Journalism and Alcoholism go hand in hand

Sophomore year of College my History of Journalism professor told our class this one day, "Journalism and Alcoholism go hand in hand." I have definitely understood why he would make such a comment several times before. And from April 5th-16th I REALLY believed him. Those were the two weeks that I was producing and anchoring KXLF's 10 p.m. newscast while our regular anchor was out. I was also doing this with just one other reporter working who was brand new so the stress level was high. (Aslan this is not a diss to you, anyone who was brand new it would have been the same situation. You're cool you give me red starbursts) But there was lots of running around, lots of trying to figure out what content to use to fill the show, and lots of stressing to get everything done quicker while also trying to not scream at someone in the control room. So yes, there were several nights after work that I was just thinking I need a beer or some wine. I sadly rarely ever have such things in my apartment tho because I totally feel like an alcoholic buying that stuff just for myself at a store but oh well. I'm sure with more experience I would not feel so stressed and drawn to alcohol. Also, everyone in Butte thank you for your kind comments during those two weeks. It is so appreciated. Now I've had a whole week of back to regular reporting now and the stress level has dropped. Don't get me wrong I would love to be an anchor some day and get more experience with that but I do love reporting and just being able to go out and talk to people all day long for my job. That is the best part to me is just getting outside and getting to know people and what they have to say.

With that said I need to thank Montana weather for being much nicer lately. All this past week It was bright and sunny and warm. I was able to wear short sleeves with no jacket outside. My footwear changed from boots to flats and when not at work flip flops! Greatest thing ever. So thanks Montana Weather for listening and getting nicer. After all it is spring.

A letter to Montana Weather.

Dear Montana Weather,

We were doing so well. You were kind enough to not dump a lot of snow these past 4 months and you only got super super cold the first week I was here. That I'll forgive since we barely knew each other then. I understand some people thought you were being too dry and the snow pack was too low. But you knew that I didn't care about the snow pack. I'm not a champion skier and forest fires this summer gives me good material for my resume reel so you kindly kept most of the snow away this past winter. However, today you disappointed me. There was a forecast of 6-12 inches of snow Today and you did not disappoint on that. There's no way there's 12 inches out there now but there's a lot probably the 6 and I don't like it. It is April 13th. What are you thinking Montana?? Did you know that you were Headline News' pick this morning for worst weather today? C'mon now step up your game. That is not what I like to hear about the place I live. I also don't like a lot of what I heard today. That this is normal, this is when "we" get this weather, and that it snows in May. MAY?!!!!! I should be wearing sundresses and sweating while outside not wearing a parka and shivering. Montana Weather please please just be nice and have this be the last snow until at least November. That would be very much appreciated. Don't force me to leave you for Florida.

My mom was carded in Montana

My mom came out to Montana for her first time for about 6 days around Easter. We found out that she is better suited to live here than I am because she thought the weather was fine. Didn't even need a jacket and kept lowering my heat. I on the other hand was constantly freezing and learned to live in sweat pants and sweat shirts in my apartment for that week. Oh well. I didn't have any time off work except for my normal Saturday and Sunday weekend so my mom spend the weekdays cooking and baking. She made many friends at KXLF with the amount of baked goods that went into work with me that week. I also am now stocked in my freezer and in my pantry in case a nuclear war breaks out. This is not me complaining just giving you a visual. I'm actually pretty excited I'll be able to save some money this month since I won't have to go grocery shopping. Anyways I introduced her to the world of Moose Drool beer. Also had her try a sip of fat tire and she herself ordered a blacksmith blondie. There are such fun names here for beer. None of those times were either one of us carded. Now she tells me that when she bought some wine at Three Bears (a costco like grocery store here) the woman asked my mom what her birthday was and told her she couldn't get the wine without it. Haha. We both thought this was funny. I think it's even more humorous because I never get carded here. Drinking is big in the local culture and I'm not sure now if they just don't care of if I'm starting to look really old with these dark circles that are taking shape under my eyes due to lack of sleep.
Anyways......On the weekend we took a scenic drive up to Missoula, MT for some shopping. Easter Sunday was spent with family and watching little kids look for eggs. The picture is of Easter Brunch. It was also a day to tour Butte and get some pictures.

Monday was my mom's last day in Montana and good thing she was there. about 9:10 am I found out I'd be anchoring the 10 p.m. news that night and had no appropriate clothing with me. (Dress code is pretty lax in Mt. I can wear jeans if I want everyday) So had to call up Mommy and have her bring in a suit jacket and shirt. She was nice enough to also go shopping and pick up some a nice necklace and matching earrings to go with the outfit. That was pretty sweet. Except the rest of the week I also anchored the 10 and just had to bring my clothes and jewelry to work with me at 9 am every morning. Oh well I'm a big girl haha.

Tuesday my boyfriend drove the 10 hours from Bismark, North Dakota to hang out with me just for a couple hours after work before I had to go to sleep haha. He then went back to Bismark on Wednesday. It was nice that he was willing to do that since I hadn't seen him since Valentine's Day. But the rest of the week anchoring went pretty well. I think I'm getting more comfortable with it I just need to work on writing more creative transitions between stories. I'll do it all again this week. So I'll probably be exhausted again next Saturday. Oh well. It's worth it. However, if I don't blog all this week that is why.

A night at the Butte Bars

I've been out to the bars in Butte several times before however, this past Friday gave me a pretty interesting story to share. I went out with our old Butte sports reporter/current Bozeman sports reporter and his replacement who just got into town. We met up with some people at one bar and a few of the Montana Tech and University of Montana football coaches were also there. The old sports guy saw this as a perfect opportunity for them to get to know the new guy so we all migrated over to the coaches table. Well then the coaches decided to leave and go to a local Irish pub. The rest of us followed about 15 minutes behind them. Shortly after arriving at the Irish pub one of the coaches asked me to be his pool partner. I agreed and gave him fair warning that I REALLY REALLY suck at pool. I didn't let him down on this promise either I made one ball in a pocket in 2 games. However, we still won these games. He was pretty much an awesome pool player. Now during these pool games a super drunk middle aged man dressed in all black (including black beanie) kept coming up and talking to me and giving me tips on the pool game. Of course these tips were coming out in slurs. Well this was continuously happening. Whenever it wasn't my turn to try to hit a ball with a stick and make a fool of myself this guy came right over to me whispering drunk talk in my ears. Luckily one of the guys I was with saw this and recognized that I needed saving from the drunkard. He came over put his hand on my back and put his arms around me to try to ward off the guy. This worked and then we both forgot about it and I went back to playing pool and not standing with him anymore. So later the guy comes up slurring at me again so again my friend comes over and tells the drunk guy that he needs to borrow me and puts his arm around me turning me away from the guy. Well then the drunk guy calls my friend an asshole. That just started a huge fight between the two of them yelling at each other with me in the middle holding a pool stick unsure of what to do. I attempted to stop it but was unsuccessful and it was my turn to shoot so i just took my pool stick and left. They were still yelling at each other when the bar closed, which was only a few minutes later. The bartender told everyone it was time to go so we all gather our stuff. As I'm walking out with my guy friend right behind me the drunk guy is being held back by someone as he yells in my face "Don't go home with him! Don't go home with him!" We all walked out of the bar and I'm not sure what happened to this dude but I thought the whole debacle was pretty hilarious. I'm glad the fight was just verbal too and I do appreciate the attempt to keep the creepy drunk guy away from me.

Moose on the loose

So last week a pair of moose decided to wander into Butte. Therefore my job that day became Moose stakeout 2010. About 5 minutes after I got into work we got word that there were moose on Harrison Ave, which is a major road in Butte. I then quickly loaded up the station car with my camera and tripod and headed out there. Once I got on the scene and parked I saw the 2 moose running across Harrison. As fast as I could I got out my equipment, set it up, and started shooting. Unfortunately I only got about 3 seconds of the Moose sprinting back across Harrison. But they kept running so I filmed that. Then they kept running far and the police and Fish Wildlife and Parks Game Wardens followed them. So, I also followed. Got back in the car and drove to where all the action was. Then I set up my camera and tripod again and filmed some more moose activity. As I was standing at that spot a reporter for the NBC station came up so we were both standing there filming moose running. Well then we hear what sounds like gun shots (later learned they were firecracker shells to scare the moose) and a cop standing by us yells "get back to your vehicles!!" So we go back to our cars and just film standing next to them as the moose come running by. Then they ran off far away so we couldn't see them anymore. But we could see where a bunch of cop cars were gathering so we drove over there. We learned that the moose had run into the area and Fish Wildlife and Parks said they bedded down in an area of trees and bushes so we couldn't see them. So we waited for the Moose to come out of hiding. 3 hours later all that had happened was one of the moose stood up once and then went back down into hiding. It was a very interesting 3 hours just sitting there outside waiting for moose to show their faces. At noon Fish, Wildlife, and Parks left so we did too. They put up signs along the road to warn motorists of moose in the area but they said the moose would probably be there all day so they would decide what to do that night and possibly the next day. Well turns out the moose was up and running again around 3 p.m. and by 4 they were safely back to the mountains they came from. So it ended well and no large animals had to be tranquilized. Definitely was a first for me. I had never seen a moose in person. They are much hairer than I imagined. The rest of the week wasn't quite as exciting after that fun stereotypical Montana experience.

I had beer spilled on me before going live on camera

Warning: This will be a VERY VERY Long post.

Last week I experienced my first St. Patrick's Day in Butte. It was a day I was warned about by many and since have been asked by many how it went. The Holiday is probably one of the if not THE biggest day of the year in Butte. Well when that Wednesday rolled around I put on a green sweater and a green and white beaded necklace because I was told I would be pinched if I did not wear green. I look good in green so not a problem. If yellow was the St Patrick's Day color I'd be in trouble. Also, the necklace was a cheap thing from Walmart that came with a blinking shamrock but I took that off finding it too tacky for the news.

Well in the morning I went out to film the parade. It was interesting but shorter than what I expected and from talking to people after it was shorter than other years. They also said it was disappointing and one of the worst parade's. Oh well. However, two of the guys I interviewed after the parade I want to say were in their 20's. They informed me that for the past few years they had been traveling with a group of friends to different St Patty's day celebrations. This year they decided to bring all their friends to Butte. And since the Parade was a bummer they made their own fun with relay races. These races required 2 people to race up the hill to where 2 beers were lined up then chug the beer as fast as they could. Once a person was done his or her beer the next teammate would run down the hill and chug a beer. They then invited me to come on their bus for the day and follow them around as they celebrated. That would have been fun but probably would have gotten me fired. So I went on to interview more people. I talked to one guy who told me he didn't see much of the parade but was happy with the chicks that were there. Awesome. I also interviewed a 77 year old man dressed in a white tux complete with hat. His vest had shamrocks all over it and his beard was dyed green. He has been walking in the Butte parade for 20 years.

Later in the afternoon I headed back uptown with my news director to get set up for my live shot at 5:30. We got up there at 4 and were set up and test run went smoothly by 4:30. So with that hour of time to kill I walked around and took some pictures and also had some very interesting conversations with people. I was hit on by dudes with my news director sitting 2 feet away from me, had some girl scream "yo you blondie" at me to try and get my attention to tell me about her guy friend that was interested, and saw several people walk by the camera and just scream in it. Yea it wasn't on. The best was the girl that walked up to the back of the camera where the viewfinder is and stand in front of that part screaming at it. Ok even if the camera were on you failed miserably at your goal of getting on because that is the BACK of the camera and not the part where people would be able to see you. There was also a drunk girl who came up to our "golden rod" aka what we use to feed the video to a transmitter on top of a mountain so that people can see what's on my camera, on tv. Well when this girl got up to the "golden rod" I guess she thought it looked like a certain um male body part. She proceeded to rub it and make certain sexual comments and sing songs about it. It was so hard not to laugh. Then about 20 minutes before I was to go on tv another drunk girl dropped a full beer right next to me. The beer splattered one side of my body. Sweet. I couldn't wait to interview the Sheriff smelling like beer.

Well the Sheriff showed up about 5:20 and we were going live at 5:30. We had asked him to have one police officer there as well just to keep an eye out for crazy drunks while we were on live television. There were 6 police officers. I was feeling pretty safe surrounded by police and standing next to the Sheriff haha. Well the live shot went ok except for the fact that anytime the Sheriff was speaking we had no audio. At first we thought it was a problem with the microphone cable but then our Anchor said she had a similar problem once before because of a transmitter they wear and it needs to be turned off. Oops. Guess I'll know for the future.

After the live shot I went to an alcohol free party for teens. Again smelling like alcohol since a beer had been spilled on me haha. Oh well.

After work around 9 I was able to meet up with some people and experience my first St. Patty's day in Butte being one of the people celebrating. All bars were ridiculously crowded. The picture at the top is of the bar I was at. And I would put it at this point in the blog but I don't know how to do that yet. Teach me. Anyways I felt like I was back in College with that kind of crowd at a bar. Also, the bathrooms were also very much like the College Park bar bathrooms. Dirty and long lines with no toilet paper.

I left the bar with a friend and 2 cowboys. Don't worry she knew them. We went to a bonfire that one of the cowboys knew was going on. That was interesting. It was a good time I was taught how to jitterbug by one of the cowboys. I really don't know what that means but it was some kind of dance. Anyways it was interesting because I had to pee while I was there. Well this bonfire was in the middle of nowhere. Soooo me and the other girl climbed over a hill and tinkled on the ground far away from the bonfire where no one could see us. I really don't remember the last time I had to do something like that. Thrilling. My St. Patty's day ended shortly after that but I was still told I did not do it right because I did not get a shamrock painted on me and I did not eat corned beef and cabbage. Looks like I already have plans for next year.

Crazy

Yesterday was a pretty crazy day, for news. The story I covered in the morning was pretty routine but then about 10 minutes after I got back to the newsroom a guy that works in our control room called to say he had just seen 4 cop cars and fire trucks at this one apartment complex. So I went over there with my camera to see what was going on. When I arrived at the scene I saw a mass of people just standing around watching as police were on ladders breaking a 2nd story window. I asked the people who were watching what was going on and one woman told me that the guy who lived in the apartment that now had a broken window had posted on facebook that he had bombs and was going to kill himself. She also informed me that he had barricaded himself into his apartment by putting things in front of the windows so even though the police just broke the window there was still a wall of random crap they had to get through. Immediately in my mind I was thinking "this is ridiculous!!!!" but kind of exciting at the same time. The police proceeded to yell into the broken window telling the guy the just wanted to talk to him. There was an officer on one side of the window on a ladder that had broken the window and on the other side on a ladder was another police officer holding a gun aimed at the window. Great visuals for the story. When they got nowhere with that window they went around to another side of the building, climbed ladders, and broke another window. Then the fireman brought out their chainsaw and started cutting the door off. After they cut if off and pulled it away the pulled a bunch of things out that had been stacked behind the door. Clothes, books, pillows. All types of stuff. Eventually they did get the guy out of the apartment in handcuffs and he was taken away in a cop car to the local hospital for a medical evaluation. I talked to the police chief once everything was over and he told me that they had evacuated everyone nearby and that he had never heard anything about bombs. But when the police got to the scene at about 10:30 a.m. (this whole thing ended a little after 1 p.m.) they just tried to talk to the guy first and that's when he barricaded the doors and windows and told police he was cutting himself. When the cops did find the guy inside he was sitting on his couch and the only weapons they found inside were knives. Is it wrong that I was a little disappointed there were no bombs and my life really wasn't in all that much danger standing next to that building? It was still an exciting story but the whole no bombs thing made it a little less exciting. This is probably why people hate reporters. I'm super happy no one got hurt and even if there were bombs I wouldn't want anyone getting hurt but being able to say he had bombs just makes such a much better story haha. But it was still crazy and I enjoyed watching all the action.