Going A Little Too Far

This week started the North Carolina State Fair and The Wife and I are excited to go. We wanted to go this past Thursday, but rain and cold prevented us from going. One of the things about the fair I get a kick out of is what crappy food concoction will they create next. Most are things I have no desire to eat (deep fried Coke), but every once in a while they will hit a home (deep fried Twinkies). While on facebook, local company Burt's Bees mentioned the new craze at the state fair... chocolate cover bacon.

That made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Yes I love bacon and I also enjoy chocolate, but who thought up this travesty. It's can't be as simple as the Reese's commercials of yore. "You got peanut butter in my chocolate." This had to be some bored Carnie sitting there eating the rejected pig that did not get sold and looked at the chocolate and went, "What the hell." and poured chocolate over the bacon.

I do not see how those two tastes can EVER go together, and I'm the guy that likes mustard on his french fries, I actually enjoyed the deep fried twinkie and yet this I want no part of. I don't even think Homer Simpson would touch that, who am I kidding it was probably on an episode and I just can't remember.

As I kept reading stories online about this new phenomenon I wonder what did they try and thought was not suitable. If chocolate cover bacon made it past, I'm guessing the list was pretty short. Carnies need to get a grip on reality here. I know it's the fair and everything has to be deep fried, covered in something or on a stick but please stop mixing things like bacon and chocolate.

Tedious and Monotonous Week

Ever since my trip with Dante to the lower bowels of hell I have been plagued with tedious and boring tasks that takes up hours of my life. What have I done to deserve this? Will this be part of my future and God is prepping me for a life of data entry?

Friday was a good day till I opened up iTunes and noticed a few exclamation points next to song titles. This is iTunes way of telling you there is something wrong. For some reason, the original file was missing and I had to reconnect it. I connect a couple and remembered that a few other songs had this same problem. after a little digging around I found out that over 500 songs where not connected. The only way to reconnect them was. Click on the song, find the proper band, the proper album and then click the song. The problem occurs with bands with multiple albums and on top of that I have the same song on multiple albums. Barenaked Ladies' Brian Wilson is on 4 albums and three were missing. I lost 4 hours fixing this problem.

Next is the new editing software, I love being able to now edit from the house, but I have to learn the terminology of this system. Of course Sony, Grass Valley, Avid and Apple can't use the same terms, no they have to make it hard. Example; to control the speed of a clip in Sony's Vegas Pro 8 you have to use velocity. Come on Sony, you could not call it speed? There are other such randomness that I am dealing with so I get a little bit of a project done and then I sit for an hour sifting through the manual trying to find a tool then trying to figure out what Sony would call it. I can't wait for the day that I can sit down and "Bang out" a project at normal speed. I'm guessing that will be in a month.

To help make some money down the road and to learn the editing software I am making a video for The Wife. I'm cheap and Valentine's Day is around the corner. The problem is I'm using a lot of pictures and most of the ones I need are from the wedding. If you don't remember we lost almost everything with the great computer fry of aught 7 and I never got around to rescanning all of the wedding pictures. Now I am 40 pictures out 200 that I am scanning. Oh it doesn't stop with the wedding, I have honeymoon pictures and other random fun picts that need to find there way onto the hard drive (Then to be backed up on the external drive and finally onto a flash drive).

I'm hoping this week will have something different, maybe some ninjas or a pirate ghost ship. Who knows something wacky. Who am I kidding, it's going to be script writing for the church with a side of editing frustration. I can't wait till I have to figure out how to crop something... and no the answer is not a ninja sword.

Bad and Good Day

I woke up today feeling pretty good, then 20 minutes later I was rushing The Wife to the doctor. She started bleeding and all of the sudden large blood clots started to come along. She was fearing a miscarriage and I went into freaked out control mode, everything was slowing down, but inside I was freaking out. I calmly get her ready as I got dressed.

I flew down the highway towards Raleigh as The Wife makes an appointment. We are fearing the worst and I have never prayed so much in my life. I finally got to the point where I was ready to be a father.

Then I started to think about the last 30 days and I don't think I could handle any more bad news. I was feeling like Job and I don't think I could handle much more.

We get back to the ultrasound room and the doctor starts doing her thing and she is showing us the water sack... we can't see anything and The Wife starts to cry. She starts moving around in there and the next thing you see is this little blip on the screen. She makes it larger and we are still having a baby. We even saw the heart beat. We both cried with joy and relief. You can see The Baby in the picture and we are so excited.

There is one problem though, The Wife is now high risk for a miscarriage and has to take it easy. For the next three days she has to have her feet above her heart and can't do anything. I'm not even allowing her to get up to change the DVD. We have three more weeks until we hit the second trimester and even then things could go wrong. Hey, it wouldn't be us if it was easy. I'll take the hard way as long as the baby is fine.

You Might Want to Rethink That Design

I have to thank Dan Lee for finding this link. What better way to celebrate Christmas than a glowing cross on your lawn, oh wait... it looks like is on fire. I've seen this before... where is it... I don't know*.

I understand what the American Family Association was going for, but you can't sell a burning cross. Good intentions, bad follow throw.

*Still frame from O Brother Where Art Thou

No Welcomed at Moe's

On Thursday of last week I walked by the assignment desk and saw a press release from Moe's Southwest Grill. Their Cary store had sold over one million burritos and they were giving away free burritos for a year to the first 50 people. If I were to rank my favorite burrito places it would be

Chipotle

Cosmic Burrito (If they had more than one location or a location not in Durham it would be number one.)

Salsa Fresh (Another single store, but they have awesome authentic tamales.)

Qdoba

Moe's

Shawn on the other hand has Moe's at the top of his list and I'm not going to turn away a chance at free burritos for a year. We decide to leave Wake Forest at 8:45 and get there a little after 9:00. We see long line and know it's going to be close. We get out and get to the end of the line and find out that we are around 60th in line. Crap, but there are some small kids and the sorts and maybe the contest will be only one per family. Then the other problem were the majority of those at the front of the line... drunken college and high school students. Holy crap, these guys were drunk of their asses. I'm not talking about a little tipsy, I mean screaming obscenities and from what we heard in the middle of the night the cops were called out because they found a dumpster and were throwing people in it and shoving it down the parking lot.

We started to get a little down trodden but then things got worse. Someone from Moe's came out side to take names of the first 50. All of the sudden a mass of humanity started filing out of cars and jumping into the line. They had people saving spots for them and so we were shoved even further back. A manager type guy was walking around and another dejected soul asks him about the line jumpers and what about us. We know we are not going to get the free year, but at least we deserve a free burrito because of the line problems. He says he will see what he can do and then never comes back. The dejected soul gets a little mad about being ignored goes up and asks again. We are out of luck, we might get a T-shirt or something called Moe's bucks, but nothing else.

Shawn and I leave, Moe's did a really bad job at this promotion. I don't think they realized that people would camp out over night in a driving rain storm for burritos. Nor did they realize that most of them would be drunk and probably underage (How do I know they are underage, they were talking about what high school they will have to transfer to next year). No organization was thought of and now they have a group of about 50 that are mad because they were shafted by this disorganization. I know Shawn will probably go back to Moe's, but I will think twice. I'd rather go burrito less than have to think about the stupidity of that morning.

The Longest Weekend: Part 1

The Father-in-law was honored at this past weekend's Ohio State game so we made a quick weekend drive to Columbus, that sounds like a nice easy weekend... Wrong!

It all started with a text message on Thursday afternoon, The Wife mentions that I could play golf on Friday afternoon, but we would have to leave after I get off work. To make this part of the story short, I could not get into the golf game, but we left that night any ways. When we first moved to North Carolina we would drive to Beckley, West Virginia because that is a nice cheap mid point. That was until I started to get off work at midnights. Instead of getting there around 1 or 2 like we use to, it's now 5AM. I was having problems driving that late, I was swerving all over the road and nodding off every once in a while. Last time I checked that's a bad thing to do while driving through the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia.

Friday we arose around 10AM so we got less than five hours of sleep. I drive till we get breakfast at the greatest breakfast place in West Virginia... Tudor's Biscuit World. If you have not had the wonderful biscuit sandwiches, then you need to drive to the closest store and buy one.

After the deliciousness in our bellies, The Wife drives as I get a quick nap so I can finish the drive. About an hour later I wake up and I see a blurry sign that looks familiar. With the signs for a shopping mall and the hills around it I swore I was in Huntington, WVa. I put my glasses on and ask The Wife where are we. She tells me just past the Huntington Mall. This would not be a bad thing if we were on our way to my parents, but we were going to Columbus and this is very bad. The sound on the GPS was down she missed to turn to head north on I-77, then missed the second option in Hurricane, WVa. I try and clear the fog in my head as The Wife panics because she thinks I am mad, I tell her to keep driving. I did not realize we were right by the interstate so we continue on WV Route 2. We followed Route 2 and the Ohio River for and hour till we hit the only bridge between Huntington and Parkersburg. With the time lost that negated the entire reason for leaving Thursday night.

Come On!

Last night Boston Stevie and I were sitting in a live truck waiting for a press conference when he got the idea to look at the competitors websites. We did find any new info on our story, but we did find this story. If you don't want to go to the link, the quick version is this old woman took an insurance on her grandson worth $100,000. Come to find out she has done this in the past to her other husbands and now they are looking into see if she killed them for money. Boston Stevie saw that she has a connection to Ohio and immediately thought that she had to be from Ironton.

Back in June he did a blog post on a rock from the Ohio River and the man who dug up the rock just happened to be from my home town. I wrote a response about how every time something news worthy comes out of my home town. He thinks this is funny and did a search using only these three words: Ohio, Woman and Insurance. The first item on the list was from the Herald Dispatch with this title Ironton native with 5 dead spouses 'obsessed with cash.' CRAP! Why did she have to be from Ironton? Boston Steve went into hysterics and I started down a shame spiral... yet again. How can this continue to happen, you never hear about Van Wert, Loveland, or somewhere like Versailles it's always Ironton. Why not national coverage on our Memorial Day parade? Ironton needs an overhaul and has to stop getting all this bad press. I'm probably blowing it out or proportion because I'm from there, but twice withing a month is way too much bad press.

Making Things Better

This was kind of a rough week and Friday was the epitome of that. I was dealing with incompetence and people who's news judgement were, well, not very clear nor good and it was driving me crazy. Oh did I also mention I had to deal with President Bush and I did not find that information out till 3:30 and his "drive by" was at 4:30. I'm not going into the annoyance of the day, all I will say is I got everything done that needed to be done. Was it pretty? No, but it got done.

Shawn could see that everything was taking a toll so he, Mellisa and I went to the Wake Forest Carolina Ale House to have a few adult beverages and some food. I went all out bad with the food, a chili Cheddar cheese burger with fries and they had $2 Killians. After a few drinks (not Mellisa, nobody want baby Cash drunk yet) and some good conversation I went home feeling better.

Yet I knew I was still not where I needed to be. Even though a lot of the house is packed, I had one cigar out for just an occasion. I'm not a smoker, but every once in a while I do enjoy a good cigar. So I when out back and lit my Monticello White and relaxed. It was a perfect night, it was in the low 70s, the crickets were chirping and every once in a while a lighting bug would dance on by. I also put Lucy on the lead and gave her a little late night snack she was so calm I actually let her off the lead and she stayed in the backyard, normally when that happens I have to chase her down.

For an hour I sat out there and just relaxed. That's what was needed and I feel so much better, normally I would be bruiting over Friday till probably Tuesday, but now I am done with it.

Murphy Strikes Again

I was hoping today would be better, alas not so. I got the battery plate around 10 in the morning only to find out it's the wrong plate. For some reason Panasonic and Anton Baur decided to make different plates for each model of camera. So, for another day I was cameraless.

We developed a system for having only one camera and that worked out fine, the only other problem was feeding video. I guess the Alamodome or the NCAA tournament did not realize TV stations would feed through the internet and there is not enough bandwidth to deal with this issue. So what took 20 minutes last week was now taking and hour or longer. I caused a lot a panic and then at different points through out the day the laptops kept "freaking out." Mine would not respond and then we would have to start the sending process all over. Gibby's was just going real slow.

Luckily for the most part the viewers never saw a problem, except when the IFB (the way the reporter can hear what is airing and hear the producer) when down. Also we had a problem coming back from commercial one time. We did not know they were going to not play the normal music, instead they went straight into the Mariachi band that we sent back. All I heard on the phone was; cue... CUE, J DOG CUE PENN! I frantically started waving my hand at Penn and he response was classic. What? Oh, hi?!?! Welcome back.

So after two days we have had our fair share of problems and I am looking forward to a relaxed morning and a slow start before the chaos known as game day. I may see the Alamo tomorrow and I might do some other touristy crap before we have to head to the arena. I hope tomorrow I will have more time so I can do more than one post a day.

Off My Chest

I had one of those days, the kind of day that it will take a while to bounce back from. While working, I finally figured out the worst thing you can do to a photographer. It's not call him a videographer (that's for Wilson), nor is it going to countless press conferences or meetings, those are boring, yet you are generally inside and don't have to work all that hard. It's not chasing spot news across the area, it is stressful, but your day will probably go faster. The worst thing you can do is take away the hope of a good story.

Today I shot a story about a church organ, it's one of the largest in the state and I really wanted to knock this story out of the park. I was shooting everything possible, we even went up and got the guys tuning the thing. I was even creative with interviews going low angle and putting crap in the foreground. As we finished I realized I shot over 60 minutes of video. To give perspective on this, I average 20 minutes on a crappy story and a good story will be around 35 minutes. I went over board to say the least.

I guess no one realized the President was going to speak tonight so they put our story on hold. Normally this may not sound as bad as I am making it, but there is a history here. When I shoot a story and we save it for later I HAVE NEVER EDITED THE STORY! In the year in three months I've always dished the story off and it never looks the way I want. The person editing doesn't want to weed through my hour of video, they will find something quick and slap it together. It's not their fault, they just don't have the time to find the really good stuff.

This put me in an awful mood, this is the second time in a month I've worked on a story like this and had it pulled from underneath me. The last one never made air, it just went away. All I look forward to is that one story that will allow me to show off my skill and make me want to continue shooting. Every time this happens it gets harder and harder to want to shoot. I had three people reassure me that I will edit this story, I will believe it when it happens... or should I say believe it when I edit it and I see it on air. I need a drink.

My Car Hates North Carolina

For the last two weeks I started to notice every time I turn my steering wheel to the left I would hear a little grinding and over time it kept getting worse. Since we are going to be making the usual three Ohio City tour (Ironton, Columbus, Dayton) I thought it would be a good idea to make sure you know a wheel won't fall off and we go over the side of one of the mountains in West Virginia.

I was hoping for just the alignment to be off, but of course not it had to be something else. I get a call at 8:30 this morning, I stagger to find my cell phone and find out that it is the wheel bearing and it is completely worn out. What the hell! Since we have been in North Carolina I have had to replace my breaks, spark plugs (twice) and now the driver side wheel bearings. There could be another thing. They thought the axle was OK, but they would have to check it out. Great an axle replacement! Well if the axle is fine we will only have to pay a little less than $300. I just have to be thankful that we have a credit card that we keep fairly empty. A year ago I would never have been able to do any of the repairs without going into horrible horrible debt and owing a lot more than we do now. I just hope this is the end of repairs for the year.

Not Again

Holy crap what is next too happen. Back in February I chipped my tooth, I got it fixed and everything is fine. Fast forward to this morning, The Wife and I have had a run of bad luck, our taxes are a mess (more on that tomorrow), the computer blows up, we have not seen each other that much for the last two weeks, so everything has just been off. I go to work this morning to help out the Sunday morning sports show. I grab a Pop Tart from the vending machine and as I take a bite I notice something felt weird. I freaking ripped the filling out of the tooth. Just what we need another bill, lucky for us I'm going to the dentist soon for a cleaning. Hopefully he will fix my tooth as well, but know me he can't do it then and I'll have to schedule an appointment and December will be the earliest they can see me. If anything else happens I going to punch someone. I'll probably break my hand and they will sue me, but that will be par for the course.

(This is not a picture of my tooth, it's not that bad, but feels like it.)

Oh So Close

Since we have moved to North Carolina we have not had to worry as much about money. For us money is a big issue and causes much strife. This month we worked a lot paid the bills and everything was looking good. We even had money left over to start a savings. Then fate once again turned on us by using out cars. The Wife's Honda suddenly had the check engine light turn on. This occurred back in Ohio and then again in November, but we had it check out, paid a lot of money and thought everything was fine. Well, the catalytic converter needs replaced. There goes all the extra money we saved this month. With no overtime on my up coming check, we will be fine, but we don't have any savings... again. It's a vicious cycle and I want it to change. Hopefully we can keep plugging away and maybe this time we can be more responsible with our money. Probably not, but hey we can at least try.

Stuck in the Mud Day

For the most part my days in Raleigh have been really good. I've even started to be feel this sensation, it's called ummm let me sound it out... He Hop hoopi hap hap-pi-ness? I guess this is a normal feeling for must, but for the last few years I have not felt this strange emotions. I go to work, I don't feel angry while there, I go home and don't complain about my job and I sleep better.

Today was a little different. I'm working night side to fill in for a lack of photographers and I get called in early to shoot a press conference with the NCSU women's head basketball coach, she had cancer and is cleared to coach again. I head down to campus and I can't find the Murphy Center. I find the athletic office and find out that the Murphy Center is actually at the football stadium 30 minutes away. I get there 20 minutes later and had to confidence the office staff to let me in a back door so I can shot the last few minutes of the press and I get lucky. I get a player, the assistant coach and then a one on one with coach Yow.

From there the day was not too bad. My package was already shot so I just needed to look up some file and shot a stand up close. I finish the package and then I hear something about Johnson County. Come to find out that we had to go to Johnson County and try to find someone to talk to about the death of some teenagers. We start our hour drive and we can't find the access road where this accident happened. We find some kind of small road and decide to take drive down it. To be honest I was not really wanting to drive down this road. It looked to be covered with Carolina clay, and I need to start heeding my own judgement, because as soon as we hit the clay we start to slip and slide and finally get stuck. We try our best to get out, but our best intentions leave us low and muddy.
By this point in time I'm now covered in mud and we have to call multiple people to figure out how we are going to get a tow truck. Luckily, fortune was turning in our favor, a Kenly police officer sees us and stops. He calls the local tow truck guy and helps us out.

After we get pulled out of the mud by a tractor and get him the info so he can get paid and finally get on our way to shoot the memorial and get on our way back to the station. We finally arrive at 11:30, too late for the news, so our efforts are for the most part are not going to be seen. So I got stuck in the mud for mostly nothing.

Still, today was better than most days at The Network.

Right place wrong time

Yesterday I was in Defiance, Ohio for Sam Hornish Jr Day. Sam won the Indianapolis 500 back in May and since the IRL is only a few hours away at Michigan International Speedway. The town, IRL and Indy 500 thought it would be a good time for a parade. It was a nice and easy story except for my one flaw. I always have something stupid happen.

I was finished shooting Sam at a local hospital for a greet and meet when I took my camera off my shoulder I hit something. Well, that something was someone and that someone was Crystal Hornish AKA Sam's wife. I hit her in the shoulder with 36lbs camera. She was ok, luckily it was only a grazing hit, but every time I go to a big sporting event I do something stupid or have a misunderstanding of sorts:

1. Almost ran over Ozzie Guillen at the All-Star game
2. In advertantly blocked Mike Wilban from the drink station in the media room at a Cleveland Cav's game
3. Yelled KOO!!!! in the Reds press box when said player was pitching
4. Was accused of making an anti-Semitic comment when all I said was I was out of "juice" That what happens when I'm dehydrated and on a sugar low. I slur my words, pick up my southern accent and talk faster.

Overall I'm a good shooter, but stupid things just happen to me.

At least I'm not this guy.

So you had a bad day... Well, make that 2 months

It's been a while since I posted. Not because I've not had anything to say, it's that I have been exhausted and not feeling "up to the task." After what The Wife and I have been through since our marriage, once things settle down we should be able to handle anything.

It all started with The Wife being fired from her job a few weeks before the wedding. We handled that well. She found a Nanny gig three days a week for a set of triplets. Well all things there were going fine till they decided to move to Texas. She's now been out of work for the better part of a month. She's been trying to supplement some work with a "sitter" service, but they have not been helping that much. She's now working one day a week at our church. We went from her making almost $300 a week to $80 (before taxes). Well that caused a problem when her parents decided to enforce a rent increase of $250. We knew about this before hand, but we are so far streched for money this is not what we needed. We have struggled financial which has caused many an argument. Luckily, we have some how gotten most of our bills paid. A few are not full payments, but most are. I hate money.

Then there's my job. I am completely unhappy. I just found out that I have used all my sick day. In my near seven years of TV I have only used all my sick days ONCE! That was because I needed knee surgery. I actually think I'm getting sick more often, because I really do not want to be at work. I've been in trouble for my "attitude." We moved the only decent reporter to a new shift so I have to work with Reporter A (see the ranting post a couple down.) almost three times a week. Even sports shoots are no longer fun. I get to sleep in and go to work late, but I won't get off work till 10, 11 or later and then be back in at 9:30 and have to work with Reporter A because I had a good day the day before. Then this past Thursday my tripod decided that it wanted a nap so it fell over. Oh, did I mention my $30,000 CAMERA was on the tripod at the time. Oh, and the former GM who now is in charge of sales at the the local sister station to the Network was standing there. Oh, and it may cost $7,000 to fix. Oh yeah, and will take 2 or 3 months to fix. It's to the point that I am looking around, but I have ZERO confidence in myself, which makes it hard to look. Also the fact that we have no money makes the moving process a hell of a lot harder.

Also this week I get a phone call with The Wife balling her eyes out. She had a bad e-mail from one of her sister-in-laws and called her mom about it and the mom make The Wife feel even worse. The Wife grew up with a lot of strange circumstances. She was pretty much in foster homes most of her formative years. At age six she was placed in with her adoptive family. At age 9 I believe went back to her biological father then went BACK to her adoptive family. Well this has caused some issues. The e-mail from the sister-in-law basically said we where in grateful for what the adoptive parents have done for us and that we were bad people because we have not finished our thank you letters for the wedding. Also complained that Mikki and her biological sister were late to the church on the day of her wedding making her hair dresser (the sister-in-laws mother) wait 30 minutes. The mother then complained about The Wife's biological sister and they took some comments she made wrong and it "ruined" the reception. Well all of this was news to us. My family had a blast and never knew anything was wrong. If anyone knows the sister know that 30 minutes late to anything is a miracle! She's usually 45 to an hour late. I think that her family doesn't realize that they make comments that makes The Wife feel less of a person which makes it harder for me, because I have to build her back up.

You know what? I am gratefully that they bought a condo for her to rent and it is nice. I know they have helped her with finances. I know that she did not like school and it was a struggle to get her to graduate, but don't bring it up every time we talk or every time she calls to vent about our struggles.

I hope things start getting better. If not, I'm either going to become an alcoholic or start wearing The Wife's dresses smear make-up on my face and go on a rampage.

Unlucky Number 7

It's been a while since I last post. It's not that I haven't had anything to talk about it's that I've been working, tired, or sick.

Thursday started out normal until I got out of bed. I was not suppose to go on a trip with a report that I feel that we are polar opposites. We just have different styles and it makes the day go by longer. We drive two and a half hours, shot a story, and start back. Well The heavens opened up, dark clouds swarmed around us and I thought I saw a woman on a broom wearing ruby slippers. Come to find out a Tornado hit about 45 minutes north of our current spot (Anna, Oh) in Lima, Oh. I'm itching to go. Said reporter is still on the phone deciding what we need to do. After a couple of stops and delays along the way, we finally hit Lima. We find the airport destroyed! 18 airplanes damages and 2 hangers are ripped to shreds. We go into town and find that two hotels have their roofs ripped off. While the reporter was on the phone (notice the trend here) I find a guy who saw the tornado (BONUS!) We go over to the second hotel and see a crew from Toledo, I know the reporter, we talk and we grab the owner. I find a lady that had her car ripped apart by a piece of roof (note again he was on the phone). The satellite truck shows up I'm ready to edit and he is off doing something or other. We have a 9pm live shot and I'm finally handed a package at 8:30pm for those in TV that's like saying Hey I need you to read this entire post in 5 minutes, very hard to do, but can be done. I bust the story out and this continues for three hours.

Then the phone call. We have to stay over night. The one thing I hate about shooting in the rain is having my feet wet. I HATE THIS! So I don't have any back-ups in the car and the only Wal-Mart with in and hour is closed because it does not have power. J-Dog not happy!

We get to the hotel at midnight and then leave at 4am. We do live shots from 5am till 8am. We go around town look for new video and sound. Get back for a noon live shot and at 1pm I FINALLY get to go home. An hour and a half later we make it to Columbus, but oh wait the day is not done. You may have forgotten about the story we originally went up there for. The reporter did not. I do not get to leave work till 6pm. I worked 29 out 33 straight hours. I am tired and go home.

Saturday I was suppose to work with the same reporter, but thank you Micah you saved me! The only thing of interest today is The Wife and I spent way too much money on things we did not need and We ate at Applebee's, I had shrimp (is this fore-shadowing?).

Sunday at 6am my stomach starts to roll. I roll over on my back to hope that will ease it. 6:30 I'm in the bathroom and lets just say I'm not sitting there sick. I go back to bed 6:50 back in the bathroom. The Wife knows I'm not doing well and says I can stay home from church. She goes to the store and gets some Petobismolt I take it and immediately run to the bathroom and lets just say I'm bowing at the feet of the porcelain goddess. We find out that I have food poisoning from the shrimp. In 30 years I have never had food poisoning and I hope I never get it again. I wish I could have died. Only good thing to happen during all this is that I slept all day and watched all of season 4 of The Simpsons.

Monday took of due to illness, bought The Wife her birthday present, a very expensive Palm Pilot, it's not top of the line, but much better and more expensive than I wanted it to be.

Tuesday rather dull day at work, but still feeling a little sick. Except for one thing remember the story I had to stay late on Friday to edit? Well after I worked over an hour to edit and still had him nit pick the piece and had to change shots. HE WENT BACK AND CHANGED IT MORE. Why am I mad? It was my work that he changed. If he asked to change it I might not have minded as much, but he does this all the time. I'm tired of having my work changed and I thought he made it worse.

Today I get in and find out I need to work on a story I shot two weeks ago. I get it started, there are some voice issues and I tell the talent and they will revise it when they get a chance. Well before that happens, I find out that I get to go to Van Wert. Van Wert is over two hours and automatically makes for a long day. We get the work done, but I get off late. I'm just tired of driving across the entire state. Oh yeah and I find out that tomorrow "fav reporter" and I are working together.

Sorry to complain, but I need a drink or a new job.