I've been meaning to write another hilarious post about my roommate but thinking about death instead. In Iraq last week, an aid-worker named Andi was ambushed outside the office of a Sunni political party; she and three security guards were killed. She was the girlfriend of Mike Hastings, a Newsweek reporter who used to sit in the office next to me. He had planned to ask her to marry him on Valentine's Day.

I barely know Mike, and didn't know Andi at all. But still. It reminds me that behind every death toll figure in the newspaper there is a story like this one, Iraqi, American, or otherwise.