This morning I interviewed longtime speech coach Joyce Newman for an article on media training. We got to shooting the breeze, and she confessed to being a Blackberry fiend, not shutting the thing down until 10:00 p.m.

"You know how you used to reach for your cigarettes in the morning?" she said. "Now we reach for the Blackberry."

She and I agreed: In terms of satisfaction, a net loss.

I've been in Ohio for two weeks of accompanying my dad through some heavy medical tests. I'm heading back to Chicago this morning.

Here's an account of my stay here.

I have mixed feelings about sharing all this, yes.

But hell.

Right?

As we all chatter about the significance of McCain's so-called campaign suspension, I'm reminded of the greatest parenting advice I ever got.

"There is no such thing as parenting," Chicago paramedic friend Ed Reardon told me before Scout was born. "You know what your kids get? They get you, for 18 years. If you're good, that's good. If you're bad, that's bad."

I don't know who we're going to vote for, but especially thanks to the financial crisis happening in the middle of this campaign, I'm pretty sure we're by November, going to have a pretty good idea of what it is we're going to get.