... It’s Friday. And it’s another busy weekend, with a playdate and a GTG, and housecleaning and laundry, and preparations for some traveling all coming together. That and assuaging the feelings of B who has a complete meltdown anytime anyone mentions that I’m going to be leaving in a week.

Well, now it’s less than a week. Hey, just trying to stay current, OK? Speaking of staying current, that leads me straight into this week’s Friday Forum!

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1) Do you enjoy keeping up-to-date on current events? Why/why not? Where do you typically get your news [TV, the radio, magazines, the Internet, or elsewhere]?

Normally I’m really good about keeping up with what’s on the news, but there’s been such a dredge of bad things in the news, children dying, and nothing that’s really inspirational (except the safe takeoffs and landings of Discovery), otherwise there’s no point. It’s going to be the same thing over and over again – there’s bombings in Iraq, more soldiers and innocents have died, there are still child molesters, and murderers, and random stuff in politics where someone is trying to screw someone else (if not literally, then figuratively).

I ignore the newspaper lately, so I should probably stop getting it, but it’s useful for the comic pages. I don’t watch the evening news anymore – a habit trained out of me by my DH because he doesn’t like it when I walk in the house and turn on the television to watch the news when I get home from work. I miss that – I used to love to get my dose of the news as my transition from being in work mode to home mode after a commute. I’ll catch headlines on Yahoo once in a while, or on Google News, but that’s about it these days.

2) Have you ever been interviewed for a news story? When the story aired/was published, were you happy with how it turned out? Was your photo included with it?

I’ve never been interviewed for a news story. My name has appeared in the paper for a retrospective about the 10 years since Mount Saint Helens erupted (it’s been awhile) but that was a comment submitted by me, since they were looking for reader memories of the incident. They didn’t edit me very much, if at all as far as I can recall, and that’s my only brush with media other than my time in PR, where I never really appeared on camera or did anything significant.

3) Imagine that you have the opportunity to become a foreign correspondent for a week. Where would you want to report from, and what types of stories would you be interested in doing?

Foreign correspondent? Send me to Fiji to report on snorkeling. Or a human interest on how a non-seafood lover survives on islands where seafood is the main course every meal. Don’t send me anywhere dangerous. In all honestly, the only media I was ever interested in participating in as a career was photojournalism. Let the pictures speak, not me.

4) A friend has some major news to share. Are you usually the first one to find out or always the last to know? Do you do a good job of keeping big news a "secret" if the person doesn't want anyone to know? Do you become upset if you're left "out of the loop"?

Oh, I think it depends on the friend. There were a couple of people in my past that made sure I was the last to know, or made sure that someone else told me the major news. That was always pleasant, because everyone really loves to be the last to know, right? Especially when it’s obvious that you were supposed to be the last to know.

I’m very good at keeping big news a secret if it’s something serious and critically important to the person with the news. Of course, I’ve also violated that for the reasons of putting together surprises for people. There was one situation where someone was getting married, and they didn’t tell *anyone*, but I let it slip to a few people so that I could put together a great big present for them. You have to use your judgment on some of these sorts of things, and take the character of the person and the weight of the news into account.

As for being “left out of the loop” – I’m ok with that if there’s a very good reason for it, but if it’s something that I really *should* have known, my nose gets a little bent about it. Usually I can just brush it off. Better late to the party than never invited at all, right?

5) Name five topics [or issues, or stories] that you wish the news media would cover [either nationally or locally].

Aw man, I can’t think of anything for something like this. What I want is the Happy News Network – where only really nice happy stories are covered. Things like people winning the lottery who really deserve it, or long lost relatives finding each other. Letters lost by the post office for 60 years finally being found and delivered. Stuff like that. I know life isn’t sunshine and rainbows all the time, but man, does the news always have to be so darn depressing?

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Have a wonderful weekend everyone...