I have been intently following the death of Peter Jennings these last two days. Yesterday, I TiVo’d/watched ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “World News Tonight,” and “Nightline,” all of which were almost entirely devoted to Jennings and his death. It was surreal to see Charles Gibson last night hosting what is officially called “World News Tonight With Peter Jennings,” reporting about Peter Jennings. At one point I half-expected Jennings himself to appear and report on his own death, because it just seemed like the type of job he should be doing.

GMA and “Nightline” had split-screen interviews with Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather yesterday. It was so odd to see them interviewed on ABC, since each man is so strongly identified with his own network.

Why my interest in all this? I don’t know. But I’ve always been interested in national network TV news. My parents had the “Today” show on every morning when I was a kid, and I used to love it when Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley would spend a week on location somewhere – Rome, Moscow, Africa. When I was 14, my dad, my brother and I took the NBC studio tour at Rockefeller Center, and we got to see the “Today” set. After we got home, I took a shoebox and some old Fisher-Price Little People furniture and recreated the set from memory. I decided that my dream job, when I grew up, would be to anchor the “Today” show or the network evening news and travel all over the world and interview world leaders. I still think it would be fun to anchor a broadcast of a breaking news event. I haven’t enjoyed the network news programs as much since they switched their focus to celebrity news, but I’ve still got that fondness for them.

It’s weird that in less than nine months, all three nightly news anchors with whom my generation grew up – Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather – have left their posts. There a few good pieces about this today from the Chiacgo Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, the Washington Post (Howard Kurtz), and the New Jersey Star-Ledger. I particularly like this quote from the latter: “[Jennings] was Mr. Spock to Brokaw’s folksy Bones McCoy and Rather’s impetuous Captain Kirk — an alien intelligence from the planet Canada, offering not a hug or even a reassuring pat on the shoulder, but a poker face that was accented, on rare occasions, by a faintly raised eyebrow.”

I think the quote exaggerates Jennings’s aloofness, but the comparison of the three is apt. (Can’t you totally see Dan Rather as Captain Kirk?)

As Spock might put it, the death of Peter Jennings is, simply, illogical.

I really need a vacation. It’s not that work is particularly bad, but I’m tired of the endless cycle of Monday-to-Friday weeks separated by weekends. And one needs a change of location and routine sometimes. I’m a little bummed that it’s the second week of August and Matt and I haven’t been able to go anywhere. Matt has not been allowed to take a vacation from the New School all summer, which is ridiculous – they shouldn’t have to rely on Matt for everything. Other hall directors get vacations, and so should Matt.

As for me, I have 36 days of vacation saved up and no idea what to use them for, other than as random days off. But a random day off isn’t a vacation. I’ll probably wind up doing what I’ve done the last few years, which is to take a week off in late August and not actually go anywhere.

Part of the problem is that I don’t know where to go. Well, I have some ideas, but I’m either afraid of going to unfamiliar places or afraid of running out of things to do once I’m there. Which is weird, because I’ve travelled to several places around the world over the years with my parents. (And lived in Japan for three years. OK, there’s that.)

Anyway, Matt and I might go to San Francisco in the fall. That could be fun. I haven’t been there since I was 14.

I would love to go to Italy. I think. I do wonder if all the artwork and churches would get repetitive over time.

We went to Washington, D.C. last summer for a four-day weekend. It was a bit of an odd choice, as I spent eight years living and going to school about two hours from D.C. and made several trips over those years. But it turned out to be terrific, because I’d never really visited the city as a tourist, except on a trip with my mom and a friend of hers many years ago. Matt and I chose our own itinerary, steeping ourselves in American history (one of my favorite subjects) and visiting a bunch of traditional D.C. tourist sites that I’d never seen before.

I also have a problem spending money. I’m reluctant to spend money on a trip if I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy it. For instance, I’m curious about visiting Berlin, Vienna, and Prague, because, hey, I’ve never been there! But it’s hard to get myself to spend money on it if I don’t know what I want to do there.

And I worry about things like choosing a bad hotel.

I just need to get better at planning vacations. And take them. Otherwise, life just passes by, and before you know it, you’re old and have gone nowhere.

Peter Jennings has died. He was 67. Holy shit. I know he announced his lung cancer four months ago, but I couldn’t fathom that he’d actually die, or at least not nearly this soon. (But I put him on my celebrity death pool list anyway.)

I always found him the most watchable of the Big Three: Jennings, Rather and Brokaw (although Brokaw was a close second). Now Brokaw and Rather have left their posts, and Jennings – though he’d been on hiatus lately – is forever gone.

Rest in peace, Peter Jennings.