Monday

One of the problems with working weekends in news is that when Monday rolls around, even though your week is halfway over, everybody else insists on acting like it's Monday. By Tuesday most people are resigned to the fact they have to be there. They feel like they're caught up with everything. They aren't nearly as flustered. They tackle their jobs with a little more enthusiasm, but also with a lot more calm.

Monday, however, they feel this intense pressure to catch up. They've been gone for TWO WHOLE DAYS! They've missed TWO WHOLE DAYS of news! There's almost a sense of panic as they try to get back into the game.

Thus, those of us who work weekends are completely out of step with them. I think it irritates people when their coworkers aren't in the same mindset, so they try subconsciously to bring them in line with the Monday attitude. Somehow, if you're taking things in stride and not contributing to the confusion with your false sense of urgency, you're not taking your job seriously enough.

A related problem is that whatever happened over the weekend doesn't count. If we break a big story on Saturday, it doesn't matter that the story is two days old. Monday gets it fresh, as if it hasn't been done at all. It's as if the weekend newscasts aren't real news, but just placeholders for the genuine journalism that starts Monday.

Saturday's big story was a fatal trailer fire. The fire itself happened early Saturday morning, while nobody was on the desk, so Lizzie and I had to catch up on the story when we got in four hours later. That wasn't really that much of a problem, since none of our competitors got it any earlier than we did.

Still, we covered all the bases Saturday. The fire department determined early on that it was a simple cooking fire. Apparently the guy started something cooking for breakfast, then sat down and dozed off while the range was still on. We had all that information by the end of the day Saturday. We had video of the scene (still smoldering after several hours). We had interviews with the fire captain on scene, neighbors and even one of the guy's relatives.

Despite the fact that there was no new information Monday, and despite the fact that the story was two days old, the trailer fire was Monday's Top Story. Not only did a dayside crew rehash it, I found myself shooting the story again Monday night.

Of course, this story was new to Sarah, so I figured the fact that I was familiar with it would be a help. Of course I was wrong. Her attitude seemed to be, "If I haven't done the story, the story hasn't been done."

When we got out to the trailer park to talk to the neighbors, I tried to point out who was friendly and who wasn't. The owner of the trailer next door (with the "No Trespassing" sign at the edge of his lot) had been hostile to media and didn't want to talk. Of course that's exactly where she wanted to go. I hung back when she knocked on the door, in case he decided to fire off a warning shot. Luckily he either wasn't home or didn't answer his door.

"I don't want the same interviews everybody else got," she said.

I tried to give Sarah a rundown of the information we had, but she didn't want to listen. She called the Sheriff's department and asked them a whole bunch of fire department questions they couldn't answer. We knew Saturday that this was an accidental fire, and Monday's dayside crew had pretty much confirmed that when they interviewed the fire chief. Yet Sarah persisted in asking questions about "any hint of arson" that might have surfaced. The sheriff's press officer just confirmed what I and the dayside crew had already told her.

She seemed irritated when she couldn't get the fire chief for another interview of her own. Granted, it seems a little lazy to reuse material another crew shot, but there was no point in the chief repeating the same stuff he said earlier.

And then Wendy enters the story.

About the time Sarah had finally given up on the hope of uncovering some new smoking gun in the case, she got a call from Wendy, who wanted to know what we had. Wendy was wholly dissatisfied with the lack of new information.

"What's the point of even running your story?" she asked. "I could just rerun the package from six if I knew you weren't going to get anything new."

Why didn't you, I thought. It's not like this story isn't TWO DAYS OLD. Alas, she didn't follow up on her own train of thought. In a shocking turn of events, Wendy wanted the story after all, with a live shot. Gee, what a surprise. Unfortunately the editing system in the live truck is broken, so we had to edit at the station.

Still, with such a lack of new material, we finished pretty early. Sarah had plenty of time to write. And yet she STILL gave me the script at just over an hour before the newscast, knowing full well we would need at least 45 minutes to get out to the trailer park and set up the shot. Since by now I was already pretty intimately familiar with the material, I was able to cut the package in 20 minutes and get on out there.

The live shot went off without much problem except that Sarah was standing in front of a pitch black pile of what was left of the trailer, in the dark, without much light. It was also cold as hell out there, and the truck's on-board heater doesn't work. Thanks to Jake the engineer's handiwork, we can no longer crank the engine of the truck with the mast up, so we couldn't run the heat from the engine either. It wasn't so much of a problem for me, since I was outside setting up, but Sarah acted like it was somehow my fault that she had to be freezing also while she went over her script.

"Can't you do anything about the heat?" she asked.

"No, it's broken."

"Have you tried it? Maybe it works now."

"Be my guest," I said. "I don't have time to fool with it right now."

"Hmph," she said. Yes, she really did hmph at me.

Back at the station, after I put the live truck away in its pen, I was sitting in the newsroom after the newscast when Lynn walked in. She approached Andrea, the associate producer, and asked her if she was going straight home after work.

"No, I'm going over to Scott's place," she said. Scott is the redneck firefighter she hooked up with last week. Apparently they're now an item. "Why?" she asked.

"Oh, don't worry about it," Lynn said. "My car broke down, so I need a ride. I didn't want to call Chris to come get me, but that's okay. I'll wake him up." Chris is Lynn's boyfriend. I didn't want her to call Chris to come get her either.

Somehow I got the impression she was projecting this conversation to the entire room and not simply talking to Andrea. I recognized the chance. And took it.

"I can give you a ride," I interrupted.

The smirk appeared. "I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble," she said.

"It's no trouble." I sounded WAY too eager, I'm sure.

"Okay," she said.

Hell yes, I thought.

We made idle chit chat during the ride. She asked how my day was, and I gave her the condensed version of my theory on Mondays. She commented on the sad condition of the Hate Van. We were idling in front of her house way too soon.

"Thanks for the ride," she said, opening the door.

Now's my chance, I thought. Now or never. I steeled my courage as she was getting out of the van. She turned back once her feet were on the ground.

"Hey," we both said, at the exact same time.

"Go ahead," I said.

"You wanna have lunch with me tomorrow?" she asked.

"Um," I paused. There was really no reason for me to pause, because I already knew the answer without having to think about it. She just caught me off guard. I had to switch from asking mode to accepting mode without saying, "Hell YES I want to have lunch with you!"

Calmly I said, "Uh, sure."

"Twelve thirty okay?"

"Yeah, that's fine. You want me to pick you up?"

"That would be best, since my car's still in the shop. I don't know if they'll have it fixed tomorrow."

"That's no problem," I said. "I'll give you a ride to work if you need it." And a ride home later, I thought.

And thus, after a typical frustrating Monday, I somehow landed a date with the girl of my dreams with almost no effort at all. I'm meeting her in just a few hours. Once again, I'm terrified.

These things don't happen to me.

Making the Call

After my (too) brief encounter with Lynn Wednesday night, I could think of nothing else. Unfortunately I didn't think to get her telephone number. I figured the station had it in the telephone directory, but I was off Thursday and Friday and felt extremely awkward calling up the station to ask someone there to look it up for me. It would be my luck Wendy would answer the phone, and I could just hear the disapproval in her voice. I also didn't really want it spread around that I had an interest there, lest I look like more of an idiot than I really am should the whole thing go sour.

First thing Saturday morning, therefore, I looked up her number in the computer and wrote it down on a slip of paper that I folded and tucked into my pocket. I didn't really want to call while Lizzie was around, so I waited through the whole day, until I got home, to call. All day long I kept reaching into my pocket to make sure that slip was still there.

Apparently the matter was also on Lizzie's mind. She danced around the subject for a while, but finally she couldn't resist it any longer.

"I won't ask what was going on in Lynn's room Wednesday night," she said.

"That in itself is a question," I responded.

"Okay," she said, "So what happened?"

"I thought you weren't going to ask."

"Look, he's blushing again," she said.

"Stop it!"

"So really, what happened?"

"Nothing," I said. "She was showing me her photos. They're really good."

"Is that all she showed you?"

"I'm not talking to you about this," I declared. I tried to sound authoritative when I said it, but it's hard to control the mood when you're smiling.

Lizzie turned a little more serious. "I told you she has a boyfriend, right?"

"Yeah, you told me," I said. "I'm not sure what to think about that."

"Well, now I'm not either," she said. "She said yesterday they're not getting along that great."

I felt a funny flutter in my stomach at those words. Does it make me a bad person to rejoice in someone else's bad news?

"Uh, that's too bad," I said. I tried to sound sincere. I really did.

"Oh, don't even try it. That's good news for you," she said.

"I really don't know what you're talking about," I grinned.

Here is where I'll reveal what is probably my most debilitating weakness. I'm afraid of the phone. I don't like to answer it. I don't like to call people on it. It took almost an entire semester at school to get comfortable ordering a pizza. I would go down to the pizza joint and order it in person, then sit and wait on it, rather than use the phone to call ahead. Even more recently, it took every ounce of courage I could muster to return the ND's phone call back when he first contacted me about this job. My friends often think I'm snubbing them when I don't return their calls, but it isn't that. It's the phone.

I actually read somewhere that there's a name for this problem. It's called "call reluctance." Apparently lots of people have it, but they're able to work around it. They keep the problem from coming to light until they have a job that requires heavy phone use. The article I read was in the context of salesmen who couldn't meet their quotas because they're afraid of the phone.

When I finally got home, I was scared to death. I'm a grown man, yet I'm terrified of picking up the phone and even more terrified at the thought of calling a girl. What if I stumble over my words? What if we have nothing to talk about? What if she rejects me?

I lifted the receiver and put it back down. I suddenly had to go to the bathroom. Yep, better get that out of the way so I can be totally relaxed when I talk to her.

I picked up the phone again. The dialtone sounded menacing. I decided to check my email. There was, of course, another message in there telling me to post on my blog more often.

Okay, stop procrastinating and do it, I thought. But it had already been three days since I had talked to her. What if she's pissed off that I haven't called sooner, I wondered. She may not want to talk to me at all.

Nonsense. I decided to make some notes for myself. I discovered that one way to get over my fear of the phone is to collect my thoughts on paper. I grabbed a pen and pad and wrote, "I was wondering if you'd like to go out next week."

That's stupid, I thought. I'm not going to read it off the paper. I'll just throw caution to the wind and wing it.

I reached for the phone, but it rang and scared me out of my wits. It wasn't supposed to do that. I answered. It was for Suzanne, my slut roommate. It was a guy, of course. He wanted to know if Suzanne would be home later. I said I didn't know and took a message. I'm not her hookup service.

"All right, dammit!" I said out loud. I took a deep breath. In a swift series of motions I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I waited for it to connect.

...

...

"The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try again."

What? I know I copied it down correctly, because I checked it twice. I dialed the number again.

"The number you have dialed--"

"Fuck!" I said.

And yet, I felt relieved. Suddenly the pressure was off. That's when I decided to sit down and write my previous entry about Wednesday night.

But the story doesn't end there.

I worked with Lizzie again today. Even though Lizzie has a big mouth and will probably spread it around, I knew she had Lynn's number, so I told her what happened with the wrong number from the station computer.

"Oh yeah, she just moved there a few months ago," Lizzie said. "It takes forever sometimes for the phone list to get updated."

"You have her number, though, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, I have it."

"Weeeell, would you give it to me?"

"What for?" she asked. What for? If she weren't a girl...

"Oh come on," I said, feigning disgust.

"Oh all right," she said. "I don't think she would mind if it's you."

She wrote Lynn's number on her little reporter's notebook and tore off the page for me. Lizzie's handwriting is atrocious, but at least I could make out the numbers. Years from now I'll probably find that note and think "Lujuu? What the hell is Lujuu?"

After a shorter version of Saturday night's game of chicken with the phone, I finally dialed Lynn's number.

I got her voice mail. And I hung up on it without leaving a message. Not just once, but three times throughout the course of this evening. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you are reading the words of the world's biggest coward.

Sigh. Pizza, job interviews and dates. I'll end up having to do this in person.

Electric II

"So tell me about the story," I said, once we were in the truck.

"What about it?" Sarah asked.

"Well," I said. "Who are we talking to? What are we doing for b-roll? Do you know what angle you want to take?"

"We'll see when we get there."

That pretty much set the tone for the whole night. Sarah was really pissed off at me, presumably because... Well, I really don't know why she was mad at me. She screwed me over Tuesday, and then refused to talk to me all night Wednesday. I did the best I could with the story considering I had no idea what was going through her head. She did leave me 45 minutes to edit (after writing for 90 minutes herself), so after the last couple of weeks I felt like I had an eternity.

After the show I ran into Lizzie in the newsroom. I was surprised to see her, since she had worked dayside that day.

"Escape tapes," she said, when I asked why she was there. She was referring to resume tapes, the demo tapes reporters and photographers send to show their work to news directors when they apply for job openings. While reporters generally don't want to broadcast to management that they're looking for new jobs, very few of them actually have their own systems to edit and dub their tapes at home. They have to rely on the equipment at their stations, and they have to be somewhat discreet about it. Most reporters probably would have waited until the middle of the night to do their tapes, when no one else would be around, but I think Lizzie wants the ND to know she's looking elsewhere, without actually shoving it in his face.

"I'm almost done," she said. "You out yet?"

"Yeah, I'm off right now," I said.

"Wanna go somewhere? I'm off tomorrow, and I don't feel like going home."

"Sure, I'll go."

I waited another fifteen minutes, just surfing the net in the newsroom. Then Lizzie and Lynn popped in together.

"Let's go," Lizzie said.

Hell yes, I thought.

We went over to Lynn's place to hang out. Lynn lives by herself in a comfortable one bedroom apartment carved out of an old house. There are four apartments in the house, and she has the first floor.

The first thing that struck me upon entering the place is that Lynn has really cool taste. To cover the cracked plaster walls, she has old, red, velvet-like cloth hung from the ceiling like tapestries. All her furniture is old, but she has picked stuff with character. She has an old Philco television cabinet, complete with doors on the front, with a newer television stuck inside it to replace the old tube and guts. She sectioned off one part of the room by making a wall of old windows she got from a construction salvage yard and put her desk and computer behind it. Her couch and chairs are all covered with quilts, and at one end of the couch is an old end table with a brass pipe holder built into it. There are plenty of little strange decorative items around, but too many to list here.

Lynn offered us drinks, and for more than an hour the three of us sat in the living room engaged in a discussion of our jobs, which consisted in large part of listening to Lizzie bitch about hers. She told us about some of the places she was planning to send tapes. She explained her theory on the ND's hiring practices, which apparently involves letting his penis choose his reporters. That would explain the discrepancy in the ratio of females to males in the newsroom.

Lynn and I kept catching each other's eyes throughout. The spark was definitely still there. Finally she let out a big sigh.

"Every time I make a new friend, they leave," she said.

"Nature of the business," said Lizzie. "Can't stay here forever."

"What about you?" Lynn smirked, turning her eyes my way and looking at me around the corner of her glasses. "You planning to leave me here too?"

"No," I said, feeling pretty bold. "I'll take you with me."

"Oh really," she said. "What if I can't go?"

"You could go if you wanted."

"I dunno," she said. "I like it here. I might wanna stay."

"I could convince you," I said. Crap, was that ME that said that? Where is this coming from?

"Big words," she said, with her smirk growing a little more like a smile.

After a short pause, Lizzie reminded us of her presence by suddenly saying, "I have to go to the restroom."

"You know where it is," Lynn said.

Now Lynn and I were alone together, and suddenly it seemed awkward again. Why does that happen? One minute you're swimming along, the master of the current; the next minute you're drowning.

"Let me give you the tour," Lynn said, getting up. She led me through a door into a short hallway that connected to the kitchen. There were some framed black and white photographs on the wall there. "Don't look at those," she said. So I didn't, even though I distinctly got the impression she wanted me to.

"This is the kitchen," she said. It certainly was. Just like the living room, it reflected her style. Against one wall was a 50s style red formica table with chrome trim, with matching red vinyl chairs. This was no reproduction, but showed the genuine wear of several decades in the dullness of the chrome and the splits in the vinyl. Her cookware was hanging from a rack suspended from the ceiling, galley-style. The counters and sink were trimmed with black and white tile. I noticed a French press on the counter (girl knows about coffee, obviously), as well as--what's that?

"A waffle iron?" I asked.

"Heart shaped," she said, stepping over and opening the old chrome waffle iron to reveal a heart pattern inside. "It still works, too," she said.

"I didn't picture you as the type," I said.

"Yeah, sometimes I feel like being a girl," she said.

Lizzie was STILL in the bathroom after all this time, so the tour continued. (Thanks, Lizzie.)

Next up was the bedroom. The room was small and was mostly filled with her bed, a queen sized four post frame with a canopy. Off to the side, leaning against the wall on top of a little bookshelf, was a stack of large black and white prints mounted in cardboard frames.

"Don't look at those," she said. This time I wasn't as obedient. I headed straight for them and started flipping through.

"Did you do these?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I used to use the darkroom in school. At some point I'm gonna set up my own. Now everything's digital, though. I oughta just use the computer."

Some of the photos weren't that interesting, but some were really good. I stopped on a picture of a little kid eating what appeared to be chocolate cake. He had this huge smile on his face. What she captured in that instant was simple, extreme happiness. You couldn't look at it without smiling in sympathy.

"These are really good," I said.

"Stop it," she said. "That's enough." Then she started trying to shove between me and the stack.

"No," I said, "I want to see the rest."

"That's enough for one night," she said. But instead of pulling them away from me, as she had been trying to do, she turned toward me and pushed me away from the stack. I instinctively put my hands up, and she grabbed both of my wrists. Remember, I said this was a small room, mostly filled with queen-sized bed. The only place for me to go was--you guessed it--onto the bed. As I backed against it I lost my balance and sat down on the edge. She moved directly between me and the stack of pictures, still holding my hands.

"I'm not letting you up," she said, moving closer to me. She ended up standing with her knees between mine, but still pushing on my wrists so that our upper bodies weren't as close. I turned my hands to try to catch hers in mine. She responded by loosening her grip a little to allow it. We ended up with our fingers interlocked.

Holy crap was my heart pounding. She was breathing hard also, but we had hardly exerted ourselves at all. Her glasses had slid down her nose a little, but she wouldn't let go to adjust them. Instead she just tilted her head back to look down at me through the lenses. She wasn't smirking.

I pulled my hands apart to take away her leverage, pulling her closer to me in the process. She resisted, but she didn't pull away completely. Then she did something unexpected. She let go of my left hand and ran her fingers through my hair with her right. I closed my eyes and shuddered, not even realizing at the time that my free hand instinctively had gone to her waist.

"Huh-um!" we heard come from the living room. "It's about time I got home!" Lizzie said. We hadn't even heard her leave the bathroom.

"Okay," Lynn said, still not letting go of me. "See you tomorrow!"

"Uh, Max is my ride home," Lizzie yelled back. This is how murders happen.

"Your girlfriend's calling," Lynn said to me. Her smirk was back. She let go of me and straightened her clothes a little, even though I didn't really mess them up. I was hoping to at least get a kiss before parting, but she just turned her back on me and went back to the living room. I followed shortly behind to find Lizzie grinning idiotically and throwing glances back and forth between us. She already had her coat on and turned for the door.

As she went out, I stopped at the doorway and quietly said to Lynn, "Maybe we could pick up where we left off sometime." I almost immediately felt like a lecherous idiot when I said it, but perhaps it wasn't the wrong thing to say.

"Maybe," she said, smirking sideways at me with her head tilted down a little to give me the full effect of those steel blue eyes.

Damn. Electric.

A Quick Update

Here's a brief update on where I stand with Sarah and the company.

When I got to work Wednesday I pulled CP Rick aside and asked his advice. It turned out that by that time Wendy had already gotten to the ND and complained about Sarah. Sarah, of course, blamed it on me. However, Rick told me not to worry about it, that he knew I didn't have enough time to edit. He wants me to try to get faster, but he also wants me to alert Wendy sooner if it looks like I'm going to miss slot.

I don't have a good feeling about this, but I don't have a particularly bad feeling either. Sarah hardly spoke to me Wednesday night, but I did get 45 minutes to edit.

What happened at Lynn's house after work Wednesday night is the real story this week, but I'll have to write about that later.

Meltdown

After months of doing the reporter shuffle, with different reporters getting assigned to the shifts I cover, I finally seem to have settled into a routine with two reporters. Lizzie works with me on weekends, although she isn't happy about it. Sarah, the new girl, works with me Monday through Wednesday at night.

I have worked with Sarah several days over the last two weeks, and some disturbing personality traits and working habits have manifested themselves. I guess the worst problem is that Sarah is slow. It sometimes takes her twice as long as other reporters to write her stories. I'm not sure what the problem is, but she has consistently put me under the gun when editing time has rolled around. It seems like the problem has grown steadily worse over the last two weeks.

She also tends to panic and, for lack of a better word, freak out. For example, one night last week she was trying to get in touch with a school contact for a story about a teenage girl who had been accosted on her way home from school (but got away). We got the story too late to catch anyone at the school itself, so she was trying to track down the principal at home. When she could only get his voice mail, she turned bright red and said, "What am I going to do? WHAT AM I GONNA DO? Why won't this FUCKER answer his PHONE?! This is CRAZY! How am I supposed to get a story like this?!"

"If you can't reach him, you can't reach him," I said. "It's not a big deal."

"Shut up!" she said. "I didn't ask for your opinion."

"Okay," I said. After a prolonged silence she apologized, but still...

And that brings me to tonight.

We got our story early this afternoon, right after the afternoon meeting. It was a rather boring story on a plan to rezone an area to allow a housing subdivision to be built. The county guy was easy to reach, and we knocked out his interview quickly. The landowner took a little more time, but we got our b-roll of the area in question while we were waiting for him to call back. We managed to get out to his house for his interview, and all the elements of the package were in house with three hours to go before the show. Although we were the lead story, we weren't even live.

Yet, somehow, she managed to give me the package to edit almost exactly twenty minutes before the newscast.

I know there are guys out there who do twenty minute edits on a daily basis. I'm still pretty new at this, however, and so far the fastest I've been able to do it is thirty minutes. I told her when she gave me the package that she needed to tell Wendy, the producer, that we would possibly miss our slot, and I wasted no time getting to work.

Unfortunately Sarah didn't tell Wendy that there was a problem. Apparently she went back to her desk and didn't say a word. I became aware of this fact at five minutes before the newscast, when an AP came into my room and asked me for the tape. I told her I was almost done but didn't think I would make it, and to tell Wendy to be ready to float us. I'm glad I wasn't in the control room for Wendy's initial reaction.

Unfortunately I wasn't completely off the hook. Less than a minute after the AP had left, Sarah burst into the room and said, "What's the problem?"

"I don't think I'm gonna make it," I said.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Not enough time," I said. "I'm workin' on it."

"How much more time do you need?"

"A few more minutes," I said. "I'm WORKIN' on it."

Sarah stepped out, but outside the door I could hear that Wendy had turned the corner and was discussing it with Sarah. "He won't tell me how long he needs," I heard Sarah say. A beat later, Wendy burst into the room.

"Are you gonna make it?" she asked.

"I don't think so," I said.

"You don't THINK so, or NO, you WON'T make it?"

"I'm not gonna make it," I said.

"What's the problem?" she asked.

"Can't talk about it now," I said, still trying to edit despite these two idiots distracting me. As I sit here now I'm convinced that I actually would have made it if they had just let me work. Both of them seemed to think that by standing there distracting me, I would somehow change my mind and tell them that everything was just hunky dory and I would be delivering the tape at any minute.

Wendy stood there for a second, then let out this huge sigh and left. Outside the room I could hear her say, "He won't tell me, either."

I finished just after the newscast started, but not before the first block turned into a wreck. I went back and looked at the aircheck tape to see just how bad it was. The anchor actually read the intro to our package, then said, "But, um, we'll have that story in just a minute." Then the wrong video was rolled for the next story, and she became visibly flustered on air. I ran my package to the playback booth in time to be the third story, but the prompter operator somehow got lost, so that the anchor had to read everything off her scripts for almost the rest of the first block.

At the time, however, I was letting out a huge sigh of relief after handing off the tape. When I turned back toward the newsroom, Sarah was standing there waiting for me, with her arms folded across her chest.

"You wanna tell me what happened?" she said.

"I didn't have enough time," I said. "You're gonna have to give me the package earlier."

"You had PLENTY of time," she said, "And now I'm gonna get shit because YOU fucked up."

"I don't think I fucked anything up," I said. "I didn't have enough time--"

"Don't give me that," she said. "Any photog here can edit a package in thirty minutes."

"You gave me the package at twenty minutes 'til."

"No, you got thirty minutes. I know because I looked at the clock when I finished writing."

"And I looked at the clock when you gave me the package. It was twenty minutes 'til," I said.

"What are you trying to do to me?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"I know you could have gotten that in on time."

That just hung there for a minute.

"Are you saying I missed slot on purpose?" I asked.

"The thought has crossed my mind," she said.

At this point I was enraged. I was shaking. I was about to explode into a kaleidoscopic display of obscenities. But I held it together.

"I wouldn't do that," I said.

"Hmmm," she said, sarcastically.

"We should talk about this later," I said.

"Oh, WE WILL," she threatened.

I went back to the edit room, shut the door and just sat there listening to the hum of machinery. I guess you could say I was hiding in there, because I did NOT want to come out and face either Sarah or Wendy. I suddenly realized I still needed to cut a video-only version of the story for the morning show, so I reluctantly put myself back to work.

I did run into Wendy after the show. She didn't say a word.

So now I can't sleep, thinking about what happened and obsessing over the fact that I have to work with Sarah. I don't know if I should launch a preemptive strike and go complain about her first thing tomorrow, or if I should wait to defend myself when the inevitable questions come from the ND. I know I need to get faster at editing, but I can't see how she can say the problem tonight was MY fault when she took three hours to write the story.

I'm really starting to worry about this job. It's been fun and interesting up to now, but the prospect of working directly with this woman three days per week for the foreseeable future does not sound pleasant at all.

The Day After

Here's a quick update on Sunday before I start work for the day.

After Saturday night, I was quite eager to hear what Lizzie had to say about that little exchange with Lynn. They're pretty good friends and talk a lot outside work. Lizzie is also something of a busy body, so I figured she would have a comment.

Strangely, she didn't mention it for the first part of the day. I thought it was a little weird. But finally, while we were on our way out for our live shot for the early show, she brought it up.

"You seemed to have fun last night," she said.

"Yeah, it was nice," I said. I immediately got a mental picture of Lynn's smirking sideways glance.

"What did you think of Lynn?" she asked.

"She's cool," I said. I wanted to say, "She's freakin' hot," but I figured it would be better to play it cool.

"You know she has a boyfriend," she said.

That didn't exactly make me happy.

"No, I didn't know that," I said.

"Yep," she said. "They've been going out for a couple of years now."

Ah crap.

"Oh yeah?" I asked, trying unsuccessfully to sound nonchalant about it.

"Yeah," she said.

"So... I guess they're pretty serious."

"It seems that way," she said.

Dammit. I found myself lost in thought. At that moment I wanted to ask all sorts of questions. Is she happy? Does he treat her well? Does he cheat on her? Does she cheat on him? Is she with him because she really likes him, or just out of convenience? Are they--

"She said you remind her of him," Lizzie said, interrupting my thoughts.

Now what the hell is that supposed to mean? Really, how am I supposed to react to that? If I remind her of how he used to be, before their relationship went sour (as I'm hoping it has) then that would be good. But if they're doing fine, and I remind her of him, what's the good in that?

"Is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?" I asked.

"I dunno," she said. "I think she likes you, if that's what you mean."

And that's where we left it, since we were then arriving at the live shot location and both had work to do.

Let's take a moment to sum up my love life. I work mostly with women, many of whom are really hot but are completely disinterested in dating a poor news photographer when they can land a lawyer or mayor's aide or redneck firefighter. In the past eight months (including the time since I last had a steady girlfriend) I have kissed one woman, a long time friend who is now dating one of our mutual friends from college but who wants to come visit me during Spring Break; and I have had a flirtatious encounter with a smirking redhead with whom I refused to dance and who is involved in a long term relationship. The closest thing to sex I've had is hearing my roommate Suzanne through the wall our rooms share, and it looks like that's the best I'll do for a while.

And people are saying my blog is fake because I'm getting too much attention from women?

Electric

With the changes in reporter schedules around here, Lizzie has been permanently assigned to work with me on weekends. She's not very happy about that, especially since the new girl, Sarah, is working Monday through Friday. Apparently the ND didn't even bother to make any excuses, instead just telling her it was up to him to decide where to put people in the schedule.

Today was the first Saturday since she found out, so she wasn't in a great mood. We get along well, however, so she didn't take it out on me. She was just extra cynical today. Our truck talk on the way to our stories included her characterization of the ND as a "lecherous bozo," a diatribe on the idiocy of Wendy and a lament on the generally disappointing state of the news business. After work she wanted to go drinking with a friend, one of the newscast directors, and she invited me along.

The director in question is a girl named Lynn. Lynn has short auburn hair in a style that is intentionally messy. She wears a pair of narrow eyeglasses with thick black frames and has steel gray eyes. She's pale, and she doesn't entirely hide her freckles with her makeup. She also wears very red lipstick that doesn't even begin to hide her usual smirk. I would describe her look as that of an "artsy" type, with a hint of the sexy librarian.

Lynn exudes a calm confidence. I don't know if that's from directing shows, or if she's a director because of her natural demeanor. It wouldn't surprise me if some people found her smirk and the smooth tone of her voice a bit condescending. To me, it just seems like she's smiling at secrets the rest of us would really like to know.

So after work, Lizzie, Lynn, an associate producer named Andrea and I went for drinks. The bar had a live band that wasn't very good, so the place was a bit loud. Surprisingly, we were able to get a table to ourselves off to the side.

With three girls at the table, however, we were almost immediately set upon by guys. Most of them didn't even bother to try to figure out my connection to any of the women; I was completely an afterthought. Gee, it sure is great to know I present such a minor challenge to them.

One of the guys who approached was an off-duty firefighter. He was a total redneck dumbass. Even so, he impressed Andrea by raising his shirt and showing his abs. He quickly managed to separate her off from the rest of us to dance.

With Andrea thus occupied, Lynn and I listened to Lizzie bitch for a while about the news director and her job. Lynn listened very supportively without saying much. I found myself studying Lynn's features instead. She caught me looking at her a couple of times, but she just glanced back at Lizzie without really reacting. Finally Lizzie wound down and said, "Where's that waitress with my beer?"

Lynn turned her attention to me. "You should dance with me," she said. Unfortunately, I can't dance. I'm too self conscious on the dance floor to even do the silly beer-in-one-hand frat boy sway. Not to mention that she scared the shit out of me by dropping that so suddenly.

"Sorry, I don't dance," I said.

"Why not?" asked Lynn.

"Trick knees," I said. I heard Don Johnson say that once on Miami Vice. It sounded cool when he said it. But I'm not Don Johnson.

"Bummer," she said. "You just don't want to dance with me."

"That's not it," I said. "I just prefer conversation." I knew what a loser I sounded like even as the words left my mouth.

"Okay, let's converse." Then she stared into me expectantly with her unblinking, steel grey eyes. Boy, did I set myself up for that. She had me off-balance, and the smirk told me she knew it.

"Um," was the best I could do. She let the silence hang there awkwardly, just to watch me squirm. There was a charge in the air between us.

"You're gonna make me do all the work here?" she finally asked, and turned to Lizzie. I had forgotten Lizzie was even there, even though she was sitting right next to me. "SO! How do you like working Saturdays?" she asked.

"You're gonna let him off the hook that easy?" responded Lizzie. I realized immediately that not only had she recognized what was happening and was thoroughly enjoying the show, I will also have a hell of a time living it down. She will DEFINITELY give me a hard time about it tomorrow.

Luckily I was saved by Andrea and her dumbass redneck, who returned to our table. This guy liked being the center of attention, so he flexed his arms at the girls. My attention, however, was drawn to Lynn, and I was quite happy to notice her rolling her eyes at his display. She realized I caught her at it, and she winked at me out the side of her glasses.

Damn. Electric.

Unfortunately the volume in the bar wasn't really conducive to conversation anyway, and I still wasn't going to dance (trick knees, you know), so it didn't really get much further than that. Lizzie and I both have to work tomorrow, so we all called it a night pretty early (except for Andrea, who said she'd be fine getting a ride home from Muscles the firefighter). Lynn went her own way, and I dropped Lizzie off back at the station.

The funny thing is that I KNOW Lizzie has something to say about what happened, and yet neither of us brought it up on the way back. She would only talk about what a slut Andrea is and what a dumbass that firefighter was.

I'm kind of looking forward to work tomorrow.

Live, Live, Live

Wow. Blink and two weeks have flown by.

We hired a new reporter, Sarah. Sarah is blonde and small, and she looks like Naomi Watts except a little softer. She has a great voice, but her delivery is a little weird. She tilts her head to the side a funny way when she speaks, and she likes to stand sideways when she's on camera. She said it makes her look thinner. This is her second job in the business.

Sarah has been assigned to the night shift, which means we'll be working together. We seem to have hit it off pretty well, so I think it's going to be fun. She has already displayed a tendency toward sarcasm.

She was on dayside Monday and Tuesday, but they put her on nightside with me Wednesday night. Of course, Wendy wanted a live shot. Now that I'm trained on the truck, Wendy wants live shots every night. Sarah was a little nervous about it, because her previous station never did live shots.

When I drove into the parking lot Wednesday afternoon to report for work, I noticed Jake the engineer out in the pen where we keep the microwave van. Actually, I only noticed Jake's legs, sticking out from under the van. After a few seconds, Jake's feet jerked up off the ground and hung in the air for a minute. Then he started laughing and let them back down again. I wondered what the hell he was doing, but I was running late and didn't have time to go find out.

Flash forward to later that evening. Sarah's still not quite accustomed to our system of doing things, and it took her some time to get her package finished and voiced. We were working out of the station, so I was acutely aware of the time creeping up on me as I edited the package. I needed to leave myself time to get the truck out to the live location and set up the shot. I wasn't really happy with the final product, but at least I finished it. We finally left forty-five minutes before the show. Sarah seemed to be in a bad mood, nervous about the time.

Even with my limited experience, I should have had plenty of time. We didn't have far to go. I parked the truck, jumped out to do my walkaround (and look up!) to make sure the site was suitable and cranked up the generator. After a few minutes of warmup I hit the main breaker, while Sarah repeated her prepared copy out loud for the seventeenth time. The genny bogged down as usual as the racks came to life, then recovered. Time to raise the mast.

I pushed the switch up. Nothing happened.

"Uh oh," I said.

Sarah stopped reading her copy. "Uh oh what?" she asked in a mistrustful tone.

"It didn't work."

"Huh," she said.

I just stood there and looked up at the dish for a minute. I was drawing a complete blank on what to do. Every time I have hit that switch before, the air compressor that extends the mast has kicked on and sent the dish on its normal ascent. This time there was no compressor noise, no sound of air leaking from the mast, no nothing.

I'm a fairly analytical person and can often troubleshoot things if I understand the system. I checked the breaker panel, but the compressor's breaker was on. I climbed up to look at the mast itself, thinking maybe it was bound by the cable, but it was free. I had no idea what to do next, so I made a huge mistake and called Wendy.

"I can't get the mast up on the truck," I said.

"You know you're live in half an hour," she responded. Well, no shit. That's kinda why I was calling.

"Uh, yeah, but I don't know what to do," I said.

"I'm not sure what you think I can do about it," she said. Actually she was right. I shouldn't have bothered asking her.

"Are there any engineers there?" I asked.

"No, they all go home after the six," she said. "Call Rick [the chief photographer]."

"Okay, yeah, I have his number."

"And what about my live shot? You think you'll be able to get it?"

"Uh, I don't know," I said. "I need somebody to tell me how to get this mast up."

"I thought you were trained on it," she said.

"Yes, I WAS trained on it. It isn't working right."

"Call Rick," she said. "Call me back and tell me when you get it fixed."

"Okay," I said, "But I'm short on time."

"Just get it fixed and call me back."

Sarah only heard my half of the conversation. "Is she going to scrap the live shot?" she asked.

"No," I said. "She wants me to fix it."

So I called Rick. He had me check the breakers. He had me look on top of the truck to make sure the cable wasn't in a bind. Wendy paged me while I was up there, but I had to ignore it. Rick gave up.

"Call Jake," he said. "I think he was workin' on it today."

Rick gave me Jake's number. By this time I only had twenty minutes to showtime. Wendy had paged me two more times. Sarah was asking me again whether we would get the shot.

"EEEYello!" Jake answered.

"Hey Jake, this is Max," I said. "I can't--"

"Max who?" he interrupted.

"Max from the station."

"Max, max... Oh, the new kid?"

"Yeah, that's me. Listen, I can't get the mast to go up on the live truck. Rick said you might be able to help."

"Sure I can," he said. "Take it on back to tha station. It don't work right now."

"Right," I said, "But I have a live shot in fifteen minutes."

"Not today you don't. I han't finished with it. I still got it disconnected."

My pager went off again. I was dreading talking to Wendy.

"So there's no way to get it working?" I asked.

"Not unless you want to do some rewiring," he said.

I was still on the phone with Jake when Sarah handed me her phone. Wendy had now called her to find out what was happening.

"Why haven't you answered my pages?" was the first thing she said. It was obvious that she was in a fit.

"I've been trying to get the truck fixed," I said.

"I told you to call me back. How am I supposed to plan for my fucking show if you don't tell me what the fuck is going on? Is it fixed?"

"No, Jake said he's still working on it and has the mast disconnected."

"What the fuck?" she said. "DAMMIT! Why didn't he tell me it was broken? Did you know about this?"

"Uh, no."

"Well. Shit. Let's see. So the live shot isn't going to happen at all?"

"No," I said. "Jake told me to bring the truck back."

"Uh. Is there any way to feed me a look-live?"

(A note to those who don't understand the technology here: If I can't tune the microwave signal to send back a live shot, I also can't send anything else back. A "look live" is a reporter standup shot to look like a live shot, but recorded to tape. If I couldn't get the live shot, I also couldn't send her video. She really should've known that.)

Obviously we didn't go live that night. It turned out that Jake had been working on the previously mentioned interlock system and had disconnected some things to try to make it work. He hadn't finished it. But he also hadn't bothered to tell anyone that the truck didn't work. CP Rick told me he had "words" with Jake about it, but that Jake just grinned and said, "Sorry."

Sarah was really quiet the rest of the night. I think she was angry. She didn't say much about it, except to ask me if I thought she would get in trouble for missing her shot.

"No," I said. "I don't see why you would get in trouble."

"You're right," she said. "It wasn't MY fault."

Nor mine. But somehow it wouldn't surprise me if I get blamed for it.

New Live Truck Policy

Recall that my chief photographer, Rick, knows about this site and has read it in the past. I'm guessing he's still reading, because we received a memo yesterday:


To: All Photographer's

From: Rick --------

RE: Live Truck Policy

I would like to remind all photographer's that it is against company policy to move the live truck with the mast up. If you need to move the truck after the mast has been raised, lower the mast first. It is dangerous to move the truck with teh mast up. Even if you have done it in the past, I do not want to hear about anyone else doing it.

The engineer's will soon install a cutoff system to kill the engine if the mast is up. Jake is working on the design now. Until the safety system is installed, do not drive with the mast up.

Remember, be safe out there. Look up and live.


So there you go. I figure some of you folks who commented on my live truck training would be happy for the update. I'll let you know when it's installed.