Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Fighting For June 28th
Thursday
April 25, 2002
"Yes I guess we need the drama"
-Everclear "So Much For The Afterglow"
In the fall of 1991, I was a freshman at Father Ryan High School in Nashville, Tennessee. There, I met Mike Miller -- a guy who'd just moved to town from Ohio. Now it's tough starting high school for anyone, between the adjustments involved and the inherent changes and all. But poor Mike faced the added difficulty of being in a brand new in a new enviornment where many people know one another already from the junior high circuit.
Mike and I became friends, and we hung out as the years went by in high school. We were born on the same day (August 24, 1977), so we had something in common off the bat. As for the FRHS days, I could run through the stories -- the Spin Doctors/Screaming Trees concert and Jennifer Lane, Commander Keen, the Commodore 64 with a 300 baud modem, the Dukakis/Bentsen bumper sticker prank, Thielke Day with Glenn Brown and Melissa Smith (complete with the celebratory coconuts)... you get the idea. Good times.
Since high school, we've not been in the same town at the same time very much, and it's been challenging to keep in touch. But we have. And even though people change and go their own ways and what not, your old school crew is still your old school crew. And I stay loyal to them.
So you get the idea, Mike and I go way back. And it turns out that Mike is getting married in St. Louis on June 28th. I met his fiancée back in February 2000 when I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras -- and I'm very happy for both of them.
Now it turns out that June 28, 2002 is a Friday. I have a comp day that I get for July 4th, so I figured I'd use it the Friday before so I could go up that Thursday after work. Glenn and Mike will be there, and it'd be great to hang with the old crew and catch up on everything. The wedding is that Friday, so there'd be no problems. Makes sense, right? Well, not so fast.
Turns out that the 6 AM producer at WTSP, Brian Kargus, has that day off already, as he'll be on vacation in Alabama. So in my mailbox yesterday I had my vacation request form with the approval half-erased on the front and the note "Kargus off 6/28" stuck on a post-it note on the front. I won't get into the specifics behind why this shouldn't matter, but the point is that it's been a hassle. So the past two days I've been jumping through hoops trying to make this happen. It's not like I want the day off to go party in Ybor or go to a baseball game or something -- I have a wedding to get to here. Working the third shift, I put up with some pretty screwy hours as it is, which gets to be quite a personal sacrifice after awhile (I'm not complaining -- it comes with the territory). But to put the blocks to me going to the wedding of a friend I've known for roughly 11 years... well, that can't happen. So we'll see how this turns out. But I need to go ahead and buy a plane ticket before the major airlines try for a third time to jack up the price of tickets. Time's a tickin'.
Speaking of travel, tomorrow's the big trip to Huntington. I can't wait... it should be very fun. Ted Daniel (a reporter at WTSP) was telling me last night how much he enjoyed going back to visit friends in Chattanooga (his market before here). I'm looking forward to it.
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