Weather-related maladies

Man - I had an odd day because of the weather, which is why this entry is actually coming after August 5. However, I'm backdating it because I would have posted it earlier, if not for the ridiculous weather.

The fun started at 9 a.m. I just finished submitting my latest story on court hearings for a local woman accused of killing a man with her car. You can read a brief of it here. Also, just like last time, my family noticed that I landed in some video clips again. I came in at about 1:50, blinking like I just stole the crown jewels of England.

Anyway, after submitting that story, I took the next five minutes to relax and unwind. I got up from my desk, walked out to the small kitchen area of the paper, got some water from the Poland Springs dispenser, and used the bathroom. Just your everyday sort of thing.

But when I walked back into the newsroom, there were literally buckets of water pouring out from the ceiling. See, early Thursday morning, Westerly got hit by severe flash thunderstorms, and it was also under a tornado watch. Apparently, the leaky roof from earlier in the year wasn't quite fixed completely, and something had burst in the roof. All the weight of the water focused on two ceiling tiles, which snapped and came tumbling down.

Of course, the affected area was right near my desk, about five feet away. One of my co-workers unfortunately got the brunt of it, as it mostly hit her area of the partition wall that we share. However, the water soon seeped across the floor to the rest of the newsroom, and by the end of the morning production run, the newsroom was down to six computers that could be safely used, as opposed to the normal 16.

The whole scene was madness. Workers from the on-site print facility came rushing in with pushcarts. These are normally used for paper disposal and recycling, but today they held dozens of gallons of water. The thing that surprised me the most was the sheer noise of the event - The water was loud, and it was surrounded by two to six yelling workers at all times, followed by a noisy vacuuming and cleaning effort. In this cacophony, the editors managed to get the paper out, which was a small miracle.

Anyway... That's how my day started. I left work early to instead do some stuff out of the office, since they had to clean-up and what not. Proving the old Rhode Island adage correct, if you just waited 15 minutes (times four), the storm passed, and in its place was 88-degree heat and ridiculous humidity. The feel-like temperature according to Weather.com was 102 at one point, so I didn't really get a ton of work done. (Damn my Irishness!)

The fun wasn't over for the day though. Thursday night is trivia night at Casey's, a local restaurant / pub that my friends and I enjoy. We were minding our own business, eating delicious meals before the fun started shortly after 9 p.m., when the lights started to flicker. They came back on, and then, VOOMPH! Complete darkness. (Photo to the right, taken by my roommate Becca.)

I've seen this sort of thing happen in bad movies, and thankfully, there was no mad rush or screaming as people tried to flee in terror. Everyone kind of just sat in the dark for a minute, and quietly murmured to their friends. The staff came around to tables and said that a conductor on the street had probably blown, and that we could stay and drink if we wanted to and what not.

We (my roommate Becca and her friend Julie) decided to stick it out, because we're awesome like that. The power snapped back on in about 20 minutes, following by trivia, which we totally dominated and won! Woohoo! Two weeks ago, we won with the glorious team name The Stephanie Pratt All-Stars, but this week we kept it simple with the inside joke name of What's Your Deal?

So, yeah. I'm officially not a fan of this god damn weather. But at least winning trivia at the end of the night softened the blow a bit. (Also, I stole a bunch of mints on the way out from Casey's, which is always a good thing.)

Steve At Work

Have you ever wondered, "Hey, what does Steve look like when he's working?" Well, thanks to the obtrusive nature of television news, you can now find out by clicking here. I'm in the background of both of the videos on that page, wearing the green polo shirt. For the fuller version of that story though, I recommend my paper's articles on the court case, which can be accessed here (today's hearing) and here (the background).

I'll admit that it is kind of odd to be in the background, working, while someone else is working, if that makes sense. It happens to me pretty frequently though, since I have the courthouse beat. Earlier this week, I believe I made it into some broadcasts because a crooked lawyer was sentenced to a year in jail and I was there working. I'm also in this YouTube video about historic flooding in Rhode Island, albeit briefly.

Here is the sad part - My brief appearances on television always elicit more of a response than most thins I actually write for the paper. Here is a rough hierarchy of what events cause me to get the most feedback:

Being in a background shot of a television story > reporting a major story in print > writing a column with a head shot > a normal news story

Anyway. I'll add that I've never been on television for a legitimate reason. I was interviewed once by The Providence Journal because a fraternity at URI stole a bunch of our student newspapers and burned them at their house. However, I think that story ended up on the bottom of A-1 or B-1, and it represents the peak of my Z-level local celebrity.

The picture of Dusty and Robbie is from this site here.

Weird Rhode Island news: Eff off, Bambi!

I don't normally like to link to articles from my own paper, but in my defense, this is at least something that I didn't personally write. One of my co-workers wrote this great piece on one Charlestown resident's plan to feed the homeless - with deer meat, because the deer are "nothing more than a disease-carrying rodent."

Good times, good times! For the record, while I find deer to be cute and may or may not have cried when I was six and saw Bambi's mom get shot, the deer in this area are really annoying and unsafe. They are especially bad on my road, Kings Factory Road, late at night - They try to scamper across the road seemingly right as cars are coming. I've almost hit them a half-dozen times, which would be quite bad, considering that I drive a small Toyota Corolla. (Hey, at least it's not a Dodge Stratus.)

Anyway, I'm always reluctant to link stuff from my "real job" to this blog, just because I don't want it to seem like one is feeding the other. I consider them two distinct and separate activities, just to make them clear. But on something wicked cool, like this story, it would be negligent for me to not link.