Just Waiting for the Call

In half an hour to an hour and a half, one of my sources should call me for a quick interview. I am nervous, even though all I have to do is fire off a few questions and scribble down the answers quickly enough not to waste her entire lunch hour. I need to be at work in an hour and a half, but obviously, I might be late. Unless I can catch the 44 or 48 or something. That would save me a bunch of time if the timing is right.

Anyway. Assuming she calls, I'm not totally fucked. I did talk to the other source yesterday afternoon and the website for the subject of the story covers a lot of the information the editor wants in the 625-to-700 words. No time to catch up with other sources, of course, but hey. I'm squeaking by with the bare minimum, for now.

Kevin and I went to the Crocodile last night and caught half of Ben Lee's set and witnessed the rocking of Fountains of Wayne. I'd never heard Ben Lee before, to my memory, but I enjoyed it. He told some amusing stories and quips and the songs were pretty good. FoW rocked--they played two songs I really like, "Leave the Biker" and "Sink to the Bottom"--though this was one of the last dates of the tour, and they were noticeably tired. They did two encores, but I wasn't feeling the love. When we saw the Eels, the love was palpable; Mr. E did three frickin' encores before he had to drag himself offstage. But anyway, FoW was good stuff, and it was cool to go to the Crocodile for the first time.

So today at work, I must write my story. After work, I'm either going to do laundry and spend time with Kevin or go to Chop Suey and see the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. I need to go to my prof/editor's office with the story tomorrow morning, probably around 10-10:30, then get Josie and drive to Portland. I need to refuel the car. I need to do a lot of things.

I think I'm going to try to find some "experts" in sunburn/burn medicine at a UW facility and write a story (possibly for the stupid Daily) about severe sunburn. Of course I'll use my own recent experience; not very proper journalistic, but probably far more interesting than a straight news story, unless I can find someone else with a similar story.

My sister will be flying into Portland tomorrow evening and I will pick her up from a MAX station nearer our hotel. I'm not sure what I'll do with my evening, but Saturday afternoon is to be spent with Josie and Christine (!!!), perhaps in downtown Portland (to do: get piles of Mapquest directions), before I must go to the wedding reception. Sunday I'll meet Christine for lunch or so before getting back on the road, alone (to do: borrow some of Kevin's CDs that are good driving music, like Sloan and Fountains of Wayne).

The 12 o'clock hour is drawing near. I'm sitting here with a bowl of cold avocado green curry and brown rice from Araya's. We went there last night specifically for avocado green curry, even though it was much more expensive than I remembered ($12.95 instead of $8 or 9) and we got Tom Kah soup, too, so it was just way too much food.

I would seriously never make it as a real reporter. I can write, maybe, but I'm terrible at newsgathering. I get so anxious I want to puke. I don't know how to pronounce peoples' names, even if I consult the Internet. Ah, well. More coffee for me.

And I took the gauze off today without reapplying silvadene. It's okay. I can shower. I was able to shave the hair off that made it somewhat painful to peel off the skin. I can wear socks, shoes, and pants. I can stand. It doesn't even itch like hell right now. It's just shiny, a little tight and dry, and ugly, but since when did I care?