the guilt of being away from the office for a week finally drove me back today. actually, i drove myself back today (har har)... slushy streets and all. the road conditions were actually drastically improved from yesterday and it was a pretty easy drive.
as i pulled into the parking lot i saw my boss sitting on a lawn chair in the snow, bundled up in winter gear from head to toe, watching ice fall from the tower. when the ice hits the reinforced roof at the transmitter building it sounds like mortar fire. incredibly loud and spectacular. of course, no one is allowed to go down to that building in weather like this... can you imagine getting hit by a sheet of ice falling 1,200 feet to the ground?
there were 1 or 2 people at the station who had been there for a couple of days. this is how it works at a radio station... you've got to have a human on the air 24 hours a day. (this assumes the station is not run by clear channel.) and being that we work way out in the boonies, it's often too difficult for the regular staff to brave the elements in weather like this, so the few people who can get out there end up staying for days on end and constantly rotating air shifts. it's not pretty. i've done it before. sleeping on an office floor and taking bird-baths in the bathroom sink is only something i'd wish on my worst enemy. plus, people get a little delirious and start making goofy mistakes on the air.
of course, some really kooky-fun things can happen, too. i think it was during one of these marathons that several of us went nutty while listening to handel's messiah. we got giggle fits over the line that goes "all we, like sheep, have gone astray..." the way it's phrased it sounds like "oh we like sheep!" and we do... we like sheep.
maybe you had to be there.
it's mozart's birthday today. every year the station celebrates by playing 24 hours of his music. and people love it. i, on the other hand, have a really hard time figuring out creative ways to keep from saying "mozart" more than once each voice-break. you back announce the previous work... "that was mozart". then you forward-announce the next work... "and this is mozart." it really takes some thought and planning to keep from sounding like a total dork. and on top of that, i still feel like i'm talking through a head full of cotton (and i totally grossed out my office mate with the vast amount of snot i blew out of my nose this afternoon), so it was a doubly-challenging day at work. plus the death-defying commute... i guess that makes it triply-challenging. i clearly need a raise.
ray & i decided to invite joe over for dinner after we heard he'd baked home-made cinnamon rolls earlier in the day... and still had leftovers. heh heh. it should surprise no one to hear that they were incredibly good. joe's a fabulous chef. he was telling me about the cookbook he got that recipe from, and it sounded like a compliation of 'easy recipes'. i wish i could remember the title or author. d'oh.
but that conversation about cooking really made me want to pull out some of my old cookbooks and pick a couple of new things to try. i get stuck in a rut pretty easily and it would be nice to consciously break out. plus, i really do love to cook... but i hate spending a lot of time doing it. (i've got so much knitting to do!) that probably explains why "30 minute meals" is one of my favorite shows.
Posted by xta at January 27, 2004 11:08 PM | TrackBack