also want to post a link so you can read my Marquee stories for Chicago magazine. I didn't write anything this week, as I had more really large projects to work on at work, but the four previous weeks, I have a story, including one on Shakespeare that was the lead on last week's edition. Its been a really fabulous opportunity, both to work at a highly regarded magazine, but also, from a practical sense, to get real clips and give myself more of a shot with potential employers.

I believe Ron Zook's agent owes me commission.

I was surprised, really, by the Kerik withdrawal, because, usually, the GOP is much better at vetting its people than we are. That he would have this skeleton is not surprising, but that it had seemingly not been thought of by anyone who makes decisions regarding Cabinet appointments is scary.

Charlie Weis is a good hire, but not a great one, for Notre Dame. There is some school of thought that says they needed a really big name, and Weis, though highly thought of in NFL circles, is not really that big a name. Now, coaches with NFL experience have seemed to do well in College jobs lately, Pete Carroll especially, but for all of the bluster coming out of this place, you'd think that Rockne had just been resurrected.

Remember, it's not arrogance, it's excellence.

Laughter
When my dad drove me back on Saturday, I moved this weekend and he needed to bring down the van, I was reading a trade paperback I bought a couple of years ago called "The Golden Age". Its about this alternate reality that the superheroes that inhabited the World War II-era of DC Comics were put in. There's a line in it during a conversation between Alan Scott (The Original Green Lantern) and Jonathon Chambers (Johnny Quick) that really stuck with me. Both, in this world, had retired from their super-hero identities and were frustrated with the lack of action in their lives and the new stresses they were encountering in the "civilian" world. Johnny Quick had been a guy who, like nearly all comic book speedsters, basically laughed at life and didn't take anything seriously, that's what happens when you are literally able to run away from problems. The line, which was delivered as exposition, was "Alan looked into Johnny's eyes, and saw how much the laughter's left them." With Karen moving on in her life, which I obviously don't begrudge her, because I want her to be happy, I can't help but think how much the laughter in my eyes, the joy in my life, has gone away in the past nine months, most of which has been my own doing. I talked to Susan on Sunday, and we're trying to see each other when she comes home for Christmas, and that conversation is what got me thinking about this. I wondered whether anyone who hasn't seen me for as long as Susan has would recognize me as the same person.
I'm not the same person, which is the reason I've had such a hard time getting over what happened was not just my being upset about losing Karen, it was because I lost a part of myself as well. And that's only been compounded by my depression, the way I've shut myself off from people and from social situations during the last months. While I am not exactly the most social of people to begin with, the last few months I've been so totally cut off, so obsessed with my own grief that I've lost sight of the rest of my life, that there will be a future for me, even if it isn't with Karen.

It's time for me to get the laughter back.

I'm really disgusted by what Notre Dame did in firing Willingham. Notre Dame is supposed to stand for something, not just be a football factory. Notre Dame is supposed to value its academics, its supposed to be the place that values integrity. And in firing Willingham when they did, and for the reasons they did, they have revealed themselves to be nothing more than a football team with a University attached .