.it's still an obsession.

i decided i couldn’t sit down and write my book report that’s due tomorrow until i talked about this weekend.

thursday day me, liz, jules and michael began our weekend trip to knoxville, tn to visit with bob benz and the scripps operations. this trip is starting to become an annual one with speakeasy members. it's a great chance to keep up with an influential company in the business, get the word out to professionals about our publication and actually learn something just by talking with scripps employees.

we left thursday night, about two hours later than we planned (anyone surprised?) and between bathroom stops and being pulled over by the police for speeding, we didn't make it to benz's house until 330am.

luckily, benz is one of the coolest people on the planet, and didn't mind that we snuck into his house long after he and his wife and their four dogs went to bed. we crashed as soon as we got in. i got the air mattress. leave it to benz to have the most comfortable air mattresses in the world.

after only three hours of sleep we were up and ready to go to breakfast with lara. it was delicious, even though i had way too much food, as usual. then we started a full day that benz's secretary had put together for us - meetings with different people at the network that talked with us and gave us advice on everything from content, multimedia, content management systems, programming, advertising and pr efforts and our redesign.

i think i learned more that day than a quarter's worth of journalism classes could have taught me. it was so amazing for us to sit down with professionals, tell them about us and speakeasy (and brag a little in the process) and collect pages worth of notes and ideas about how to proceed with speakeasy, and our careers in general.

those sessions were also a little redeeming, in the fact that they were so impressed with us and speakeasy, it was a big confidence booster. the four of us are incredibly (and nerdily) passionate about speakeasy, the internet, writing, design, multimedia and journalism in general, and i think it showed. maybe a little too strong, but hey, it happens.

basically i got to spend the whole weekend surrounded by people who are, in some ways, looking to us to help shape the future of journalism. it's in such flux right now and there's no telling what will happen or how current problems will be fixed. they were incredibly intelligent and exerienced individuals and were so excited to be talking to us, and were so helpful.

after such an amazing and exhausting day we decided just to head back to benz's house and decide about dinner from there. we left the knox news headquarters around 6ish and somehow ended up turning what would normally be a 20-minute drive into over an hour drive that included a stop for coffee and us managing to circle around back to the knox news. we were so tired and we just kept laughing at our incredible lack of observation when it came to trying to find the exit we needed. i will say this though, knoxville's roads are very confusing.

we finally made it back and sat down with benz by the fireplace and began chatting about our day. at one point he opened a couple bottles of wine and set out some lasagna, salad and bread for us to have dinner. the conversation continued over dinner and we probably talked about everything from newspapers to religion to the brilliance of south park.

after dinner michael, benz and i sat down back in front of the fireplace. we started working on some speakeasy things (we're impossible, i know), drank more wine and kept talking. it was such a great evening, getting benz's perspectives on everything and talking to him about ours. for the second year in a row i had that feeling that he wasn't just sitting there trying to recruit us but was really just acting as a mentor, helping us figure our shit out. especially considering everyone's graduating so soon (and everyone will be leaving me).

i finally passed out that night around nearly 1am. which meant that i had been awake for about 22 hours. as soon as my head hit the pillow i was out.

the next morning i woke up at about 745 with a big headache. i managed to fall asleep again, and was woken up around 9ish by parker's text (i never mind being woken up by him, though) and pulled my computer over to talk to him. i still had a throbbing headache and i wasn't even sure why. i never get headaches.

by noon we were all finally up and ready to go out to lunch with benz and his wife, lara, and their friend, sarah. we went to this really amazing mexican place. although, i wish i could've enjoyed it more. by that time my headache was really killing me, especically right over my eye, and it was starting to make me feel sick. the mexican didn't help.

headaches must be contagious, because liz, jules and michael all started complaining of headaches as well, so we stopped at a cvs on the way back to buy some advil, alieve and cinnamon altoids. i took two liquigels immediately. it was seriously the worst headache i've ever had. i've never had a migraine before, so this might have been one or might not have. but it hurt like hell.

when we got back i went upstairs to set my bag down and make sure all my stuff was packed. then the air mattress looked so comfortable and i just laid down and curled up in my jacket and pulled the covers over my legs. i heard everyone else come upstairs and grab their things, but i was too out of it to even lift my head.

around 430ish liz came and woke me up. we were going to meet caren for dinner at 5 before we left. it didn't feel like my head hurt anymore, but the minute i stood up it came back again real bad. but after i was up and walking around and talking it got better.

we met caren at this place called the sunspot cafe near ut, and it was fabulous. the food was great (i had a turkey wrap) and we talked about speakeasy and graduating and jobs and it was great. the ideas were flowing and again i felt so great about what i was doing and the people i was doing it with. i don't know if i can ever see myself working for scripps, but i'm really happy for caren, she seems to be doing really great, and i know when liz, jules and michael graduate this spring they're going to do some amazing things.

around 7pm we finally tore ourselves away and piled in the car, eager to get back to athens and sleep and start thinking about how to put everything we had learned into action.

the drive went pretty quick for the first four hours. we just kept talking. talking about our ideas, what we want to do when we're all done with school, how things need to be changed and how we think we can change them. experiences like this weekend, the ONA conferences and the endless conversation between liz, jules, michael and i constantly remind me why i am in journalism in the first place. i could have sat in that car and talked for hours with them about it. so many times we were all so engaged that we'd miss exits. it just gives me this high. and it's not this every-once-in-a-while high that i'll get for a day and then forget about. it's always there. it's this drug that's always in my veins, and when i'm around people who understand it and feel it and can't stop talking about it, i have a place for that energy and that high to flow and jump off the charts. and even though it might settle in the face of the mundane and the daily routine, it's always there. it's what drives me.

so we drove. and laughed. and talked admist the occassional playing of "love me or hate me" by lady sovereign (which, btw, is now michael's theme song) and sufjan. and somewhere around 11pm, with jules and liz sleeping in the back and while michael and i talked about random things, we were scared to death by what sounded like a jet enginge starting up.

realizing that we had actually blown a tire didn't make us feel any better.

there we were in the bumblefuck that is west virginia with a blown back tire, sitting on the side of the highway in the dark. it was beginning of a clusterfuck. or a delightful campy horror flick.

thank god for AAA. or more like thank god that liz, jules and michael all have AAA. we called and some super nice guy came in a tow truck to put on our spare tire while we sat in his toasty-warm truck.

since we couldn't make it all the way back to athens, about 150 miles away still, we took the first exit, beckly, w.va. to try and find a place to stay. we stopped at hotel after hotel - comfort inn, best western, even a hojo! but they were all booked. we were shocked. as michael so eloquently put it, who would've thought that we'd get stuck in the middle of nowhere, where apparently everyone wanted to be.

one nice woman at one of the hotels explained to us that it was a big skiing area, and it was valentine's day weekend.

figures.

we finally ended up getting a tip about a place called america's best value two exits down. we weren't entirely optimistic about this place, but if it had a bed and roof, we really couldn't be picky at this point. we pulled into this dorm-style hotel snuggled in across from the appalachian bible college, which i predictably got an enormous kick out of. so for $60 a night we were treated to a non-smoking room that smelled curiously like smoke, a small bed and pull-out sofa, felt-like blankets, a puke-brown bathroom and a television that had hbo but only showed programs in strange blue, purple and yellow colors. its only redeeming quality was that it had free internet. america's best value, my ass.

breakfast the next morning was offered by the hotel - stale cereal, watered-down orange juice and fruit punch, whole milk and wheat bread and cream cheese made for a fabulous spread. however, the best thing was the donuts, even if they were a little stale as well.

after breakfast we jetted out of there down the road to the commercial center of the town, which included a walm and a starb.

gotta love corporate america.

we left jules' car at walm to get a new tire put on and walked down to stab to get coffee so we could survive the rest of the day.

our trip ended today around 2pm - a whole 12 hours later than planned. anyone surprised?

i'm not. regardless, the weekend overall was great. i still got to talk to my boy often :) and i laughed too many times to begin counting. last night could've easily turned into a horribly stressful ordeal, but instead it turned into an adventure of sorts. no one freaked out (except jules when she was talking to her dad, but even then we were able to laugh - we love you jules!).

i'm just glad that we didn't end up having to spend the night with the hill people. i'm tough. but not that tough.

well, i guess this book report is calling. so is food. and so is sleep.


xoxo.m