Redbird Fallout

It's been awhile since I've talked baseball on here... you knew a post was coming sooner or later. :) As pumped as I am for the approaching season, I'm not too excited at the same time. In one month the St. Louis Cardinals will be right here in the Ozarks to play the Springfield Cardinals. Fingers crossed I'll be there. But instead of looking forward to that I'm pretty worried about this season as a whole.

The Cardinals have fallen from grace since the 2006 championship season. Actually, "fallen" is a nice way to put it. I think the better term here is nose-dive. Apparently there are only two Redbirds left from the 2002 season (Pujols and Izzy). I don't even want to know how many are left from last season... depressing. Let's just say this season is going to be a rebuilding year. Hopefully we have a decent one, and hopefully it only takes one.

Taguchi, Edmonds, Eckstein, Rolen... all did great things for the Cards, all gone. And as if things weren't looking bad enough add to that list Scott Spiezio. The team released him last night because of a six-count arrest warrant that's out for him. ...This sucks.

Let's just hope we can manage a .500 season, which we couldn't even do last year. Besides that, as long as we finish with a better record than the Royals, and the Cubs don't make it to the playoffs (this year makes a century, remember?)... I guess I'll be happy.

If anything this could mean great things for the bright-eyed guys here in Springfield. Maybe I'll get to see some of the guys play here and in St. Louis all in this year. We'll see.

On a side note, I really wish I could go to Spring Training again this year. The beach sounds sooo nice right now.

No Chili For You!

I know this is a bit late, but I feel like I just have to blog about it... the Sertoma Chili Cook-off! Obviously it's my first year in Springfield so I had never even heard of the event before. My co-workers talked it up for months and I must say I did not leave disappointed. It was a pretty good time, but you can't really go wrong with beer and chili. Wait, one exception, Miller sponsored the event so there wasn't a drop of Anheuser Busch in the joint. Thank goodness for those SoCo slushies, mmmmm. Anyway, back to the chili, my favorite was McAlester's "Hot." I didn't try nearly as many as I should have, maybe 7, and I didn't try the grand champion News-Leader's either.

I'm really not a chili person. I can't say I've ever thought to myself 'hmm, I could really go for some hot chili right now.' I'll eat it if it's there, but that's about it. However, ever since the cook-off I've found myself craving some. But not just any chili, it's gotta be good and spicy. I can't wait for next year.

Obviously the highlight of the day (and one of the best so far this year) was meeting the Soup Nazi! I've been a huge Seinfeld fan for as long as I can remember, so it was clearly quite amazing to meet him. Jason and I talked to him a few different times... he served us chili, autographed some Seinfeld stuff and even took a picture with us! We were pretty excited.

Besides that, it was pretty fun watching the Chili Eating Contest (Joe was so close). And the event was also a great exposure to what is the Ozarks. Lots of interesting people there.

I've also heard there's a wing festival and rib festival later this year... oh goodness I love this town.

Just Another Manic Monday

Well, here we are again... another Monday full of awful weather. Ever since the tornado outbreak on Monday, January 7th it seems like at least every other Monday we have terrible weather. Has anyone else noticed this? Has anyone else also noticed the days leading up to those horrible weather days were bright, sunny, and unseasonably warm? I think most of the Ozarks is starting to catch on. As much as I love those 50 degree days I'm starting to loath them because I know bad things are to come. It's never fun snow. It's always this messy icy, sleet, rain mix... or tornadoes, like southern Missouri and northern Arkansas saw last week. Josh (ice) deBerge did a nice little blog about the up and down Ozark weather in the weather blog. He also explained the temperature fluctuations during today's 5:30, but I don't think he put it online. If you missed it, here's what you need to know... buckle up, the nauseating ride known as Ozarks weather will keep throwing us for some loops.

Early morning thunderstorms brought rain and sleet, which meant sloppy roads and lots of ice. Lots of ice means heavy trees which fall on power lines.

Uh oh. Even the media can't escape nature's wrath sometimes.

4:28:06... to me and the rest of the crew that means 1 minute 54 seconds to show time. Today, not so much. One of the scariest things that can happen in a newsroom did. The power went out... 1 minute and 54 seconds before the show. Fantastic. Things slowly started to come back on and get fixed. Seven minutes past the scheduled start time we were back on "air" to an audience we weren't even sure was there. Apparently we weren't transmitting over analog or digital, so maybe we were on cable? Apparently so. Besides the fact we were on black for seven minutes pre-show, the outage was pretty noticeable on set with a lack of lighting. It worked though. Going into a show 7 minutes heavy is a producer's nightmare. Somehow with the help of my news director, Brad, and our marketing director, Addie, we came out only 52 seconds heavy. Not too shabby. Considering all the challenges going into the show, i.e. no lighting in the control room for the director and audio op, I think the show came out pretty clean. Everyone was winging it in every sense of the phrase. So great job, everyone! Here's to hoping we don't have to go through 30 minutes of hell like that again!

Tuesday was super, thanks for asking

Super Tuesday certainly lived up to its name in the Show-Me State. I spent a majority of the day and night in the newsroom keeping track of numbers and producing cut-ins. For as short as those were (4:00 minutes each) they turned stressful pretty fast. Working in the newsroom was a great experience though last night. It was the first election night I've ever worked. I produced the 5:00 newscast at KOMU the day of the Talent/McCaskill election, but that was all.

I would say around 8:30 or so the AP predicted Hillary Clinton statistically won Missouri, even though there were about 1,000 precincts (out of 3,771) that still needed to report. Something in the back of my mind told me their prediction was a little preemptive. Before I left the station around 11:00 I checked the Secretary of State's website one last time to see what areas still had a lot of precincts to report, and who the leaders were in those areas. Only about 1/3 of Boone County had reported and maybe 3/4 of St. Louis County and City reported. All of those areas had Obama in a very strong lead. As it turned out he chipped away at Hillary's lead and won the state in the wee hours of the morning. The Republican race went about the same way, with Huckabee losing out to McCain after having a slim lead all day.

Now that I have Super Tuesday under my belt I'm ready for the next big thing. Bring on the Presidential election!

Beads and Barack

I enjoyed St. Louis to opposite ends of the spectrum Saturday. The day kicked off early with a trip to Soulard for Mardi Gras. If you can't make it to New Orleans for the festivities St. Louis is the place to go. The parade alone lasted three hours. Anyway, it was my first true Mardi Gras experience (it doesn't count when you're 10), and it was good times. I saw more than I needed to, but at the same time not nearly as much as I thought I would. The weather was beautiful and I had fun with all the people I was there with.

I made sure to not have too much fun in Soulard because I knew I had a big night ahead of me. The big night included presidential hopeful, Barack Obama. I'm going to be honest with you here, politics is not my strong suit. I just don't get that excited about it like I do other things. However, in the past week my boyfriend Jason has become a huge Barack Obama supporter. When I found out Obama was visiting St. Louis the same weekend we were I had to tell him because I knew he would want to go.

We were going to go as members of the "media" but ran into a few difficulties, so we were stuck in the back of the crowd. At this point in the game I can honestly say I do not have a favorite in this presidential race. I just haven't looked into everything deep enough yet. I simply went to listen to what he had to say. I figured the best way for me to get into the whole campaigning ordeal is to actually go and experience the candidates. There really is no better way, right?

Nearly 20,000 people showed up for Saturday's rally. A truly impressive number given 1) it was a Saturday night downtown, and 2) it wasn't just any Saturday night downtown, it was Mardi Gras. Besides the sheer number of people who showed up, the make-up of the crowd really impressed me. As Claire McCaskill put it that night, the room really looked like America.

I found Obama to be a great speaker with a lot of character. I just hope I'll be able to see the other candidates in the next coming months.

You can watch and listen to a little snippet of Obama's speech in St. Louis by clicking on the video above.