little lost robot

I’m getting used to smelling like baby formula and diaper wipes, rather than just a sweaty news photographer. The good news: the ladies love both.

This afternoon we wandered around downtown Greenville. I carried babybot Eliza in the Snugli backpack-thing that I’ve been dying to try out. I’m not sure which one of us was having more fun (although I suspect it was me). Earlier today I put together a monstrous, plastic put-the-baby-inside-it contraption and found myself scrounging around the condo for AAA batteries. I later took them from one of the survival kits my wife and I prepared last year. Now that we have a baby to entertain, I’ve found that my definition of “survival” is now somewhat different.

Also, I need to brush up on my nursery rhymes, if I’m to properly sing to Eliza before bedtime. Knowing the title of the song simply isn’t enough. Here are some impromptu lyrics I ended up singing tonight:

“The Itsy Bitsy Spider climbs up your chest at night…into your mouth and right down your throat…that happens one night a year for the rest of your life…statistically speaking.”

Okay, I’m still learning. Tomorrow Eliza will teach me some nursery rhymes, and in return I’ll teach her how to play Grand Theft Auto 4.

Upon returning from the store (in which we bought more random baby junk), we pulled into the parking lot to this random sight:

It’s the weirdly neighbor guy, all decked out in a spandex body suit and starring some sort of new age yoga video. This is the neighbor guy who sorta looks like Andy Worhol or a German interpretive dance instructor - depending on what day/time you run into him. And he always has random things to say like, “When I go to the grocery store I will never spend over $30.” Don’t get me wrong, he’s a super nice guy, but also kinda super-weird. As soon as I get my invisibility cloak back, I plan on following him around for a day just to see where the hell an average day takes him.

As promised, I’m blogging about some big changes happening at LLR headquarters: the arrival of our new, baby girl, Eliza! And, I’ve wasted no time taking a photo of our photogenic little slobber monster for the blog.

It’s crazy, man. We’ve only been parents for about six hours, but we’ve packed all kinds of adventures into this afternoon. A frantic run to the Super-Target. Accidentally changing a diaper in “mid stream”. And a stressful drive down the freeway, in which I’ve already taken to venting my road rage in a delightful, I’m-talking-to-a-baby tone [“Daddy thinks this **** should pick a lane before I run him off the road.”]

We did a pretty good job at keeping our adoption plans under-the-radar until the last minute, so I’m sure there’s a ton of questions that y’all are dying to ask. Feel free. I’ll probably get around to a more lenghty baby blog post sometime this weekend [and I’ll continue to update our “Eliza comes home” photo set on Flickr]. Later!

I have so many things to blog about, but not just yet. Partly because some of the awesome stuff is top secret (how’s that for a sweeps tease?) and will be revealed later this week. Anyway, here’s some of the fabulous things I’ve been engrossed in for the past few days:

1. Sweeps promos: Now that I’m part-time in the promotions department, I’ve been churning out promos for the May war effort. So far I’ve produced: “Permanent Makeup” ; “Sex and the Bible”; and “Could Your Job Be Killing You?”

2. Special reports: The only sweeps segment I’ve been assigned this ratings book is called, “Permanent Makeup” [video link] and it’s all about women who are getting makeup tattooed onto their eyes and face, rather than apply it all day the normal way.

3. Here’s where I stand on this week’s pop culture: Still blown away by Lost. Missed this week’s BSG. Forgot to see Iron Man. Played a ton of GTA4 (mostly getting run over by Hasser online). Ashamed I’m obsessed with the polygamist ranch story (also looking forward to the next season of Big Love).

I’ve been busy finding things to keep my mind distracted from waiting impatiently for Grand Theft Auto IV’s release on Tuesday. Like what? Well, I’ve been going onto Wikipedia to look-up which historical figures are going to be beheaded on upcoming episodes of The Tudors.

It seems that my pal Hasser has also been doing things to keep himself occupied. Things such as: sending me random packages from his home base in San Francisco. Upon opening the mysterious box, I discovered (and photographed) the following contents:

1. Pootie Tang DVD - which he borrowed from me in 2002 and apparently never returned.
2. A framed photograph of the two of us taken moments before our historic cross-county road trip in 2005.
3. DVD ROM entitled, “Awesome Shit 2008″

Naturally, I’m intrigued by what’s on this disc, and I plan on popping it into my laptop in just a few minutes. I thought it wise to do this blog post first, in case Hasser jokingly sent me the AWSUM_$HIT_08 virus, effectively nuking my HP Pavillion. Until I post an update of the disc’s contents, feel free to use the comments forum below to speculate on what he could’ve sent me. [Also, I just sorta used a line from Dune as the title for this post. I’m not sure if it’s just lazy or insanely geeky. Both, I imagine.]

UPDATE: Awesome Shit 2008 contains: Several music collections, including the complete Hall and Oats discography; Several cracked software suites, and the programs to properly open and install them.

That’s right: my office. I’ve been given my own workspace back in the Creative Services department, as I fill-in for one of our promo-producers while she’s away this summer on maternity leave. I’ll be splitting up my work week by shooting news stories the first half, and following it up by begging random photogs for the video I need to cut promos during the rest of the week. Enough about all that…back to my office…

It’s actually a small, closet-ish space, but I’m certainly not complaining. I’m loving it. And while today is my first official day working out of my office, I’ve wasted no time getting it all decorated to my liking. I’m keeping it mostly professional. Back when I had a mancave at home, my computer workspace was covered with all kinds of geeky memorabilia - making it look like a wealthy middle-school kid lived there. My place at work is much more tasteful. Here’s a quick by-the-numbers tour:

1. Dazzler (issue #1 -mint) - Who doesn’t love a laser-light superheroine on disco rollerskates? Dazzler might not be the most popular mutant in the Marvel universe (something the jackasses in the comic shop remind me of on a regular basis), but she did save the X-men from the Hellfire Club back in the day. So there!

2. Lost promotional poster – It’s signed by half the original castaways. I know it’s an ABC show and I work at an NBC affiliate, but they have yet to give me a Heroes poster…

3. Dolls Action Figures – The Punisher and Captain Kirk remain vigilantly at red alert over by my desk lamp.

4. Robot 2000 – I think it’s pretty obvious that I’d end up with one of these on my desk, right?

5. Top secret May sweeps plans - I probably shouldn’t talk too much about this one.

6. Photos – This is a bunch of cute photos of me and my wife arranged on a weird sputnik-looking thing I got at Urban Outfitters.

7. Cobra Commander – He’s a long way from his serpentine lair, but there’s important stuff in my office that he needs to oversee (meanwhile his subordinates plot against him in his absence).

8. WYFF Photog Staff Photo – This is so I don’t forget where I come from, even though I’m still slinging a camera and tripod half the week.

9. Flowers? – I got this lovely bouquet from my wife to place on my desk. I’m keeping it in front of the television, so that I’m not tempted to watch Rachel Ray and Judge Judy all day.

10. Lotus Notes office suite - Just terrible.

Today’s shooting assignment took me to the sleepy, little town of Jonesville to shoot video of a controversial church sign. The pastor wanted to call attention to the fact that Barack Obama has a similar last name to Osama Bin Laden’s first name - a similarity that perhaps makes him a Muslim, despite the fact he’s a practicing Christian and has denounced the Muslim claim about a trillion times.

To my surprise, many of the church’s neighbors found the sign offensive, and one lady even asserted, “No, I don’t think that they are brothers.” Personally, I find the sign offensive on several levels, and many for reasons of bad grammar and punctuation. Perhaps the pastor doesn’t have a question mark tablet. I’ll let that one pass. But, “Humm?” Pretty weak. [All that said, the pastor was a really nice guy and we were thankful he granted us an interview.]

Here’s a sneak peek at the WYFF photography staff photo for this year’s NPPA magazine mention. [Perhaps you may remember me bragging about it: we won the Medium Market Television Station of the Year award again this year.]

Zellmer took the photo, and he’s such an awesome photog that he was able to be in the photo at the same time. Now, doesn’t that blow your mind?