A Perfect Day

I love going to the lake. It makes me happy! And we had a great day on Saturday when my friends Andy and Chade invited the Buxtons, the Craguns, and me for a day of boating.
The kids had a great time riding on the tube. There was a lot of screaming and giggling.
The big kids had fun too!

Ami and Ava had the official duty of looking cute, and as you can see they did a great job.

And - I'm happy to report that in my advancing age and after not having done it in a couple years, I can still wakeboard. Yahoooo!! But I am paying the price today. My already bad back is hurting so bad I can barely move. I'm so old. One of my favorite moments was watching Rachel (who is 13) try wakeboarding for the first time. Despite her nervousness, she didn't give up. She tried several times until she could do it. She was AWESOME! All of the other kids were so excited for her and they were cheering and screaming (in very high-pitched manner) like they were at a Jonas Brothers concert. They even asked for her autograph afterward. In that moment, I think another boat-ophile was born. I don't have pictures of her on the wakeboard -- but there is video available. Hopefully, Jodie can post it on her blog. The Buxtons are moving in two weeks and we are trying to pack in all the fun we can before they leave. This was a great day that we'll all remember. For me there is just nothing better than a day at the lake with your best friends.

Perfect Bliss!

I Wanted to Believe ...

I wanted it to be the same X-Files (first 8 seasons) that we knew and loved. But it wasn't. There was Mulder and there was Scully, but it just wasn't the same. Sad.

I don't want to spoil the movie if you haven't seen it so I'll give my detailed review in the comments section.

P.S. - After I initially posted this, Ami reminded me that I didn't include some of the most important factors that contributed to an overall stinky movie experience. First of all the icee machine was broken. After realizing that, I had to return the empty cup for a refund because I wasn't about to pay 4 dollars for a soda. Then, I sat next to some annoying teenagers. (I have nobody to blame but myself because I picked the seats.) They weren't there to watch the movie, instead they just talked loudly nonstop. I finally had to be the annoying adult that told them to please be quiet. The teenage boy apologized, but the teenage girl just kept talking. I have encountered this phenomenon quite a few times. Movies are expensive, I don't understand why they pay the $8.25 when they could text and talk somewhere else for free. Then, the most baffling thing is that 4/5ths through the film, in the MIDDLE of a climactic chase scene, they got up and walked right in front of us and left the theater. I have seen teenagers do that in several other movies too. Strange creatures, these teenagers. Baffling. The people behind me were also talkers but they were a different variety. They were the loud reactors, i.e. "Don't go in there!!" "What is she doing?!" "He better run!" And finally, there was Ami. She sat next to me with her hand covering her eyes the entire time. She has never seen an X-Files; she just wanted to come along with us for popcorn and a soda. I kept having to tell her that she was covering her eyes during completely mundane scenes. That's when she informed me that she didn't like scary movies and that her favorite movie is "The Sound of Music" and that she had to keep them covered because something scary could happen at any minute. I've already decided that I'm going to see Batman alone.

Extreme Makeover

Okay so maybe "extreme" is a little extreme, but I'm still at the "What-Have-I-Done" stage of my new haircut. I feel naked. But I was needing a change and decided to chop off all of my hair.

The goal was to make it easier to fix my insanely thick hair. I hope that it will indeed be easier because it is definitely is one of those haircuts that has to be fixed. When I woke up this morning I looked like Lou Ferrigno.

So what do you think?

Burn Baby Burn (Mail Truck Inferno)

This was one of my most exciting mailbox days ever!

I opened the mailbox and was greeted by a smokey scent. Then I reached in and found a plastic bag with a scorched piece of mail inside. The Post Office informed me that my mail was on a postal truck that burned back in March. (You can read and/or watch the news story by clicking here.) Isn't that exciting? The postal service salvaged a four-month old piece of junk mail and took great care to make sure I got it. Hilarious. But now it makes me wonder if that million-dollar check I've been expecting was on that truck. I may never know.

P.R. Gone Awry

So this cake ended up causing a big ruckus today and consequently became the lead in my newscast.  One just like it showed up at another news station this morning and prompted an evacuation there. The cake had a wire sticking out of it and a number written on the top. It also came with a strange looking ransom note. The other news station became concerned and called police.

Turns out, it was a press release for the upcoming Batman movie. The theater chain here has been doing all sorts of corny little pranks to drum up attention for the film. This hair-brained scheme nearly got the PR chick arrested. That wire is attached to a cellphone in the cake. When you call the number, the phone in the cake rings, then you are supposed to pull it out along with a press kit about the movie. I can't give the local PR people too much credit for coming up with it, because apparently it's a marketing idea that has been used across the country for the movie. But it's pretty idiotic considering most people are a little paranoid about terrorist attacks these days.

I think if the cake had been delivered to my station, we would have realized it was a press release. In fact, during the commotion, I said to my coworkers, "I bet this ends up being a publicity stunt for Batman." I was right.

When the cake was finally delivered to our station -- we were all giddy with excitement. Here we are gathered around the cake:

Here's a chocolaty covered Sean answering the cellphone:

The PR people ended up getting a slap on the hand and a "you-should-have-known-better" lecture from police. But in the end, I'd say the campaign was pretty successful considering it ended up being the lead in my newscast. Who's the sucker now?

Watch Out Below!

I know you were all enthralled with my tower painting blog, so here's another. The painting project is going pretty well. Except for this:
That's what it looks like when you drop a gallon of paint from 400 feet in the air.  (The other debris in the picture is a giant bird's nest that the painters knocked down.) Apparently this is why we're not supposed to park/walk in this parking lot. I'm guessing a paint can might hurt if it were to hit you on the head. And in case you were wondering, paint dropped from that height can splatter pretty darn far.

I Remember

Alright -- I'm actually participating in one of these blog games. Shocking! It's a "Memory Swap" that I got from my friend Shar. After reading the comments people left for her, I realized it could be kind of fun.

Here's how it goes:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one of your favorite memories that you and I had together. It doesn’t matter if you know me a little or a lot, if we’ve actually met in person or not, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.

If you read this and you know me, you need to comment - otherwise I'll feel like a dork with no friends and then this would become a sad memory for me.

You Could Not Pay Me Enough

That's a TV tower. It's like 2 billion feet tall or something like that. (Just an estimate) It sits in the back parking lot of the station where I work and it allows for technical stuff like sending and receiving satellite and microwave feeds so we can do live television. Basically, it's like magic. Yes, there is a scientific explanation for how TV works, but it hurts my brain to think about it. (The fact that images and sound can be captured in a camera, travel through the sky, be compressed into cables and stuff and then come across your TV basically instantaneously is mind boggling.) I write the words and tell stories -- I don't mess with all that technical stuff.

Another thing that my mind cannot fathom is having to climb that tv tower to paint it! That's exactly what some very brave and/or crazy people are doing this week. Therefore all of the station employees are having to park way across the street. Here is our empty parking lot:
The high school across the street is letting us use their parking lots:
We have to park far away so that we don't get red polka dots on our cars. As illustrated in this picture, our parking lot is still splattered with red paint from the last tower painting about a decade ago.
But can you imagine climbing this sucker??!!!?? You can't even see them because it's so far up there, but there are a couple of guys at the very top of the tower in this picture:

They crew has this crazy pulley system to get the paint cans up the tower. A van drives forward and pulls a cable down one side of the tower, so that the cable comes up the other side of the tower with the paint cans:The other side of the cable is stretched all the way across the parking lot. You can see in this picture the cable with the paint cans attached. (They are about 3/4 the way up on the left -- they look like balloons or something.) I could never be persuaded to do such a task. Never. It is total insanity.

On a side note, the parking situation added to the chaos at the station today. The Avid system crashed several days ago and the engineers haven't been able to fix it. (That's the non-linear system we use to edit all of our video.) We got rid of our tape-to-tape editing decks several years ago, so the only tape-to-tape editing systems are in our live trucks. So with Avid down, our editors and photographers were running back and forth across the street to the trucks all day to edit the newscasts. Good times.

Nicole has a video clip on her blog that very much illustrates our plight. Check it out by clicking here.

Fireworks and Freedom

I've always loved this holiday. It symbolizes freedom, family, friends, fun and fireworks! Fantastic. However, the reality of the last few July 4th's haven't quite lived up to the romantic ideal I have in my memories. (Holidays tend to lose their luster when you have to work.) But I refuse to let my employment or a fireworks ban stand in the way of my Independence Day!

The (working) holiday started with an early morning pancake breakfast at church. I had a great opportunity this week to read the life story of a World War II vet in my congregation. I was given an assignment to set up a little display and create a handout with facts about his life. He was a tail gunner in a B-26 bomber and has some amazing stories about the Battle of the Bulge. It added some meaning to my July 4th as I reflected on the sacrifices of our servicemen and women. I have many friends who currently serve our country and to them I say, THANK YOU!!

Not to get all serious on you, but I read a great quote this week about patriotism and the price of freedom. It was penned in the year of the birth of our nation and it is as applicable as ever 232 years later:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of a man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly."

"The American Crisis" by Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Alright, that's enough of the soberness -- now, onto the celebration. A few of my coworkers and I displayed our American pride by popping some "fireworks" on our lunch break. Don't worry, these were the legal (lame) kind. We had a huge box of poppers and other confetti-spewing noise makers and we littered the parking lot in our revelry.

Whoo hoo!!!!

Another reason I love this holiday is because it is my brother Brad's birthday. For years he thought the nation celebrated his birth, and the heritage has made him somewhat of a pyromaniac. Here's a picture of the birthday boy: For his entire life, I've called him "Baby Brad". But now he is all grown up and 26 years old today.

Happy Birthday Brad!