Dirty Little Secrets

Got a secret that you've never told anyone? Need to tell someone?
Well, don't tell me.
Tell PostSecret.
I've spent the last half hour reading other people's nasty little secrets, printed on postcards and sent to the PostSecret website.
Some are funny, some are sad, some are downright profound.
My favorite? This one.

A Victory for Anal-Retentive Androids Everywhere!

Well. This was disappointing.


Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Why couldn't I be someone cool like Chewbacca? Or an Ewok?
This is almost as bad as the time that someone told me I reminded them of Miranda on "Sex and the City."

Health Warning:

Keep doing that, and you'll go blind.

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

For the Birds

Sure, some people are excited about the Revenge of the Sith. Others are waiting to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Me? I'm waiting to see the feel-good love story of the summer: The March of the Penguins. You have to watch the trailer (and if you have Windows Media instead of Quicktime, you can see it here). I laughed, I cried, I said "aaaawwwww."

And speaking of the Revenge of the Sith, a couple of weeks back, I was listening to the Dan Patrick Show on ESPN Radio as I was driving across Alabama. The listener poll that day was, "Which is more annoying: Fantasy baseball nerds? Or Star Wars Geeks?"

So I called in to to the show, and told him I deserved sympathy because my fiance is both. It was a funny little conversation. Of course, Cory was back at work, listening to the show with several people in the newsroom. They teased him the rest of the night, of course.

So, yeah... I told a nation of sports fans that my fiance is a geek. And get this: He still loves me.

And Speaking of Star Wars Geeks:

A little geeky fun for us all:

Cast off your old name! Your Jedi name is OLEKI KEROC of the planet Zyrtec! Find your Jedi Name!

And if that isn't enough entertainment for you,
Try stumping Darth Vader at a game of twenty questions.
It took him 24 questions to guess "Light Saber."

Baseball Fever


Our little Zoe has made her World Series prediction: The St. Louis Cardinals.
She was born in Missouri, after all, though I always thought she favored the Tigers. Apparently I don't know her as well as I thought.

On the other hand, that's the spot where she likes to sit to watch the birdies. Perhaps she'd been taking a little nap and dreaming about the redbirds.

Paging Dr. Freud

Actually, I don't need a psychoanalyst to tell me what this dream means:

It's morning (actually, early afternoon) and I'm just starting to get ready for work while Cory's about to leave the apartment. When he goes downstairs, I ask him what came in the mail (we have one of those groovy mail slots in our front door, so most mornings I just peek down the stairs and I can see the mail sitting there). Anyway, he tells me that nothing's come yet.

So get ready for work and Cory leaves. When I wander downstairs to grab my purse and go, I see a stack of mail. And I mean a stack. At least a foot high, of large envelopes (8x12 or so). I look at the first one, and it's a job rejection letter. I look down the stack, and every single one of them is from a television station, and they're all rejection letters. Actually, they're all rejection dissertations. Not just letters, these are 50-page bound manifestos about how much I suck.

So, that's the dream that woke me up on Tuesday morning. Think I'm feeling a little insecure about the job hunt? Yeah. Me, too.

Obligatory Sports Post

Troubled runningback Ricky Williams apparently really wants to return to the NFL. And it sounds like Nick Saban is entertaining thoughts of letting him come back.

Here's what I worry about. Not the Dolphins... I really could care less. Certainly not Ricky, who constantly gets himself into trouble (let's not forget that one of the reasons he broke his NFL contract and gave up his zillion-dollar salary was so he could have the freedom to smoke pot whenever he wanted. Really). Not even Nick Saban, who really should know better.

The person I worry about is Ronnie Brown. Don't get me wrong... I don't feel too much sympathy for a 23 year old who'll probably make something like $10 million this year. But I really like the kid, and I'd hate to see him potentially sidelined while the Ricky Williams circus comes back to Miami.

On the Road Again...

Last week, it was Selma, Alabama, where the Glenwood Gators won the AISA State Baseball title. This week, it was Montgomery, where the Russell County Warriors won the AHSAA Championship. I've been road-tripping a lot.

Yesterday, it caught up with me. I had to be in Montgomery in the morning to cover the Russell County/Pinson Valley championship game. I ended up parking a little over a quarter-mile away from the stadium (The media parking area was "full," despite the fact that a station from Birmingham arrived about ten minutes after I was and they were allowed to park there). After taking two trips to carry all of my equipment to the park, then standing in the sun in 85-degree heat for two hours, I got a little pooped. Ok... more than a little pooped. At one point while interviewing the coach after the game, things started to get all fuzzy and my knees started to give out. Not cool.

What was cool, however, was Riverwalk Stadium. It was my first time there, and it was really nice. The city built the site at the old train depot, and as you can see from the pictures, they built the stadium right into the depot. Cory and I will have to go sometime to see the Montgomery Biscuits.

The Law of Gravity

Isaac Newton established it, Blood Sweat & Tears paraphrased it: "What goes up, must come down."

I'm sure you all have noticed that I've been a bit down about my job lately. In fact, many of you have never known me any other way. It is a bit depressing when you've been seriously looking for a new job for 2 1/2 years and you don't get one single, solitary, stinkin' offer.

So, it felt pretty good tonight when a co-worker told me, "You're ten times more talented than Erin Andrews." I might add, this isn't a co-worker who's prone to doling out compliments. And, this is someone who's worked in television for almost 30 years. I think (hope) the compliment was sincere.

But, David Clayton Thomas was right... what goes up must come down.

See, today I ran a story about the Russell County High School baseball team, who is playing for a state title later this week. They're also ranked #1 in the entire nation. And, they're good kids. Admittedly, the story wasn't my best work... it was too long, and I wrote and edited it while doped-up on DayQuil. But there isn't a whole lot going on sportswise on a Monday night with the Braves on the West Coast. So the story ran at 6pm. And again at 10 pm on the Fox newscast. Then at 11:00. Finally, after some pressure to do a longer-than-usual segment for the morning show, we included the same story in my pre-taped a.m. sports segment.

I know, I know... get to the point.

As I was in the ladies' room, changing back into my "normal" clothes for the drive home, a co-workers very loudly asked the director what he'd done to get such bad karma. He continued, "because you must have done something pretty bad to have to sit through that piece of shit four times!" Loud guffawing followed, and I hid in the bathroom for the next ten minutes to make sure they wouldn't still be in the hallway when I left.

Gravity sucks.

Housekeeping Hints

Is the screen on your computer monitor dirty, dusty, or downright icky? If so, click here.

Mmmmmmm...

Just enjoying my free frosty. No fingertips so far.

My Bleedin' Heart...

Your Political Profile

Overall: 20% Conservative, 80% Liberal

Social Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

How Liberal / Conservative Are You?

Actually, this one surprised me a little... I took another quiz on the same website a few months ago and it told me I was a "Moderate Conservative." Yikes.

By the way, thanks to the always entertaining Basil's Blog for the link.

Career Guidance

I need a job where I can get paid to create movies like this one. It's a little preachy, but it's great entertainment!

God Bless Billy Crystal

Now go shove your cellphone up your a$$.

Tomorrow is Another Day

Ok... I've stopped feeling sorry for myself (the bag of White Fudge Chunky Chips Ahoy is helping immensely). Things, I'm sure, will get worse as the day progresses.

Don't think Cory's getting off scot-free. He's been sent to Missouri with an assignment. Since this will be one of the last weddings either of us go to before our own wedding, I've told him to take mental notes on everything, decide what he likes and doesn't like, and return with suggestions and ideas for our own wedding.

I also armed him with a camera, so there'd better be lots of pictures when he returns.

Long-Distance Letdown

I just got off the phone after a really depressing conversation with Cory. See, if I were a normal person, with a normal job, I'd be in Missouri right now. My future brother-in-law (Cory's brother Casey) is getting married this weekend. Unfortunately, it's May "Sweeps" and that means I can't take any time off.

So, Cory was hanging out with his family and friends after the rehersal dinner, and wanted to call me before I went to bed (he woke me up last night, when I was too depressed to stay up and watch Conan). It was really sweet of him to call, but it just made me really sad.

I've sacrificed a lot to work in television. When I started working in TV, I took a 57% salary cut from my previous job. I still (six years later), make about 20% less than I did before switching careers. I gave up a schedule which gave me the entire summer off and I never had to work on a holiday. I've sacrificed my privacy (I used to be able to have a drink at a baseball game and not have fifteen people ask me if I'm on the clock).

But more than anything, I've sacrificed my relationships. I know that Cory and I would be a lot happier if it weren't for my job. (For one thing, we'd actually get days off together without having to use vacation time.) I'm so exhausted on my days off that I don't ever call my old friends to catch up with them. I have no friends outside of work because I spend nearly all of my hours at work, and I really have no friends at work because my schedule differs from nearly everyone else's (nobody else at the station works both nights and weekends.) And I have to miss things like Casey and Nicole's wedding.

So, I've made all of these sacrifices. And what do I get in return?

I'm still waiting for the answer to that one. When I find out, I'll let you know.

Apparently, I'm a Real Dog

I don't even like the damn show, and still, I got lured into taking this quiz:


Which Family Guy character are you?

Attention, Marty McFly:

The bad news- The Time Traveler Convention failed to yield any visits from the future.
The good news- They had a DeLorean, though apparently Doc Brown hadn't equipped with the necessary time-travel elements (after all, plutonium is hard to come by... even at MIT)

The Diet Starts This Next Week

In honor of crazy, severed-finger-depositing psychos nationwide, Wendy's is giving away free "Frostys!" (or is it "Frosties?" either way, they're still free!)

By the way, a junior Frosty is 6 oz, contains 167 calories and 4 grams of fat. If you're one of those Atkins-worshipping freaks, you'll have to look up the carbohydrate information on your own.

Curioser and Curioser

I really haven't blogged much about the steroid scandal (gasp!) in baseball... I figure that if you want to hear about it, you're getting plenty of opportunities elsewhere.

That said, however, I came across these statistics on the AP wire today, and thought I'd share with you: (as compiled by the Elias Sports Bureau)

Through the first five weeks of the baseball season this year, there have been 908 home runs. That's compared to 990 last year, and 953 in 2003.

In 2002, there were only 878 homers in the first five weeks... but that was a severe drop-off from the previous three years.

In 2001, there were 1,047. In 2000... 1,183. And in 1999... 1,016.

So, what's my point? None, really. There's obviously been a drop-off this season, and only some of it has to do with Barry Bonds' injury.

But have you noticed that most of the guys getting nailed for steriod use aren't power hitters?

(for more on the MLB "power outage", see this article on ESPN.com)

Public Service Announcement:

If you're reading this in the future, and you have time-travel capabilities, please attend:

The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)(event starts at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

If you're reading this in the present, you can help, too. The official convention website suggests the following:

"...Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history!"

On the one hand, I think they might be completely nuts. On the other hand, it sounds like a blast! Perhaps in the future, I'll travel back in time to attend.

Wedding Dilemma #1

My "altar" ego is having a dilemma next door on Jekyll and Bride. Help!