I just finished UNBELIEVABLE by Katy Tur.

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8. Haven't got her book yet, but she wrote a terrific article

about her campaign experiences for Marie Claire magazine. Amazing account! I've only been on the road covering a story for brief moments. My most prominent assignment was covering one of the first space shuttle landings at Edwards Air Force Base. A bunch of us were camped up there for several days at this little motel in California City. That was quite an adventure but a microscopic pittance compared to what Katy Tur went through.

And nobody I covered ever threatened or insinuated threats against me or tried to stir up an already rowdy and hostile crowd against me personally! The worst I got was when I very politely asked a grumpy old dude at the next table if he might please not smoke his cigar when our food was about to be served, at a restaurant where our whole extended crew of reporters, producers, and engineers was going to have dinner. He glared at me in the greatest umbrage and loudly replied "I will NOT!"

I returned to our table where about eight of us were seated. One of the guys asked how it went and I said the old cranky dude refused. And one of the other guys who was seated next to me turned toward where the grumpy old dude was seated and thundered "WELL, SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST ASSHOLES!" The whole restaurant heard it. The grumpy old dude and his dinner companions got up and left. So I guess that was one way to snuff out somebody else's stinky cigar.

This was, mind you, before laws were enacted prohibiting smoking in restaurants - which came as as a HUGE relief for someone like me, who loves to eat but has trouble doing so with cigar smoke wafting around near me.