Before I moved to Utah to live with Warren, Sunday morning was sales ads and a bowl of cereal before heading off to work. I didn’t give a single thought to domestic or international politics, couldn’t possibly have cared less about the talking heads that feature so prominently on the television. The TV itself was rarely on in my household before either the evening or before my brother was awake, which was frequently the same time.

Even after I moved out here, for the first few years in the old house on 17th South, my routine didn’t change much except I no longer worked on Sundays. It was still cereal and the Sunday sales ads. It’s a habit I picked up from my parents, who for as long as I can remember spent their average Sundays in the same way, except coffee instead of cereal. But it was always the Sunday paper.

My life today still includes the Sunday paper – I read the sales ads, and Warren reads the paper itself and the New York Times, but the difference is the talking heads are always on in the background. Warren has a pattern established, his own routine, that while he reads the paper he points the kitchen TiVo* to Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, The Chris Matthews Show, and his personal favorite, Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

I don’t personally care for any of them, and it would be hypocritical and stupid for me to pretend that I feel a personal grief for the passing of Tim Russert earlier this week. I don’t, however, want to minimize his contributions to both journalism and politics by that statement. Warren was immensely respectful of Tim Russert and he was far and away his favorite of the Sunday morning political hosts, and so it’s for him that I mention the much too early death of Tim Russert, and that in this household in particular, he will be missed.

*i love you, tivo