get me outta here...

Story Time!

*Warning* This story is as pointless as the things that happen in it.
(Makes you wanna keep reading, huh?)

OK, the first thing you need to know is that this story begins at the end of my shift, after the show, when I'm getting tired and hungry, which equals cranky. And I'm probably crankier than usual this week because I put myself on a healthier diet that includes eating that Special K stuff for breakfast when I get home from work. And to be extra-good, I've even been following the serving size on the box.

Little-known fact: The serving size for a bowl of Special K is 3/4 of a cup! Do you know how much cereal that is? Let's put it this way--it's not enough to cover the bottom of one of my big red cereal bowls (which, by the way, I used to fill to the brim with Lucky Charms). I actually started using these little 1-cup bowls I found in my closet so I wouldn't get so depressed eating so little cereal. I'm actually starting to wonder if people losing weight from eating this stuff has more to do with the serving size than the ingredients.

So being hungry and looking forward to a bitty bowl of cereal probably makes me more irritable than I would be otherwise.

After the morning news show, we do two live news cut-ins on the half-hours. We tape the cut-ins, and then during the next two half-hours, we just run the tape, since the anchors have to go out on story assignments the rest of the morning. All of our video runs off of a digital server, so after we've recorded both cut-ins, we have to dub the tape into a digital editing program, then send it to the server. Once that is done, I get to go home.

So I went to dump the cut-ins into the server, and every time I tried to play the tape, the tape deck stopped and flashed up this error message on the monitor. I tried and tried, over and over, to no avail. There are only two dubbing decks in the whole station, so when one is broken, you had better hope and pray the other one works.

The other one is in the sports office, so I went in there anticipating disaster because THAT deck had been broken the week before. Thankfully, though, it was working today, and I finally was able to send the cut-ins to the server.

I then decided to be a good employee and take the time to fill out an equipment report, which is what you do when you want the engineers to fix something. So I went down the hall, grabbed a form, and filled it out. Usually I just tape the forms to the engineering door, but I couldn't find any tape in the control room or production office nearby, so I went BACK down the hallway to grab a piece of tape from the newsroom.

Both tape dispensers on the producer desks were empty.

Have you ever heard the rule, "You kill it, you fill it?" Well, it's a little common courtesy I once heard at camp, and unlike other things I learned there like how to use a compass and how to make a splint for a broken leg, I have applied the Kill-Fill rule later in life.

But I guess no one at the TV station ever went to camp. Or maybe they did, but they weren't paying attention at lunch.

Anyway, I sighed, picked up both tape dispensers, and took them to the front lobby to get some more tape out of the supply closet. I filled the first and was headed to the second when I realized the little spool that the roll of tape is supposed to sit on was missing.

*Sigh.*

So I found a paperclip, re-bent it to fit between the grooves on either side of the tape dispenser, and slid it through the middle of the roll of tape. Voila. I'm no MacGyver, but I am a bit of a makeshift mechanic when I have to be.

I took the tape dispensers back to the newsroom. I put a piece of tape on the equipment form. I went down the hall. I stuck the form to the door. I grabbed my stuff from the newsroom on my way back toward the lobby, hoping the receptionist had refilled the candy dish and that there would be a big, fat Reese's cup on top just for me.

"No chocolate," said the receptionist. Dang. I settled for a couple of Laffy Taffy (banana flavored, of course!) and headed out the door at last.

When I got to my car, there was frost all over the windows.

*Sigh*

I hate scraping off my car. I know, I live in Indiana, and I should be used to it by now, but I still hate doing it. Plus, I didn't have any gloves, so the chipped-away frost turned into snow all over my hands. Cold and annoying!

I finally got in my car and dug for what I knew was in my purse--one cream-colored glove. As is the custom every winter, the glove's match had developed a hole in one of the fingers and then disappeared altogether, probably to be found sometime in late July. I didn't care; I pulled a Michael Jackson and donned the one white glove on the hand that was the coldest. As I shoved my other hand deep in my coat pocket and pulled out of the parking lot, I wondered if my fellow Hoosier native had originated his one-glove look on a chilly Gary, Indiana morning when he was scraping off his car.

Oh, by the way, I did end up running a story about the space shuttle taking off this morning, and it was awesome. One of my anchors made fun of me for geeking out about it (and Deuce, if you're reading this, don't deny it!), but I don't care. Maybe it's because my alma mater is the Cradle of Astronauts. Maybe it's just because space is AWESOME! Whatever. I was proud of it and that's all that matters to me right now.

I'm going to bed.

Happy ramblings...
Lis