The Hoofer is Back

Dancing used to be a huge part of my life. Okay, I take that back. It pretty much was my life. In my hayday, all but 5 years ago in high school, I was dancing 5-6 nights a week. However, once I got into college I didn't really have the time, or moolah, to keep up with it. So when I graduated I told myself I would get back into the dancing habit once I got a job and settled down.

The time has come. About a month ago I signed up for class at Springfield Little Theatre...TAP! Tap was always my favorite and strong suit. The first class was last week. Pshhh, it was a piece of cake. Tonight, not so much. That class kicked my ass. First off, there's only two other girls in the class, which I like because there's more one-on-one attention, but tonight neither one was there. My teacher worked me... and it felt so good. I miss that feeling of leaving dance class covered in sweat, muscles aching, and body physically drained.

The class only goes until May so I'm thinking about picking up some other classes at a dance studio over the summer. I really need to get back into shape, and I just can't motivate myself to run or lift weights. It's just not my thing. But dancing is.

PS-If only I had my senior pictures scanned onto my computer... I would have used one in this post and you all would have gotten to see one of my senior pictures in a dance costume, haha!

Powder Blue Power

I want to take advantage of one huge historic occasion. It may be years, DECADES, before I can say this again, not that it makes me happy to say this, but none-the-less this is a rare opportunity.

The Kansas City Royals are the only undefeated team in baseball.

Wow.

Enjoy it while you can Royals fans.

Look-A-Like: Daniel/Hervey

It's been a while since I've done a Look-A-Like. I really lacked inspiration. Luckily this weekend a certain event sparked my motivation to post the next comparison. My friends and I saw Chase Daniel at a bar Saturday night. This sounds so high school-ish... I guess they kinda dared me to go hug him, so I did. He's pretty short, but his muscles are huge. So, seeing him has inspired me to do his look-a-like.

Here we go...




On the Left: Chase Daniel, Mizzou Quarterback
On the Right: Jason Hervey, Actor (The Wonder Years)

I felt the need to use two sets of pictures. There just weren't many pictures out there to choose from so finding a good pair was difficult.

Enjoy.

NCAARP

Sure, everyone's heard of the NCAA Tournament, but in St. Louis there's something far better... the NCAARP. I honestly don't know what it stands for, but trust me it's awesome. Every year K-HITS 96.3 pits classic rock bands/artists against each other in a tourney-style bracket. I filled out a bracket for the first time this year. I am 90% confident in it. So far I have all the points possible... 3 out of 3. The Beatles, Eric Clapton, and The Who all won today. The most heated battle of the day? Cream vs. Clapton. He just can't lose.

My all-important Final Four includes Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty, The Beatles, and Eric Clapton. The latter two end up duking it out in the Championship with Clapton coming out on top. He's lost in the Championship the past two years, including to The Beatles last year, so he's due. I'm pretty worried about my Zeppelin pick. St. Louis isn't huge on the band. I knew this while making my picks, but for some reason decided to pick Zeppelin over Pink Floyd, the 2006 Champion.

If you want to see all my picks just click here. I'll try to keep updating my blog with my leader board status.

Meme?

It's been a while since I've rambled on here, so let's get the ball rolling with an easy post.

A fellow Ozarker tagged me with a meme... I'm not quite sure what this means, but luckily it came with instructions. I have to grab the book nearest to me, go to page 123 and type the fifth, sixth, and seventh sentences on that page. As it turns out, the nearest book is a Human Sexuality book from a class I took in college. If the book is anything like the class, it could be very interesting or very boring.

"It is stored in the axon terminals there, and is released into the bloodstream when a barrage of nerve impulses comes down those same axons. In other words, these neuroendocrine cells both manufacture the hormone and (by means of their neuronal activity) control its release. Oxytocin is present in the blood at low levels most of the time, but it reaches much higher levels under three circumstances: orgasm, childbirth, and breastfeeding."

That was pretty boring.

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.