This week, I’ve been filling in for our morning anchor. This has forced me to go into the newsroom and talk to people.

While I’m not a fan of talking to people, I did get a chance to play with some doggies.

Apparently, the SPCA comes by the stations every Friday to show off the dogs they have for adoption.

As a journalist, my job was to play with the puppies to make sure they’re as much fun as the SPCA makes them out to be. Journalists also observe. So I kept pointing and saying, “Look at that li’l doggie! Look at him!”

On the talking to people issue, part of my job involves interviews with other affiliates about a national story each morning. One day this week, I was talking about the FAA’s new regulations about drones. I had covered a story at DFW about the need to register drones a few months ago, so I had at least a bit of history on the topic.

I was not prepared, however, for one of the questions an affiliate would ask.

The host of the morning show on one station, and I’m not going to say which one, but it wasn’t in Texas, asked me, and I swear I’m not making this up, asked me if drones can be invisible.

“I’m positive they’re not,” I explained. “That’d probably be an entirely different set of FAA regulations.”

And then we wrapped up, I spun around in the chair from phone to microphone and read the next newscast, thinking, “I’m almost positive they’re not. Really, though, I don’t know what they’re working on at Area 51, but it’s questions like that that make me want to spend more time with doggies.”

I’ve also been interacting with my co-workers more than I usually do when I’m out skulking around the country.

I was in the newsroom with one of our reporters when the Supreme Court ruling on immigration was issued. I mentioned that I was getting a lot of emails from people reacting to the decision, or “reax,” as we call it in journalism because we don’t have time to sit around reciting three syllable words.

What we do have time for, though, is for a discussion that ends with me suggesting things with Jay wouldn’t work out because he liked Godfather III.

Governor Abbott sent a statement praising the decision, saying “The president himself said he is not a king.” Senator John Cornyn would write that the president ignored the will of the people and “the president can’t circumvent the legislative process simply because he doesn’t get what he wants.”

Then I’d see a note from the Catholic Bishops of El Paso and neighboring Las Cruces, New Mexico. We met when I saw the pope earlier this year and I’m now on their mailing list (I also helped myself to a t-shirt from the unexpectedly large souvenir corps that had descended up on the region). They wrote that the decision would shatter the hope of four million migrants, citing Exodus in saying “We shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger–we were strangers once, too.”

They kind of went in a different direction than the governor.

I explained that I’m Catholic myself (which means that t-shirt is not insensitive), and Jay and I would discuss our religious backgrounds. This discussion would lead to him explaining his experience with Catholicism revolved around the Godfather films.

I would explain that’s racist because I’m Italian.

Then we would discuss how some of the things in the Godfather that struck him as strange seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me.

For instance, I remember a couple of instances as a child where a bunch of relatives who I had never met would gather around tables in someone’s basement for a giant meal. But this is where the Godfather and I break apart: I do not recall large, suit-clad men standing with their hands crossed in front of them near the doors.

Also, you needed to act like you knew those relatives. All 150 of them. They’re your uncle. Your uncle from Waterbury.

But now that I think of it, those invisible drones could really work out.

Imagine driving home one day and spotting a 12 pack of Mountain Dew passing through the air as you sit in rush hour traffic.

“Oh good, my soda will be there when I get home,” you’ll say to yourself.

When the invisible drone figures out how to head into your house and put some soda in the refrigerator so it’s cold by the time you pull into the driveway, then we’ll have this whole thing figured out.

I bet they’re working on refrigerator-stocking drones at Area 51 right now. I’ve been to Rachel, Nevada. The soda was ice cold. Ice cold.