well that was unnecessary.

Good afternoon everyone! How are you?
This post is going to be a little bit different; we all know the virus is raging, so I’m not going to go into depth on what the cases numbers are and what deaths we have. I’ve got some other stuff to talk about. . .

How about Tuesday? I’ll get to what I’ve cooked this week a little bit later, but let’s talk about Tuesday.
So, my meteorologist and I get along well with all our directors (who are remote, in Lincoln). We get along swell, we chat, we laugh, we have a good time during the shows. A really fun time.
Except on Tuesdays. Tuesdays was have Director A and B, who are quiet and don’t say much. They barely say anything when prompted, partially due to past drama that I want no part of. Now, I’m grown used to this (it’s not fun and brings down the morning) and I don’t really care. We dont have to talk to each other, or like each other, we just have to work together.
Well. . .that changed on Tuesday. Tuesday is where I went from “I don’t care,” to “WTF? NOW we have a problem.” Long story short something was wrong/inconsistent in my show (which I take responsibility for, since I am the producer), which resulted in the following:
We’re in a 2-minute commercial break. Director B is silent. Director A starts complaining about the mistake, voice raised, and Meteorologist starts defending me. (It should be noted this is the only director we ever have a problem with.) They’re going back and forth, I’m trying to keep it together for the camera, and they stop just as we get back from break. So I get no chance whatsoever to defend myself, respond, or do anything. This was 30 minutes into a 2 hour show.

Now, here’s the thing — I may have made a mistake or two. I take responsibility for that as a producer. And although I was shaken a bit for the rest of the show (I mean, I was yelled at for crying out loud, IN MY OWN SHOW), afterwards I wished I’d had the space to say something.
Because nobody, NOBODY is ever going to start shit in the middle of my show again. Nobody. This is MY show, it will go how I say, and if anyone has a problem, they can save it for after the show.

For crying out loud, that mistake Director A was talking about could have been addressed in an email (and my boss agrees with me). It did not, and should not, have been this huge thing in the middle of my show.
Needless to say it was unprofessional, immature, made me exceptionally angry after I had calmed down, and lowered my opinion of Director A immensely.

But it’s done. It happened. And God help me if it ever happens again. If I have to do something different on Tuesdays to accommodate Director A, then fine. But God give my strength to shut that shit down next time….

____

Now — onto more pleasant news! This week I tried WalMart Grocery Pickup for the first time! I’ve never tried it before (I never had a real reason to and it would make me feel too lazy) but I thought I would try it given the whole social distancing thing.

And let me tell you — it was so cool! It’s so convenient!
All you gotta do is go online, sickout what you want, schedule a day and time window to come pick it up, and they put it right in your car! It is seriously the coolest thing ever! Now, I still had to carry all the bags back up to my apartment (I bought in bulk for a lot of meals), but I am totally going to try that again.
Why doesn’t everyone do that all the time?

Oh! And some of our fun directors this past week gave me some nicknames. One of our Questions of the Day was, “If you had to change your name, which one would you pick?” and I said how I never had a real nickname growing up, since Erika is hard to shorten and all. So, in response, my meteorologist and directors started jokingly calling me a variety of nicknames:
Seebs (a la “Pheebs” from Friends), Skippy, Skippy Seebs, Peanut Butter.
Personally I prefer Seebs, and they are honestly so funny. I love it.

Meteorologist also used his 3D printer to make Bane-style face masks a la The Dark Knight trilogy, and made one for me as well!
See here:

I decided to show @ErikaNews2 what the masks I have been 3d printing

So naturally I’m quoting Spongebob while doing an impression of Bane

Naturally. pic.twitter.com/uoDSirHPNg
— Brayden Murdock (@MurdockWx) April 17, 2020

Now, let’s talk about Saturday (yesterday). So, my boss approached me Thursday morning and said, “Hey, X is still out, she’s almost recovered but I may need you to do the evening shows on Saturday.”
……well, when she says “may” here, that basically means “You are working on Saturday,” given how long X has been out of the office (3 weeks or so). So, I said “Okay” and went home, and mourned the loss of my weekend in the appropriate fashion. I was honestly really looking forward to the weekend (especially given Tuesday), and now I wouldn’t get one.
Saturdays are the bulk of the weekend, and that was gone in a flash.

Anyway, so I mourned the loss of my weekend, I reached the “acceptance” stage in the stage of grief, and on Friday my boss confirms that I would need to work Saturday 2 p.m. to about 10:30-11 p.m.
So Friday after work I enjoy what little time off I had to the fullest — I even made a dark & stormy, which I hadn’t had for awhile.
Fast forward to Saturday — I had showered and got my hair ready the night before, and was hanging out before work at 2 p.m. Boss calls me at about 12:45 p.m., says there is a fire burning northeast of town. I had zero time to put on makeup or do anything, so I jumped in my clothes, ran over to the studio, grabbed a marked car and went to the scene of the prairie fire.

So I went right to where I was supposed to go, to find a state trooper stopping people so emergency services can get to the fire, right? So I drive around a little bit more and try to find spots where I can get phone-video of the fire, right? So I go to the road on the far east side of there the fire is and do a Facebook Live, getting some good footage, and some footage of a plane flying overhead to put it out.

Now it’s like 2 p.m. at this point, and my boss is already producing the 6 p.m. show for me so I have less to worry about. So I go back to the original place I was — where the trooper was — do another Facebook Live, and try to talk to the trooper — who knew nothing.

So it’s about 3 p.m. when I get back to the studio and get my phone video about our computer and into our editing software. The 6 p.m. show is done for the most part, and I’m just trying to make calls about details on the fire (all I have is observations at this point), getting my video onto the computer (which have to imported one at a time), writing the script, finishing what needs to be done, all all that jazz.
Now, I’ve only done evening-side one other time —which a kid fell off the stage at the high school — which was arguably more stressful because we has breaking news AND had to do a live-shot. This time it was just breaking news. I have such bad luck lol….

Anyway, so I finish the show, my sports guys has his stuff ready to go, and we do the 6 p.m. show. No problems, super smooth. Now, for the 6 I had hardly any information about the fire becasue nobody answered their phones:
the town fire department, the fire marshall, the fire chief, NSP dispatcher, the NP Police. Either nobody answered or had no info.
Well. . .same for the 10 p.m. show. The 10 p.m. show is just a repeat of the 6 with more information/new stories — like this Cruise Night and Ceremony — but still no answers on the fire for the 10 p.m. show. I sent our sports guy out to get what he could, but all he cold get was an eye-witness interview and footage of the burned areas.

Anyway, but the 10 p.m. show went well. Again, no hiccups in either show. The only thing was that I had breaking news in the fire, and nobody could tell me anything about it. Maybe whoever is working tonight can get some info. . .
But after the shows I went home, had a drink, and went to bed.

Now, back to pleasant news! I am sending WF a care package! I’ll drop it in the mail tomorrow. I’m sending him and his family some brownies and cookies I made myself! I hope he likes it!