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.