Old friends, new city

We were so excited to see Joel and Cherrie Girdner in Madison Sunday night. We met them at The Old Fashioned for a little Wisconsin fare. Since they're visiting, where should they go? 

Cherrie just got her masters so these two Iowans wanted to take the drive north!

We've known Joel and Cherrie since at least 2007. Jim, Joel and I all worked together in Missouri and he has always been one of my favorites. Jim was Joel's chief photographer, so it was fun for Jim to see Joel find his voice as a photojournalist. Joel was also involved in some real turning points in my early career and that is personally something special to me. We worked on a couple of stories that ended up being honored with EMMY nominations... one of which we took home. Though it's never about the award, it's a wonderful memory to look back and go, "How did we do that?" Back then, stories were like our babies. Now Joel and Cherrie have real babies so it's neat to see life go on.

Joel is now the senior photographer at KCRG in Cedar Rapids. And coincidentally, he works with two of my former co-workers!  His executive producer, Brandi, was my 10 p.m. producer in Madison!  And Joel works with our former Missouri 10 p.m. producer, Larry...so, it's a reminder that the news business is small.

If you have any suggestions for them, they'll be in Madison for the next few days. I gave them a list but I'm sure I left out a lot!