I wouldn't say it on air.

Yet.

But.

I *do* have two sources. So -- here goes:

The gentleman from Illinois -- Senator Barack Obama -- is slated to speak at the gentlemanly hour of 11:30 at the Albuquerque Convention Center in the town of Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Friday, February first.

Rumours of an appearance the same evening at the Santa Fe Community College could not be immediately confirmed.

The goal is not. . .

. . . just to survive, but to *thrive*!

If I can survive the next two weeks, I can survive anything!

Tomorrow morning -- Senator Ted Kennedy comes to stump for Senator Obama.

Tomorrow afternoon -- former President Bill Clinton comes to stump for Senator Clinton.

Tomorrow all day long -- the state legislature continues to crank out bills in the approaching late-night panic of the final days of its thirty-day session.

We've got people covering it *all*, carefully arranged and timed. We plan to have pieces on everything *ready* for the evening newscast.

Not bad for a small newsroom, now is it?

And then -- tomorrow evening -- I take over board for ATC.

After that?

Well, that's just a bit off in the future, now isn't it?

Tomorrow I just have to juggle. Make things fit. Sound good.

I'm not dead.

Yet.

Stopped blogging briefly. My computer crashed and I lost maybe four years' worth of work, because I don't believe in backing up.

So for a couple of days I got spooked and figured it was either identity theft or someone maliciously hacking in.

Stopped emailing altogether for a couple of days, then stopped doing *anything* online that didn't have to do with the newsroom if I couldn't do it from a station computer. Finally figured "this is stupid" and went back on palace. The world didn't end. It's not like my computer was *disabled* -- it was just, well, for lack of a better term, "wiped".

It's an annoyance, yes -- maybe even a *severe* annoyance -- but it's *not* the end of the world.

Meanwhile -- life goes on! Perhaps it's a good thing that my computer crashed: gave me a chance to focus on what's really *happening*, and play an active role in my own life, instead of idly trying to chronicle the lah-dee-dah, who-gives-a-flying-fish-fuck details of a mediocre life online.

This, then, is the summary of everything that's happened since I last posted:

The newsroom's in flux.

The legislature's in session.

We've got the biggest "super-Tuesday" primaries in US history less than a week away.

That's all you need to know.

Except -- oh yeah -- life's *really* good.

(Fear not, my few but fearless, highly esteemed, and most dedicated readers -- next time I flub a name on air, you will read *all* about it.)

Thirty seconds of chaos.

Tried something tonight that I hadn't tried before -- and it didn't work out so great. Talk about bringing me back down to earth!

Had enough locally produced stories tonight that I had to cut out from the satellite feed *before* the optional cutaway. No big deal, right? Just wait for the last national story you're airing too finish feeding, get the outcue, fade down, then introduce and play what's coming next.

Only I played the wrong story. The right story was 011608-legis.wav, but I wound up cueing and playing 011508-legis.wav. Yep -- I announced *today's* report from the legislature, then *played* yesterday's. Did the "5" look like a "6"? Perhaps, but there's no time to worry about that now. Just time to fix it before digging in deeper.

Whoops. Fade out. "Let's try that again, shall we?" Then play the next thing in line.

Whoops again. It wasn't today's legislative piece, either. It was the piece I'd lined up to play *after* today's piece.

One more time. I go *up* in the list on the computer screen, this time, and wind up playing -- a piece I had already played for the bottom-of-hour headlines.

Fade out again.

Cut to music. Sometimes, the less you say on air, the better.

Breathe.

Now sort this out.

Get TODAY's piece lined up. Double-check. Yes, that's a "6", not a "5".

Briefly announce, "NOW we'll hear Jim Williams' report from the capitol", and I play it.

Thank gawd I *finally* played the right piece.

At least I had enough time -- *barely* -- to play with that I got all today's pieces aired.

But it wasn't pretty. I bled over into the :58:20 funding credit, but not so much that the funders' credits were covered, which saved me from having to read them from script.

Tomorrow I head up, bright and early, to Santa Fe to cover the legislature.

Jonathan Longcore managed on short notice to get me a laptop I can edit sound on. It's going to be *very* helpful.

And tomorrow's a busy, busy, busy, busy day.

In a reporter sort of way, rather than a host sort of way.

I think now that I've managed to thoroughly mangle the host sort of thing I'll enjoy jumping into the reporter-type craziness for a while.

Weird breathing.

Never, never, never, NEVER take a dose of Liu Shen Wan right before going on air!

It's potent medicine! It does what it's supposed to do. But if you take it for a couple of days and figure it's not gonna get around to doing that characteristic thing where suddenly it makes you want to cough up a big old glob of nastiness from outta nowhere, you're just *asking* for trouble.

Then, by the time you realise it's doing just exactly that, you're on the air and in the middle of a sentence.

Yikes! My "Ren and Stimpy" moment is at hand, and *everybody's* listening. (Cue "Muddy Mudskipper" theme on LS-1 in five, four, three . . . .)

Forced with choosing between coughing up my icky blob of goo, stopping mid-story while I run out of the room, or winding up with some disgusting slimy thing stuck to the board and probably shorting out turntables, I simply go as far "off mic" as I can (without fading down, because that is not yet an instinctual action), clear my throat, say "excuse me", or something like it, and move on. I don't even remember the story -- almost certainly something sufficiently grave and important that it *wouldn't* do to make light of in the middle of broadcasting it by self-deprecating humour about the state of my throat at that moment.

And while in personal company you cover your *mouth* when you clear your throat, in a studio my instinct tells me to cover the *mic*. Different actions. Weird.

Aside from that, and confusing myself over time ("am I aiming for 58:20, or 58:30? Oh wait -- now it's 58:25 -- don't *think*, *act*!"), I think I did OK tonight. I'm feeling like I'm starting to hit my stride. Trick seems to be to do it every day.

I haven't listened to my aircheck from tonight yet, so perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I *think* I sounded better. Last night I did the "get into the monotone rut, with declining intonation at the end of every sentence thing" that makes you sound plain bored.

I won't know for sure whether I overcorrected, or undercorrected, or what 'til I hear the air check, but I'll do that tomorrow morning.

It's a weird kind of breathing thing to talk like that. I mean to sound good. Seems to have more with moving your torso than with opening your mouth or consciously breathing in through your nose. If I were smart I'd take yoga or something. But I really have no interest in going down that particular road. Besides, they'd probably tell me it's terribly dangerous to breathe like that. If it is, I do *not* want to know. I just want to learn how to *do* it so I sound *really* good. Smoking's dangerous, too, and look where it landed Ed Murrow -- now they *name* awards after him.

Questionable logic, perhaps, but I'm off mic, and allowed to be silly off mic, and I'm *very* happy.

Only one more day of this!

The good news is after that I get to head up to the legislature, which I enjoy in a whole different way. Chasing stories and putting a show together are two totally different kinds of pleasure. Like bordeaux and chocolate. They can go well together, but only to a point. Or something.

More stories than I can shake a stick at, and *delicious*, dirt-cheap commissary food for whenever I have a slow moment. And commissary food at the roundhouse isn't like the free food you get when they're having "Subsidize the Christian Donkey Farmers' Gynecologists" day or whatever. Because I pay for it, I can partake without impugning whatever damaged sense of ethics I have.

If I'm only at the station for the coffee, I'm only at the legislature for the food.

Never underestimate the survival instincts of a fag from Texas. ;)

You know you're a public radio junkie when . . .

. . . you come home from a long routine day volunteering at the station and go online, only to hear your gas furnace going "toomp -- toomp -- toomp", rhythmically, and start to think there's something wrong with your gas line, only to go into your bedroom to find music from Kenya playing on the radio you'd tuned up "just so" and left on hours before.

Yay! No carbon monoxide poisoning! No need to call the landlord!

Day two of four.

Four days doing evening newscasts on the air.

I'm in heaven.

Was a bit rough going in, and took me longer than it should have to recover. But my final newscast and weather were, I seriously believe, some of the best "on air" work I have *ever* done. I turned it around.

Now I've just got to learn to turn it around faster.

Ideally, I'll take the final bits from tonight's broadcast as my "baseline" and work up from that.

Like, before the first billboard. ;)

Two more days on the air.

Life is good.

Why I'm exhausted and cranky.

Not just because things are moderately stressful. I've survived, and even thrived, on infinitely worse.

Not just because I'm living two lives. I've lived more lives than that, at one time, and done fine.

Why am I exhausted and cranky?

It's because I am sick, and I can't quite tell whether the sickness is coming or going, and not knowing is driving me nuts.

Did a story on the Air Force restructuring the way it contracts business out. Got turned around enough to just miss Congresswoman Wilson's speech, but heck, I bet I got some substance on the issue that the TV crews running away from where I was going when I got there didn't.

I liked my pacing in the piece, too. I was consciously trying to stretch it -- it still came in at 1:41, but sounded way more natural than when I'm trying to cram stuff in.

That was because somehow, today, we'd expected to have several long-ish pieces to run and wound up with a handful of short ones.

Spurt of business.

Have I done more stressful things, put myself under more dangerous conditions, stretched myself thinner in the past for fewer stories of less impact to fewer people, holding less satisfaction for me in the past than I am doing now?

Yes. Repeatedly, in fact.

I have spent the last 23 years of my life chasing stories, variously ill-conceived, only to form them into rambling, aimless narratives and diatribes that go nowhere, accomplish nothing, and affect no one. Much of this blog is just exactly that.

Today was moderately stressful.

And I am worn out tired.

But it was all worthwhile; and I do not regret a thing.

All week, I have been juggling working and doing news. Nice how quick I got back into the swing of news this time around -- circumstances forced me to it, last night, when the AP reported Richardson was dropping out of the presidential race.

Nicer to know I *can* juggle two lives successfully when I absolutely *must*.

Sometimes I do my best work when I'm backed into a near-impossible corner.

Tomorrow: a Wilson event. Then Next week: three ATCs.

Am looking forward to it, but conserving energy.

You are a political junkie when . . .

. . . you stay up 'til five AM in order to hear the results from the Iowa Caucuses.

Obama beats Clinton *and* Edwards.

Actually, Edwards and Clinton.

In that order.

I'd comment but I'm still playing "reporter" so I really shouldn't.

Huckabee takes the Republican caucuses.

Sure wouldn't want to be a fag in Iowa.

Huckabee/Obama?

At least that's what several projections are saying, as I write this.

My internet connection is lousy (thanks, Alltel); and as a survivor of both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections I don't put too much hope or despair in "projections".

But long story short: went down home for New Years' then came back in time to hit the broadcast area by the time the evening newscast was set to start broadcasting about the Iowa caucuses.

Only eleven more months of this.

Wheeee!!!