OK, so it's been almost exactly six months since I left newspapers. It was a career that put me into proximity with famous people and provided me with free stuff. You know, in addition to all that journalistic business like comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable and all that.
Afflicting the comfortable .... as if being comfortable is a bad thing? I don't think so, if you're treating people fairly and trying to leave the world better than you found it. But I digress.
My life as an employee of an unnamed Seattle-based Big Internet Retailer (you'll never guess which one!) has also involved free stuff and celebrities. The most recent example of this came on Friday, when Paula Poundstone stopped by. (This, the day after I stopped by the "duty free zone" where unwanted promotional media items sent to the BIR await trips to shelves such as mine. Best find: the Cindy Sheehan book, which I gave to Cheryl, who reads meaningful, topical, thoughtful things while I look for things featuring superheroes or lesbian detectives.)
Paula was a hoot. Very humble, as you might expect from someone who has been publicly dragged through the mud. Yes, it was largely mud of her own making. And that probably makes it worse. It's hard to understand how someone can get drunk and drive with their kids, but it's not hard to understand how a parent can do things they regret. God knows I have, though thankfully these things have not involved cars or alcohol or paparazzi or police. They've tended to involve something like raising my voice when someone gets too distracted to pee in the potty and I have to change the fourth pair of wet pants that day. Or letting kids eat cottage cheese with milk (a favorite snack of mine and theirs) in bed. But I digress again.
Paula has a book out. I'll plug it, for all two of my readers: "There's Nothing in this Book I Meant To Say."
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