Entries this day: Leonids

Leonids

11:07am Sunday 18 November 2001

Tammy's birthday.

I basically just woke up after having been awake until 5:30-ish watching the meteor shower with YRUU peeps Kate, Meg, Hethre, Phat Pat, Matt, Danny.

It all started back Saturday when I called Kate/Meg to see if any YRUUers wanted to watch the meteor shower that night. The basic plan was they were going into town to watch Elizabeth Elmore perform, and would call me around 2am on my cell phone when they were done.

"Cool," I said. "I think I've heard of Elizabeth Elmore."

- - - -

Jump to 6:10pm Saturday as I arrive at KTRU for my shift. In this case, I was not going for my shift, but actually to fade in and out the basketball game announcer as the Lady Owls Take On The (somethings) In Corpus Christi. The announcer guy was supposed to call the station at 6:15 to say they had connected successfully to the connection thing that allows us to broadcast them over the air. That's why I had to be there so early, in case there were problems with them connecting.

Jessi was not there; I expected this because I saw her request for a sub on the email list. I met her sub, Audrey, a first semester DJ whose shift is 1-4am on Friday mornings. Blah blah blah meet Audrey and trade a couple DJ stories and whatever and she pointed out 3 microphones that were set up in the studio. "Someone was supposed to be here at 6pm to play." It was about 6:25 when people with sound equipment and such walked in. First thing I said was, "Just to inform you, we are scheduled to broadcast a basketball game at 7pm, so you have 35 minutes to set up and play."

In the back of my mind I noticed the basketball announcer guy had not called.

To Audrey, "HI, I'm Elizabeth," said the woman who had walked in.

"Oh, Elizabeth Elmore!" exclaimed Audrey.

Elizabeth Elmore, eh? Whoah! She's um, wait, oh my gosh how randomly ironically wonderful cool is this????

I'm super thankful to Justin who knew WTF he was doing and helped her set up all her sound stuff, as I just kinda stood around wondering when the basketball guy would call. I was getting a bit nervous about timing.

I called Meg/Kate. "Guess where I am?" Before they could answer, "Guess who is here?" Before they could answer, "I'm at KTRU and Elizabeth Elmore is here about to play!"

After confirming that they were going to listen, I assured Elizabeth, "You have at least one listener, who is going to your show tonight."

So Meg/Kate turned on the radio and got to listen to 15 minutes of Elizabeth Elmore interviewed by Justin as I *finally* got a phone call from Derrick, the basketball announcer, "HI; we've been trying to connect for about 45 minutes, but are having trouble." Oh great. And by great I mean not great.

I was quite... quandried. On one hand we've got an artist performing live, and the Derrick *should* have called a long time ago, especially since they were having problems.

On the other hand, the artist had also arrived late, and the basketball game was scheduled to begin at 7, and I was being paid to help make that happen.

On another hand, we are trying to create at least the semblance of something that sounds good and promotes the KTRU sponsored show, and all that.

In the middle of the basketball chaos, after Elizabeth and Justin wrapped up the interview, after I made neck cutting motions at Justin in the most respectful understanding way I could, I asked Elizabeth if she would write a note to Meg and Kate. She was happy to do so. The cool thing is that I found a flyer advertising her show on which she wrote it. The odd thing is that the show advertised was for last week, not this week. Hmm.

In the middle of wrapping up Elizabeth's last song, Justin confirmed that the basketball game was connected, using the tiny cue speaker quietly enough to not be picked up by the mics that were listening to Elizabeth. "Tell them they are connected. I could hear something in the speaker," he indicated to me.

Relief. All is good.

So when her show was wrapped up, we turned them up, but the line sounded like crap. It actually sounded like an alien space transmission that I might hear in Star Wars or something.

I had forgotten to get the phone number of Derrick so I could call him to tell him to reconnect.

Doh!!

Called Will, called Mike, got them connected, and super thanks to Ben for being there to help with that. As I got them connected, Ben was on the phone with Derrick on a different line. "Okay, you are live; you're connected," confirmed Ben.

But then for about 45 seconds or a minute, we broadcast Derrick going, "hello....     hellooo..." with basketball game sounds in the background. Justin tried using the 'talkback' button to tell them, "You're on the air." Actually there are two buttons. "You're on the air, you're on the air, you're on the air, you're on the air." Obviously he couldn't hear us. "Hello....     hellooo."

We still hadn't gotten their phone number in this case to tell him he was on the air.

Finally Derrick called back, and Ben was all, "you're on the air, all we hear is basketball game sounds." Then occurred the second weird experience that we went from broadcasting cheery static to Derrick suddenly calling the plays as if in mid sentence. Our listeners might as well have been flipping through the radio dial to get the same effect. Very odd good KTRU stuff.

Big sigh of relief, big thanks to Justin and Ben for their support. Now I got to kick back for 45 minutes and write a letter to Joana, telling her the story I just relayed above. In the middle of my letter, I noticed I had misspelled her first name on the greeting. Doh! So, I played a song by an artist who has the same last name as Joana, which you can find on my set list (I think the link will work).

- - - -

Jump to the end of my shift and HI/bye to the next DJs Alex and Wendy, and Wendy's sister Marika (sp) and Wendy's mom's homemade oatmeal spice cookies, which were excellent.

Walked to Elizabeth Elmore show and got in free as a KTRU DJ. Found Meg, said HI. Saw a girl who waved HI at me, who I took a moment to recognize as Melanie from my first ASL class. The music was caustic (band before EE, The Liars, I think), so I talked to Ben, DL, Mondro, et. al. outside. Mondro is currently jobless and will be going to Australia for 4 months at the beginning of 2002. Nice.

After Elizabeth's set, I prodded Meg to go meet her and Elizabeth was all, "oh, Meg!" cause she had written the note to her. All good, it was.

Drove Hethre back to Meg and Kate's house in the woodlands, talked to Kate (who got stuff done instead of go to the show) and waited for Meg to finally get home.

- - - -

We raided the winter clothes closet; I fit quite well in Kevin's pants and jacket. Grabbed a pile of blankets and drove to Southshore Park to watch the Leonids.

So funny as we laughed at ourselves for being all, "it's sooo cold, when it was probably only 60 degrees," Kate said. (I think it was in the mid 50's but whatever) "while Northerners are in shorts and going, oh it's so hot!"

We planted ourselves in the middle of the sidewalk. No one else was in the park but some ducks over by the rocks. Suddenly, the ducks got up. Hethre was all, "Um, those are people, not ducks." HAHAHAHAHahaahahah so so funny! Meg, Hethre, and I all collapsed into a fit of laughter in fetal position at the same time. Equally hilarious!

Lots of giggles, watching the stars; other people arrived; some said HI. The drunk guy and his girlfriend, without the aid of blankets and winter coats left pretty quickly. "Don't throw up on my shoelace!"

I counted about 45 meteors before I started falling asleep. Meg and Hethre were asleep before I counted 20. Woke up in a fit of, "oh no I'm missing the show!" I must say that it was the most meteors I have ever seen at a time. As many as 20 in one minute, and actually 3 in 3 seconds.

The peak seemed to be around 5am

Oh! Matt, Phat Pat, Danny arrived around 4am. They had their own adventure looking for us and finally seeing Kate's car on the side of the road.

A tad after 5am, we decided to leave. We were the only ones in the park. Not even any ducks. "We won!!" "Yes!!"

- - - -

Back to Kate and Meg's. Sleep sleep sleep.

It's 12:13pm; I'm going to eat and then go to YRUU.