Cool kids stay home on Friday nights

I'm feeling better about the weekend now. I'm just hanging out watching Frequency. It's a good movie! It's been a long time since I've seen it.

I wound up working late tonight, but I didn't mind because it wasn't interfering with any plans or anything. There's a little more definite plan for tomorrow night, which makes me feel much better. And I have several things I need to get done this weekend, so it's good I stayed here. I think I might make it a productive one. Or not. We'll see. :)

I keep trying to watch Letterman because Kerri Russell is supposed to be on tonight. She's the star I'm told I look like most. I think if I was bald, though, I'd get Sinead O'Connor. Right now, though, it's Kerri Russell first, Nicole Kidman second, "that Noxema girl"/Rebecca Gayheart third, and some random chick who won a contest to be on the cover of Seventeen magazine like 8 years ago. I don't get that one as often anymore. Anyway, the show isn't even on because the news is breaking in for weather reports.

Makes me glad I'm not working at a TV station right now. It was awful whenever it was storming! I remember there were tornadoes all over Oklahoma during the Stanley Cup finals. (I didn't even know people in Oklahoma watched hockey!) But there were some pretty angry people! We had callers saying, "This is tornado alley. A little rain isn't worth cutting into the Stanley Cup finals for." People were asking us for scores on the game, saying, "I figured since you were cutting in, at least somebody there was actually getting to watch the game," or "This is why sports should stay on ESPN or on stations where they don't show weather." Older ladies would flood the lines when the weatherman broke into Wheel of Fortune. And don't even get me started on what happened when there was severe weather during Oprah! I definitely felt my fair share of frustration from Friends or Seinfeld being broken into, but I never thought to pick up the phone and yell at the TV station.

After so many calls like that, finally I would say, "I'm sure the people with the tornado headed to their house feel differently than you do."

My first night interning was crazy! I had grown up watching the Oklahoma City TV stations, and all the weathermen were the same. They -- and many of the reporters -- were like celebrities to me. So I felt pretty cool when I met them. And then when we became friends, I felt awesome. Anyway, so I was with this reporter and photographer on a police-involved shooting. There were storms all around the city. The photographer was worried that the antenna on the live truck would be dangerous with the storms and lightning around. So he had me calling our weatherman, who I hadn't met yet, since it was my first day, and asking if we'd be okay to get our live shot done. The storm was a couple miles away, the weatherman told me, so we were safe for a few minutes. We had run out of the station in such a hurry that our cameraman hadn't gotten to grab his rain gear from his truck and put it in the live truck. So there I was, cradling the phone between my shoulder and my ear, and holding an umbrella over the camera. I had first the weatherman and then a producer on the phone telling me to count down for the reporter. I felt so cool. :)

So that's the first time that's happened on this blog! I'm really bad about telling stories -- really long stories -- in the middle of other stories as side bits. K always teases me about it, and he even has a fake "top 10" list of my longest stories. Some of them came as side bits to other stories, and some are total stories I just told him. Details are important! And I'd managed now for 2 months to not do that yet. :)

I'm starting to get sleepy. I'm very excited about sleeping in tomorrow. Maybe I'll even really do that productive weekend thing. ... But for now, I'm going to get ready for bed!