Yesterday I wrote two Wall Street Journal columns back to back, which is something I try never to do unless it’s absolutely necessary. Shortly after I finished reading proof on the second column and my upcoming Commentary essay on Alfred Hitchcock, Mrs. T and I hopped in the car, picked up two big bags of Chinese food, and took them to a between-holidays family gathering in Connecticut. That part of the day was fun.
Today we’re looking out the window at a snowstorm through which we’ll be driving this afternoon, or possibly this evening, en route to an airport hotel in Queens, about which more tomorrow, assuming that we get there. The life of a traveling drama critic is sometimes fun, sometimes wearisome, and not infrequently both.
I just read the following paragraph from a New Republic story about campaign reporters:
CNN political correspondent Candy Crowley has taken to running through a checklist before bed. Every night she travels with the Obama campaign, she orders a wake-up call, sets one regular alarm and one back-up on her cell phone, which she places strategically out of slapping distance across the room. Then she writes down her vitals: What city is she in? What time zone? What time does she have to be out of the hotel room the next morning? What day is it? With that, she can drift off before the next day’s campaign coverage. Most of the time, though, Crowley is so scared to oversleep that she’s awake and waiting, long before the alarm–any one of them–ever rings….
Time was when that would have made me laugh. Now it makes me sigh.