Live and Dangerous

Howdy to all... hope everything is well... Had a moment of near panic on the air yesterday as we prepared to do a soccer game on TV... LIVE! Now more often than not, the events we cover during the week are tape delayed. No problem for me... that way if I screw up the beginning or end, I can re-do them and then ride the middle of the broadcast for all it's worth. But every so often, I have to do Live events. I did some back to back on consecutive nights this week. Simply put, no room to screw up... again, no big deal for me... I've been at this long enough to know that anything can and usually does happen. For me, that was this past wednesday night. I had to broadcast a girl's high school soccer match Live at 6pm... not a big deal... EXCEPT that the JV game was running way behind and didn't end until 5:57pm... the varsity girls had to do their 20 minute warm-up. So the game wasn't starting until about 6:25 or 6:30... and we're LIVE on the air... with nothing to fill it with! Soooooo... me and my color analyst were able to talk for that whole time and my director was very cool cause he ran more commercials during that half hour than he was supposed to... but how we managed to talk about these two teams for that half hour with no previous knowledge of the two teams was nothing short of miraculous. Or I'm just naturally full of crap and some kind of BSer... Thank the Good Lord that He was with me and gave me the gift of gab to blab coherently... I had Thursday off from everything and boy was it much needed! I slept in till about 7am... lounged around till 9:30am. I went and had breakfast down the road from my house. The waitress who knows me, sat and shot the breeze with me for a bit. She met a new guy and things are going swimmingly for them. I was happy for her. I went home and did some work on my computer and then got a phone call. It was from my groupie. I was hesitant to take the call but I took it anyway. She and I haven't talked in quite a long time. She got a new job at another hospital in town and we hadn't talked in forever. The groupie was talking in generalities for quite some time. So I could tell something was on her mind. I wasn't sure... we had talked before... and knew that we couldn't be around each other much because she knew that there were some emotions there and she has a boyfriend. I told her that I wasn't going to interfere with that and that even if she were available, it wouldn't work because of the age difference (she's 22). Well, I didn't duck it and asked her how things were going in that department. She said they were going incredibly awesome. She's now wearing a rock on her finger. The guy proposed. I was happy (and very relieved)... I told her it was so great and that things are really going well for her. I hung up with her and went and took a nap. I got up and mowed the lawn and then my nephew called me. He had to go shopping for some clothes to start college and didn't have much money. So I took him over to Steve and Barry's and he got a crapload of clothes for cheap. He had never heard of the store and when I took him there, it was like a little kid on Christmas. He was just going nuts shopping for all the college wear... I told him he was shopping like a girl... he started laughing. We talked about football, girls, a little bit of everything. I felt like for the first time in a while, we connected. It was a lot of fun and he wants to drive up to see me next week (and go back to that store I'm sure). I'm looking forward to it... I came home, and sat down for a while and had a smile on my face. Relationships can be a funny thing. I watched my groupie talk about starting a new life with her boyfriend and make the commitment to be his and his alone... the waitress at the restaurant was cooing with her new beau. I sit here alone and am doing okay. I still think about the ex-girlfriend who destroyed my heart into 23.3 million pieces... now that I have the perspective of time, it's been really difficult but a worthwhile experience. I now see her for who she is... and looking back, I'm glad that we parted (as ugly and painful as it was) when we did. And to be honest, I'm glad she's gone now. There are times where I almost miss her. But I now realize that it's best that I fly solo from now on... I trust in God and let chips fall where they may. Life is definitely much better now...