On With It Already

I’m a slave to routine. I only seem to function at prime capacity when I know what to expect from a given day, week, or month. When things are unsettled, just about everything in my life suffers. I only commit to those things that I absolutely must do, and everything else is forgotten or ignored.

With this admission, I ask for your patience and understanding. Since my transfer from part time studio grunt to full-time photojournalist has been, at best, tumultuous, I’ve had little time or energy to commit to my other passions, specifically my blog and my video opus, The Sledding Syndicate. I expect to eventually get back to these things when I get my schedule in order, but the timeframe for that has been extended repeatedly over the past month.

The blogging really upsets me because I’ve had no shortage of stories to tell since this news nonsense began. I’ve resorted to keeping a video diary simply because I want this weird time documented, but I just don’t have the patience to sit down and write all this crap down.

Of course, this might seem hypocritical — I am writing this, after all — but I’m writing this at my desk, having just gotten back from a 1079 (dead body) that turned out to be a natural death. Talk about a distasteful experience. But other than the occasional emergency call, I’m extremely bored working dayside — most of my friends and my usual shift are all on nightside — and I can’t wait for my normal schedule to begin.

I’m hoping that once I’m back nightside, fully entrenched in my usual grind, things will even out and I’ll be able to get back to the fun I was enjoying before the transfer drama began. The only thing I’ve been able to enjoy since I got this promotion have been the Highlight Zone on Fridays and Studio 60 on Mondays; this just makes me sad. On paper, my life has seen a huge upswing, but in execution things have played out much differently.

I just have no patience with this training nonsense, mostly because there’s no training involved. So, if I’m just going to be left to my own devices, I’d much rather do it in the company of my friends rather than the dour depressed, and disenchanted daysiders.

Somebody, please help me. I need my nightlife back.

Better Late than Never

So I have not been as vigilante in my blogging as I intended. As Phil said, “After all the blogs coming out of Iraq, anything we post now is going to see extremely mundane.” I could not agree more.

However, that does not excuse the fact that I’ve been leaving the majority of my family and friends in the dark about what I’ve been doing and what is going on with me.

As of right now, I have nothing new to report as far as my leg. The doctor’s believe that there is little to no chance of any sort of recovery. Due to the location of the schrapnel in my leg, surgery is not an option. That guarantees a couple of things. 1. Any army medical board is forthcoming. 2. My military career as I know it is over. There is a chance that they might offer me a different job in a different specialty. That job would have to be awfully rewarding to keep me in the service. I’d prefer not to get out, I feel like I owe the Army an awful lot, but if I’m going to be sitting behind a desk, I’d rather have a beard while I’m doing it.

Right now, I’m waiting on my unit to get back before I make any decisions. If I postpone it until early next year, I will have been promoted to Captain, which means more money when my disability check arrives every month. I’m honestly in no hurry.

As most of you know, I bought a house and a puppy. His name is Maddux and he is a close relative to my Uncle Joel’s dog Scamp. This past week applications to MBA programs at various schools for the class of 2007 were released. I’ve spent four nights now working on those requirements. I’ve already started the application process to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Northwester, University of Illinois Chicago, NIU, and U of I. All of them are top 25 MBA programs. Northwestern is my number 1 pick, but I’d be hard pressed not to accept an invitation to Harvard. We will see what happens. The final deadlines are not until March of next year.

My mom is planning on coming to visit me on the 13th of October. She’s not bringing Aunt Becky this time. However, she’s bringing my best friend Andy Reiff with her. It will be interesting to see how they enjoy the 14 hour car ride together. I don’t envy either of them.

I am planning on being home for the week before thanksgiving, the Friday before to the Sunday after. I’m also planning on arriving home on the 22nd of December and staying until roughly the 4th of January for Christmas. If I have to choose though, I’ll take my Christmas dates. I refuse to miss two Xmas’s in a row. Be prepared, I’m bringin Maddux with me!

As the regular season is winding down for America’s past time, I would be remiss to not acknowledge the champion of the first Cordova fantasy baseball league. Me. It gives me even greater pleasure knowing that I knocked out both my brother and my cousin Brian to win the championship. Pay up boys!

Along baseball lines, I must gripe a bit. I was going through statistics last night and I noticed a few things that pissed me off. I know my boys suffered some serious injuries (D Lee, Prior, Wood, etc.) But when looking at the Chicago Cubs line up, I find it hard to compare them to the Royals, Devil Rays, or Pirates. Yet we are competing with them for worst record in baseball this season. It reminds me of the 2004 dream team. It doesn’t matter how talented the pieces are, it’s still a team game.
30 games .500 and a possible/probable 100 loss season is not acceptible even as a Cubs fan. On a lighter note, at least we didn’t choke as bad as the White Sox did finishing out this season.

To satisfy Phil, I must put in my vote for funniest movie of the year. Jackass 2. I’m not a big comedy guy, i’m too uptight for that, but I honestly laughed for an hour and a half of the 2 hour movie. Apparently, I’m trashy and have a sick sense of humor.

I know it’s been hard for my family the past couple of months. We’ve all grown used to keeping in contact on a nearly daily basis. As ridiculous as it is to say, we all miss it. I’m going to make a concentrated effort to stay in touch, please do the same.

I love you all

Andrew

4120 Cantrell Dr
Colorado Springs, CO 80911

732-693-8013
Andrew.Rockwell@us.army.mil
AndyRock84 on AIM

Rantings of a Young Man in Flux

Greetings adoring masses.

It’s odd feeling guilty about my infrequent updates considering all of six people and one monkey actually take the time to read these damn things (and the monkey only found me on accident), but considering the past couple months have been nothing short of epic in their significance, I have to say I’m due for a serious update.

I think my entire family has been in decompression mode over the past two to three months. With Andrew out of harm’s way, or at least out of firing range, everybody has taken a moment to get used to living without The Hum, or at least getting used to The Hum on a different frequency. So, the habitual e-mailing has stopped. The phone calls have become as infrequent as they were when Andrew was overseas. And I think most of us, sadly, pay shameful little attention to the news now that we know he won’t be on it. I’m sure my brother keeps good tabs on his guys, but when they come back in November I’m sure he’ll put on the blinders like the rest of us.

All of this has had a disastrous effect on my blogging. I’m sure this is merely an inevitable valley after being at peak operating status during Andrew’s deployment, and I’ll get back to a more modest writing frequency in time. However, setting up a blog for my brother and I to share was perhaps overly optimistic. I still have hope for it, especially after Andrew knocked me out of the Fantasy Baseball playoffs last night after I manhandled him throughout the regular season. We’ll see if he jumps at that opportunity. Sadly, after sending us war stories for seven months, I understand all too well how anything we could write now will inevitably seem embarassingly pedestrian.

On that note…

A few weeks back I posted a brief blurb on my promotion from studio crew bitch to photo-journalist (newsroom bitch). Well, since then I’ve exhausted myself with training and the station bureaucracy. I worked a number for 12-14 hour days on both sides of the line, keeping my normal schedule on studio crew while training with the news folk.

I’m not a person who handles being “in flux” very well, and thanks to the childish animosity between news and production I’ve essentially been in that state since I received the promotion. It’s hard to tell if the lack of consideration my transfer has garnered is apathy on the part of my superiors, or perhaps that’s just the status quo. I don’t handle disorder well, and working without a regular schedule without knowing when certain logistical priorities will be worked out has driven me slightly mad. My training has been largely improvised — I set my own schedule around my time in the studio — and after my first bad night on the Highlight Zone this past Friday it became readily apparent that its been inadequate as well.

If there’s a silver lining to that disaster it’s that nobody noticed but me. This is good in that it clearly wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, but it was bad in that I was furious about the staggeringly low quality of my work. I think most people see me as a fairly low-key, even keel Joe. Well, that even keel has a lot to do with apathy. I’m not going to get riled up over something I don’t give a shit about. Unfortunately, I’ve finally landed a job that I want to excel at, and I will be very unhappy any time I turn in something less than stellar. And Friday was certainly less than stellar. It’s a tale I’ll happily tell again over Thanksgiving dinner, but the wound is still fresh and my knuckles can’t take any more wall-punching.

So, this post was originally going to be a brief heads-up about some upcoming entertainment offerings, but… you know… tangents. Anyway, let’s get to the task at hand.

– Tonight, my favorite new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip debuts. I’ve watched the pilot three more times since writing up my first review, and I’ll watch it again tonight (it’s in HD after all). I love love love this show, which makes me worry that it’s too smart to find an audience (Sports Night anyone?). So, I beg you to give it a chance. You don’t even have to give the full episode a try. If you get through the powerful opening and the introduction of Matt and Danny (Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford) without being as smitten as I am, then you’re welcome to change the channel. Although I don’t think you will. Also coming later this week are the season premieres of two of my favorites: The Office and Grey’s Anatomy — both on the same night, Thursday.

– Last week Nintendo announced the release date and price for its new console, Wii. To give you an idea of how much I’m looking forward to this, I already have enough store credit at GameCrazy to get both the system and the new Legend of Zelda game for free. I can’t rationalize my excitement for this — I haven’t yet played anything on the system — but it is what it is, and I won’t apologize for it. Of course, it’s not going to help me find a girlfriend.

– The most important event this week occurs on Tuesday — the release of Battlestar Galactica season 2.5. This is, without question, my favorite television program of all time. I realize I gave that title to Lost a year ago, but watching Battlestar while my brother was away at war — nothing could match the relevance and poignancy of this program in the context of our own political realities. This is just about the toughest sell I could find when it comes to recommendations, but I’m going to try by demolishing some of the misconceptions you might have about this show.

First, this is not the Battlestar people remember from twenty years ago. Today’s Battlestar is gritty, dark, and relevant in a way no show could have been in the 70’s and 80’s. Second, get over the genre. At its best, science fiction is unmatched in its ability to wield allegory as a weapon, and no science fiction work in the past twenty years has a sharper blade than Battlestar. This show makes you think unlike any show in recent memory. Questions like “Who are the good guys?” and “At what point do the good guys become bad guys?” never get asked in your standard television fare, but in Battlestar, these questions are the heart of the show. To call BSG a watercooler show does not do it justice. This show could be the basis for a college political science course. That’s how smart and complex it is.

This show will break your heart, quicken your pulse, and test your beliefs in equal measure. This is must see television of the highest order. If you have Netflix, put BSG at the top of your queue. You might just be caught up by the time it returns in the first week in October.

You can thank me later.

I’m Hired? F**k!!

Last Friday, I received a promotion — I might even consider it a major promotion — from studio grunt to full-blown photo-journalist. Instead of spending my days locked in the studio shooting newcasts, I’ll be hitting the streets with reporters to shoot stories. This is the job I had in mind when I joined KWQC six months ago, and now I have it.

Shit.

This is just about the most major happening of my life since I graduated college. I finally landed a job tailored to my skills and talents, one that could open many doors that had been previously closed to me. It’s a job that changes from day-to-day — something that is essential to prevent the typical ennui that settled in every other place I have worked. It’s a job with urgency and pressing demand, something that sounds awful but usually brings out the best in me. Aside from the fact my writing skills won’t be put to much use, this is the perfect job for me at this stage in the game.

However, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I have my doubts — in my abilities and in the job itself. The newsroom I’m joining is teetering on the edge of serious upheaval. The departure that has given me this opportunity appears to be the first of many in what could turn out to be a major exodus from the station. If we start hemorrhaging people like the Titanic it’s certainly not going to make things easier on those of us who stay onboard — especially when we’re relatively new to our positions. And though I usually pick up on things really quickly, I worry that my usual dexterity and adaptability will abandon me now that I need it the most.

Of course, this is probably just the normal pre-employment panic that would follow me wherever, but since the stakes are pretty high this time (hell, there really haven’t been stakes career wise up to this point) I’m just a little edgier than usual. Well, hopefully after three weeks of training, I’ll be a little more confident. Thank God I’m going to get eased into this or I might seriously lose my mind.

Anyway, keep your eyes out, kiddies, and if you see me driving past in my channel six vehicle say “Hello Quad Cities!” and I promise to mock you incessantly with my coworkers.