Craziness!

Whew! You know I really never thought that it would be "Big City" crazy living in Cincinnati, but I'll be damned if the city isn't trying to prove me wrong.

Last night (Saturday) at work was one of the strangest shifts that I've worked in my going on 22 years in the News business.

Starting at 2pm yesterday we had: 4-people shot, 2 of whom are dead, a murder-suicide, a 2-alarm house fire and another homicide.

Now I realized that we live in troubled times and all of that and yes, I know that I've been working mostly in Sports over the past 10 years. But geez, the only thing missing was a plane crash (Maybe I shouldn't say that out loud).

((Me at a Reds game//Courtesy: TLB))

I'm hoping that it won't be like that all of the time. Heck, even in Atlanta we didn't have many days like that.

Somehow, even with very limited weekend staffing, we got it all covered. Even with only one reporter and one nightside photographer. The dayside guy was able to keep us going with the stuff in the afternoon, that freed up the night shooter to do the other stuff.

Whatever unsure-ness that I had about being back at at a TV station and not in the field pretty much has now gone away. Between running the dayside desk by myself on Friday and dealing with yesterday, I feel much better.

Now it is on to learning the producing systems. I'm beginning to post stories and video to the website, which is now a very big deal and I'm getting more comfortable writing for news. It is a little more difficult than I thought. Writing my own Sports stories and an occasion News package isn't too difficult, its the breaking news voice overs and the re-writes of poorly written wire stories where it becomes a challenge.

But, as they say...challenges are good. It is a lot more fun to be on the upside of a learning curve than the down side. At least for me...it keeps me involved and pushing forward. Learning is always a challenge and that folks...ain't such a bad thing.

Enjoy your accompanyment music...Ozzie does the "Crazy Train":