Mary Horowitz writes crossword puzzles for the Sacramento Herald. She's loquacious to a fault. When kids at a career day make fun of her for being single, she accepts a blind date with Steve, the cameraman for a CNN-like news network. Within minutes she decides he's the man for her. He's quickly put off by her constant verbiage and over-the-top advances; he makes an off-hand remark about going on the road with her, and splits. She's moonstruck, writes a sappy crossword puzzle, loses her job, and decides to follow him as the news team crisscrosses the Southwest; Steve's team eggs her on. Then she falls in a mine shaft, and she and Steve become a story; is it a love story?

When a volcano expert becomes convinced that a cataclysmic natural disaster is about to unfold, a volcanologist Professor John Shepherd and his graduate students believes that recent unexplainable volcanic activity as all of the volcanoes in the world are going to erupt and kill every living thing on the planet! They try to convince the government that their theory is true not a joke while also trying to figure out how to stop it before time runs out!