Hmmm...

Yup... definitely time to update this blog again. What the hell... I've got five minutes to kill... might as well bang something out.

This has felt like the longest week of work yet. Not only are we short-staffed on the morning crew, we're also kinda overworked. It's been kind of crazy, with one of our directors out sick and Reggie, our floor director gone yesterday, I ended up having to floor direct. Lemme just say it's not something I want to do again. I felt like I bumbled my way through the three shows yesterday and I'm certain the directors weren't thrilled with what I did, so at least we're all in agreement on it.

The more I work at channel 30 and the more opportunities I'm given, the less I find myself wanting to do them and get pigeonholed into a production career track. I really want to produce, and I feel like I might never get the chance to unless I hit the lottery. I feel like it's dragging me down at work because I know I'm in a go-nowhere position with very little thanks for the work that we all do every day.

Mmm....

As much as I love cooking, I love the recipes in the blog below. The best part? It's updated all the time and the recipes don't seem too hard to make at all!

The Food Blog

All I can say is it's 4:30a.m. as I'm writing this and my mouth is watering. Yum...

Quote of the Morning

King Kong performed by Andy Serkis...maybe we'll get a scene with KK stroking the leading lady going "My Precioussss"

I love early morning humor...

Sleep = Good

Sleep is a good thing... unless, of course, you have bad nightmares. That was the case last night... when I had a dream some guy broke into my house through my bedroom window and woke up right in the middle of it to hear a breeze tapping something against it. Yeah that's fun...

The other dream was just as bad but in a different way... I dreamt the AP positoin opened up at work, but that it required a 5-year contract to be in the position. Yikes.

Well, bad dreams last night but at least I slept... and I'm actually wide awake at work for once. Time for a local cut-in for the Today show... more on my week and all the fun it's shaping up to be later tonight.

Change in Process

Just a heads-up to anybody who leaves me a comment... I've changed the settings since Blogger's been having problems with spamming lately. If you leave me a comment, and I encourage you to do so, you'll now have to do a word verification thing that keeps computers from leaving junk in my blog. Keep reading... and for God sakes... somebody say something and let me know you're reading!!! :-)

Bring Back REAL Oldies

Every morning when I drive into work I tune my radio into WLNG-FM off Long Island. Without a doubt this is the BEST radio station I've ever heard before. The station with 10,000 golden oldies never ceases to amaze me with the breadth and depth of their playlists and today was no exception. Nowhere else in the country can you hear a set like this:

Stop in the Name of Love by The Supremes
Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp Shoo Bomp Shoo Bomp) by Barry Mann
Raspberry Beret by Prince
and Bee Bop Baby by Webb Foley (a song, I might add, I've not heard in probably the past decade)

Overnights are called the Golden Hours, and I believe it's true... non-stop music sets, very few commercials, and a DJ who actually cares about the music he plays. WLNG's a hidden gem in American radio and it's something I believe should be repeated in other markets. The station is so good I'll often find myself listening to its static when it isn't completely tuned in just to hear bits of songs I haven't heard in a long time. If you'd like to find out what I'm talking about, head on over to www.wlng.com and check out their online stream. I promise you you won't be disappointed.

E is for Empty

Today I actually enjoyed myself. Despite having to work at NBC30 this morning and then having to work what turned out to be a partial shift at CVS I got to go to the Big E with some friends I haven't seen in a while.

Before I get into the Big E I'll start at the top of the day with some fun times at NBC30. After two hours dealing with quite possibly the funnest (is that a word???) morning crew possible- Mindi, Andy Pergam, Garret, and Karen flooring, the tape op threw in the pooch tape (our version of a blooper reel). For a mid market station we sure have a lot of mistakes... a lot of double entendres... and a lot of fun on the air. Real good times there.

After a brief nap before my shift at CVS, my mom offered to work half my shift for me so that I wouldn't have to drive up to the Big E to meet Matt, Megan, and her new husband Erik there. Lucky me... the hour and a half at CVS flew by without incident and I was out the door before I had barely even started working. Thank God I've only got a week left there.

So I get home and wait around for a bit to be picked up. After a nice ride through Suffield to avoid the traffic we get to the Big E where we get hit with the first big bill of the night: $10 to park the car. After driving around and finding a spot we got out and got to the gates... to find that admission is $15, even after 5p.m. on weekends. Here's where we start counting the cash: at the start of the night I had $50. Before even setting foot inside the venue I'm already down to $35.

After poking through the venues for a bit it was time for dinner, which meant my first smoked turkey leg in eight years... since the last time I was at Disney World. Man that was good... even at the $6 price tag. Throw in a soda and later a beer and I'm now down to $21.50. A $3 cream puff later, then $4.50 cheese curds, a $4 Mike's Hard Lime, and a $4.50 fried dough later, and you can see where the night went. Cha ching! The one bright spot of the night was the $1 steak-umms sub in the Connecticut building. For that price almost anything tastes good.

Overall it was a really fun night. It was great to see a couple old friends again and enjoy a fair I haven't been to in almost a half decade. The one lesson I've learned is that nothing's cheap anymore. Yeah I ate quite a bit of food but it still shouldn't empty my wallet to do it. I can only imagine what people with kids go through when they go to the Big E. It's kind of ridiculous. Okay, that's it for me tonight. I can barely keep my eyes open, which means it's time for me to nap before work.

Hells Yeah!

You Are a Bloody Mary

You're a fairly serious drinker, who's experimented a lot with different drinks. You're a drunk, but a stable drunk. You don't ever let your drinking get out of control.

What Mixed Drink Are You?

Longest... Day... Ever!!!

My Tuesday morning started at 6:30... or was it 6:13... or was it 6:19... or was it 6:23... damn light sleeping. I had jury duty in Hartford this monring. Connecticut Superior Court jury duty to be exact... the kind of boredom that can melt your brain in about 5 seconds. I was supposed to be doing jury duty with another guy who works at NBC30 with me, but somehow he got out of duty and ended up working instead. Lucky devil.

I got to the courthouse at around 8:15 after waiting in traffic for nearly the entire length of I-91 between Enfield and Hartford. The waiting didn't end there. At the courhouse I waited in line... and waited in line... and waited in line for like 15 minutes. I figured after that it'd be quick and painless... y'know, go into the jury pool room and sit down, watch the orientation movie, get picked, and follow the advice of Reggie and say "oh yeah I know him... he did it" when I get interviewed by the lawyer so I can go home early. Bing, bang, boom. Blah. It didn't turn out that way at all. Instead I spent nearly eight hours sitting in a hot and uncomfortable room with about 150 other strangers all as bored as I was. Nowhere to go, nothing to do but watch TV. And since we weren't allowed to watch the news we were treated to back to back court shows and a heavy dose of Maury and Jerry Springer. Mindnumbing entertainment folks... if you ever want to try shrinking your brain I suggest you watch a marathon of that stuff.

As the other people got called in for questioning I waited... and waited... and waited... again. Lunch came... still no call. Finally 3 o'clock rolls around and it's down to me and 20 other people. Slowly but surely they're all released til it's down to me and five other guys. "The rest of today's cases have been settled... you're free to go home," the woman tells us.

Great... home, where I've gotta think about my mom working my shift at CVS for me. Yes... CVS was so shorthanded my own mother had to cover my shift because of my jury duty. Kinda sad.

Moving on to much better things... the highlight of my night was being in Hamden and visiting the Q30 crew. I ended up going down there because the Chyron and server were both wiped and last year's graphics disappeared. Naren had two choices... either pull the world's first 72-hour day or just cave in and air the old stuff until he finishes his new look. I'm glad he didn't choose to break the world's record.

As is typical with every stage of my educational career... things get better after I leave the school. In elementary school it was the new cafeteria and gym. Middle school brought the new library. High school? Ditto. At Quinnipiac, this year brings true HD broadcasting and a fresh new design for the news set. *Sigh*

It was great seeing everybody tonight... and great seeing that Q30 is in great hands with Jeff in charge. Melissa and I always joked nobody would remember us when we left... well that certainly wasn't true. Thanks everybody for making me feel welcome, even though it felt real awkward being there nevertheless. If I had my druthers I would've waited a couple more months to come visit, but I'm glad I was able to help both Naren and Fabio out a bit. Best of luck to anybody from Q30 who reads this. Please let me know how the news goes!!!!!

Okay, I think it's time to throw a movie in fall asleep. My weekend awaits... and I hope it includes some beer, some friends, and a trip to the Big E. Hey... a guy can hope, can't he?

I've Always Known...

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Your personality type is RCUAN

You are reserved, calm, moderately unstructured, accommodating, and moderately non-intellecutal, and may prefer a city which matches those traits.

The largest representation of your personality type can be found in the these U.S. cities: Reno, Las Vegas, Richmond, San Diego, Sacramento, Greensboro, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Portland/Salem, Houston, San Francisco Bay Area and these international countries/regions Belgium, Switzerland, Taiwan, Hungary, Luxembourg, Iceland, Netherlands, Guam, Sweden, Czech Republic, China, Puerto Rico, Mexico, India, Wales

What Places In The World Match Your Personality?
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Back from the dead

So yeah, I'll be updating this again starting tomorrow. I'll try to put something here at least once a week instead of just letting this become a big waste of space. For now it's time to hit the sack. Later...

Closing Time

As I walked back to my car this morning I realized I was looking at the Sleeping Giant - something I'd taken for granted for the past four years - for what will likely be one of the last times in my life. I've walked in its shadow hundreds of times without even giving it much of a notice at all.

It's one of the things that first attracted me to Quinnipiac when I came here in fifth grade for a leadership conference. Amazing how I've had a connection to this place for eleven years now... it defintely doesn't feel like it. The Sleeping Giant is an awe-inspiring sight in the morning, as it towers over the School of Business with its red, gold, and green leaves catching the glimmers of the morning sun. To me the Sleeping Giant is a part of Quinnipiac. It represents the enormous possibility of all of us and the school's ability to loom large in the lives of the students who go to school there. Its graceful presence and might is something I'll miss when I leave Hamden for now, but hopefully not forever, in a couple days.

As I sit here writing this I've just gone through a relatively momentous occasion in what is otherwise a fairly mundane life. I've just returned from the last final I'll ever take in college, and I'm happy to report I'm confident I passed it. It's one of those bittersweet moments in life when you're glad it's behind you but you don't want it to end. I have to admit, a 40 question multiple choice exam with two short essays should not have taken me an hour to complete, but despite my hand cramping up I just couldn't bring myself to put the pen down and stop writing this one last time. So it's over, but it's not. I've still got one essay due in Blackboard's Digital Dropbox tomorrow at five, but it's not something that's worrying me too much. Until then I'm in senior purgatory, which is kind of fun.


Okay, after three roughshod hours of sleep last night I should probably get back to bed. I'm running the show at Shaw's this afternoon so I'll need all the sleep I can get. More on that later. Until then, in the words of Garrison Keillor:

Be Well;
Do Good Work;
And Keep in Touch.

College in a Nutshell

Rare that I quote my own away messages in my blog or anywhere else but after I typed it up I realized it's totally true.

Tonight was like 4 years of college wrapped into one... started out the ultimate homework nerd, went to a bar and felt awkward, got trashed and enjoyed myself for 5 minutes, then spent the rest of the time in awkward/non-existent conversation with my roommate. Yup that just about sums it up...

Ahhhhh... college.

Damned

Damned if we do.
Damned if we don't.
Damned if we try to help
Damned when we won't.
Damned when we're happy
Damned when we're mad.
Damn I'm almost out of here
and damn I'm really glad.

Just a little piece of my lyric life from tonight.

Hold On Loosely

And my mind goes back to a girl I left some years ago
Who told me
Just hold on loosely, but don't let go
If you cling to tightly, you're gonna lose control

Ever have one of those songs that just sticks in your mind and fits your life perfectly? Mine for the past two days has been "Hold On Loosely" by .38 Special. Maybe the key to staying sane is to hold on loosely after all. More on this when I have more time.

This Blog has...

... Sparkly New Content, not Sparky new content. Leave it to Melissa... just kidding. You know I like you... sometimes. :-)

Long Time, No Me

So yes, after a one-month respite the blog is back in action. When you hardly have time to sit down and watch the news to find out what's going on in the world you can see why I might not be able to find the time to write a blog.

I can't believe how much homework I'm getting. This is the end of my senior year, and never before in my four years at QU have I had as much work as I do now. Within the next week I've got one paper due, a quiz, two homework assignments due Tuesday for the same class, and a 1500 word English assignment. Oh yeah... did I mention all this was assigned within the past week or so? On top of that somehow I have to find the time to actually watch TV for my broadcast animation class. Yeah... that's not gonna happen.

So to take a little time off from all the bullshit work I've had, I decided to head out to Blockbuster to rent a movie. They've got this new MoviePass deal going on, where you can rent as many movies as you want each month, only taking out one at a time, for about $15 a month. Not a bad deal in my book, since I can now actually watch movies again without putting a huge hole in my wallet. But I digress...

I rented "Without a Paddle" tonight and it may be the first movie I'll actually have bought in the past couple years. It's extremely funny in so many different ways. On top of that it's got a message that sort of hit home with me. One of the characters said "it doesn't matter how much money you've made and lost. You can always earn it back. The one thing you can never earn back is lost time." It's so true, and it makes me want to kick my ass into gear and to move on with my life.

Now it's also true that money's never been a big factor with me. I know I'll never be rich. I'll be happy just making enough to pay all the bills, have a modest house, and enjoy my life. But time... time's the thing that seems to keep slipping away faster. And every time I try to figure out where the time has gone even more seems to slip through my fingers.

Even now I realize I've lost time... time that I should probably spend on doing homework, or writing a paper, or maybe doing both at once. Yup... six weeks and the stress of school is all over and done with. Life finally begins, and at long last I think I'm ready for it.

Gotta Love Boredom

So what do I do when I'm not in the mood to do homework? One of those weird blog questionaire things. I'm not getting all girly on this crap lol... just doing it for the sake of curiousity and procrastination.

You Are a Visionary Soul

You are a curious person, always in a state of awareness. Connected to all things spiritual, you are very connect to your soul. You are wise and bright: able to reason and be reasonable. Occasionally, you get quite depressed and have dark feelings. You have great vision and can be very insightful. In fact, you are often profound in a way that surprises yourself. Visionary souls like you can be the best type of friend. You are intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, and a good healer. Souls you are most compatible with: Old Soul and Peacemaker Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Class is Cancelled!

So I get up this morning and on a whim decide to check my e-mail before heading off to class. It's a good thing I did because my one class today was cancelled by the prof since his kids are sick. So what do I do with the extra free time I've been given? Well, something inside me said "do school work" and so that's what I've been doing for two hours now.

I should go to the store quick and pick up some of the food I need and I could do some laundry as well, but, well, I'm just too damn lazy so I think I'll just sit here a while longer and see what happens.

Eating lunch I was flipping around on TV and Unsolved Mysteries caught my eye. I never liked that show as a kid since the music always scared the hell outta me. But every now and then I'll see something good on there. Today they were talking about a Bible Code, in which important historical events and figures appear to have been planted in the Hebrew version of the Bible. Things like Nixon resigning, the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, Pearl Harbor being attacked, and even the Wright brothers inventing airplanes. Coincidence or not it's still interesting stuff, made all the more interesting after reading The Atlantis Blueprint. So do I think maybe we were settled by some other civilization or at least given clues about our world by somebody else? At this point in my life I'm sort of inclined to think so after what I've read and with all these random "coincidences" in the placement of religious strucures and things found in religious documents from the past.

As for the book I linked to above, if anybody wants to borrow if you're more than welcome. It was a challenging book to read but it was really good at the same time.

New Look

OK so since I'm a New England kinda guy and I really liked this blog format I figured I'd change to it. Hope it works for everybody... I really like it.

I'm Famous! (Kinda)

Yeah, like the title says... since the QU public relations department is so industrious they sent the photos John Morgan took at last week's live Q30 newscast to my hometown newspaper, the Enfield Press. So me and Melissa ended up in the paper today... for all 5,000 subscribers to see, including my neighbors and half my family. Is this it for my 15 minutes of fame? I sure as hell hope not!

Busy Busy Busy...

Wow talk about your busy days!

For the first time in a couple weeks I actually fit over 7 consecutive hours of sleep into one night.

It felt so good to wake up and yet I still
felt like I could sleep more.

Needless to say my nice relaxing day ended the minute my alarm went off... 10 minutes late. I ended up rushing off to class, finding a spot in Hogan only to find that the shuttle driver was on her break... at 5 minutes to one. This is the old lady who once let us on the shuttle then decided to take her break with us sitting there.

So I get out of class and head to McDonald's to get a fish sandwich cuz, you know, it's Ash Wednesday. So I get back home, drop the bag of food on the chair, and go to the bathroom. Literally... before my hands are dry... my phone's ringing. Graphics! Graphics! Graphics! Yup... here we go. So it's an hour and a half straight of doing graphics while munching with the other hand.

Do the news which ends up totally screwed up but thats nobody in particular's fault... for the most part. That takes another 4 hours out of my day. So it's back here... eat... work work work since my history prof apparently has no life.

To top all this off I'm thinking about graduation coming up and getting all these little reminders from all these random places and people... hello... not something I really want to be reminded about every five minutes. But it's ok... it's all almost over. With graduation comes the end of late night IM's for graphics, mid-class phone calls about news stories, and being doing a million different jobs for a million different people at Q30. Don't get me wrong... I love doing it all. But Q30's not my life. It can't be. I've got a real job... I've got an apartment with rent I myself have to pay. I've also got dreams and aspirations and in some ways I almost feel like sometimes Q30 (and by extension Quinnipiac itself) makes me not want to do it anymore.

When I leave here in May I want to come away remembering I had a great time... not that for two nights every week of my last semester I was coming close to nervous breakdowns trying to do work for what has really come down to being a job that pays no money and has no real tangible benefits for me anymore - at least at this level. The looming history test didn't help much with the whole nerves situation.

It's amazing how four years changes things. Coming in naive with the whole world in front of me, and now feeling like college life has passed me by only to be replaced with a 20+ hour a week job that comes attached with more stress than my real job. When I see my roommate for only 30 minutes a day (if I'm really lucky) I know I'm spending too much time on work and not nearly enough time on life. I kept thinking my last year in college would be the best time of my life... finally being out of the dorms and being 21. But it's quite the opposite... I feel like I'm in the real world now and feel like I've lost a bit of what I still hear from friends at other schools. Sad but true... if I could be a junior perpetually I probably would... at least for a couple more years.

Same old same old...

So this is day one of the new blog... let's see how this thing works. I haven't tried posting stuff in anything like this since back when I still had my SubProfile. Dang that's been a long time. Oh well...

Nothing new really going on. I'm still freaking out about graduating from time to time but that's nothing new. NBC had their info session on campus but unfortunately I had classes so couldn't go. I gotta remember to ask for the day off from work for the job fair when NBC30 swings through. If I have to find a cheap-paying job after I graduate I'd rather work near home at NBC30 than anywhere else, even as much as I'd rather get out of the area and just explore the country.

Too bad my income doesn't match up with my dreams. Yeah... that'd be nice.