I had a weird start to the day when I was awakened at 4:30 this morning by a weird, garbled, disembodied voice coming from my living room. The weather radio was alerting me to some kind of warning, but the reception was really bad, so every other syllable or so was cutting out and I couldn't make out what was going on. I got the sense that it involved a storm with hail and wind, but I couldn't tell where it was because the words it was cutting out were generally the place names. So I turned the TV on, figuring that if it was serious, they'd be covering it. I'd forgotten that they now start the morning news at 4:30, so it was the regular morning newscast, with eventually a mention of a storm on the other end of the county, so I went back to sleep.
And then another warning went off, similar garbling, and I assumed it was the same storm, just renewing the warning. I went back to sleep. Then it went off again. All this time, there were no storms anywhere near me, but apparently it was pretty nasty south of here, with windshields being knocked out by hail.
Watching a bit of the early morning news gave me a dose of nostalgia for when that was the show I worked on, back in my news intern days. Fortunately, we didn't go on the air until six, so I didn't have to be there until 5:30. I liked working that shift because it was just the producer, the anchor, and me in the newsroom. The producer gave me stuff to write, the anchor sang while doing her hair and makeup, and then once the newscast went on the air, it was just me and the daytime assignment editor (who'd shown up by then) in the newsroom. I wrote the cut-ins that ran on the half-hour during Good Morning America, and the rest of the time I could work on stuff like practicing editing videotape and putting together a resume tape. Being there early also meant I got first dibs on the most interesting stories to go out on after the morning story meeting.
But I'm very glad I'm not doing that job now. It was so not me that only sheer stubbornness got me through it to get a degree. I don't know what I'd have changed to or should have changed to. I probably should have pursued my real interests and studied television/film writing, but then that would have required moving to LA, where I know I wouldn't have fit in and probably wouldn't have been very happy. So it probably worked out for the best. I got skills that I've ended up using in my "real" career and didn't ever have to rely on that job to make a living.
I have a bit of business stuff to deal with today (like getting my trip to the Nebula Awards set up) and I have some major book surgery to continue with. Today, I should be through the "easy" part, which means tomorrow I'll hit the part that requires a lot of rewriting. Right now, I'm in the part that took months to write, and it seems weird to just read through it in a few minutes. I don't think it shows that I went through about three versions before I settled on what would happen.
Now, for a celebration of St. Patrick's Day, here's my new favorite Celtic band that isn't Irish at all but rather the Celtic band of the US Air Force, Celtic Aire. This one is amateur video, but it's the only one I could find of this particular song, and I liked it when I heard them do it:
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