Friday was too long and Saturday was a drag

I cover Fridays at KEOS 89.1FM College Station, TX. By that I mean that I get there at 8:30am and leave about 7:30pm.

The heater was off for the studio, so I opened the door to the other part of the station and put on the heater there. I had to keep on my jacket until it heated up. The station's engineer showed up and determined that it was a maintenance problem. The landlord should send someone by. No one showed up from the landlord during the day.

I went back and found the World Café VHS tape and cued it up for noon. Then I went through and chose the music for Morning Air and Open Air Live. I had found a CD with Australian Aboriginal music on Wednesday. I decided to use that on Open Air Live with Native American music. I couldn't find enough Native American music, so I just chose some weird national music, i.e. from Romania, Crete, Tibet, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

Democracy Now! went on without a problem. At 10am, I started Morning Air with an hour of Jazz. Followed by an hour of Blues. Somewhere in there two packages arrived from a band who play for us at our fundraisers, Del Castillo, out of Austin. I ate ONE COOKIE. I was kind of proud of myself. Damn that was a good cookie, but I knew the other volunteers would want some, so I held off from taking them all.

The playlist was for Morning Air:
Artist or Band[Song]Name of CD
Free Base Cartel[Directions]The FBC
Matt Wilson[Blue Pepper]As Wave Follows Wave
Yellow Jackets[The Evening News]Club Nocturne
Joshua Redman Qartet[Enemies Within]Jazz for a Hot Cold Sunny Cloudy Day
Elvis Costello[Weird Nightmares]Weird Nightmare: Special Sampler
David "Fathead" Newman[The Thirteenth Floor]Heavy Flute
Larry Goldings[Home Fries]Freedom in the Groove
Modern Groove Syndicate[Bojungles]Vessel
Guy Forsyth[Take Advantage]Love Songs: For&Against
Ponty Bone[Easy as Pie]Dig Us on the Road to Somewhere
Michael B. Sutton[Flight]Hopeless Romantic
Dan Penn&Spooner Oldham[Out of Left Field]Live, Moments from This Theater
David Holt w/Sam Bush&Doc[Shotgun Wedding]Let It Slide
Siegel-Schwall Band[Deja Vous]Flash Forward
Junior Watson[If I Had a Genie]If I Had a Genie
Bel Airs[Just You and I]Get Love
Ray Bonnerville[Oxford Town]Roll It Down
Kimberley "KC" Allison[Between the Dots]Beyond Blue
Don Rich[Slip Away]Come Back to Me
Kelly Doze[Stand Up]Kelly Doze
Jimmie Dale Court[Gambling Barroom Blues]Jimmies Texas Blues

I needed to go down to Public Works to pick up some vests for a cleanup project for this morning (Saturday). At noon, I put on World Café and went with a friend to pick the vests up. While we were out, I mailed a letter of nomination for a former President of Kiwanis and picked up lunch. When I got back to the station, I popped the sandwiches in the microwave. The mayonnaise was in the station's refrigerator and the catsup in the cabinet. The sandwiches were great.

I finished lunch just in time to start Open Air Live. Toward the end of the show I got this weird phone call from this guy from Crete. He was surprised that there WAS Cretan music. He wanted to come by and look at the album. I invited him. He wanted me to play something else from the album. I spent, God knows how many minutes, SPELLING the song titles. So the guy chooses one... Then my show ended and I had to move on without playing his song. The playlist was:
Artist or Band[Song]Name of CD
Kumantjayi Djelaynga[North Wind]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Bill Miller[Spirit Wind]Sacred Earth: A Tribute to Mother Earth
No Name Given[Dark Clouds]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Northern Wind[Whispering Winds]Eagle Songs: Powwows of the native
No Name Given[Grandmother's Song]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Alex E. Smith&Cheevers Toppah[Reflections]Intonations
No Name Given[Deep Elseg]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Young Grey Horse[Intertribal]Thunder Across the Planz
No Name Given[Creation Song]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Young Bird[We Don't Wear Pink]Memories
No Name Given[This Is Our Land]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Northern Cree[Straight]Nikamo-"Sing"
No Name Given[Journey North]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Northern Cree[10's Across]Nikamo-"Sing"
No Name Given[Spirit Men of Arnhelmland]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
No Name Given[When Will the weather Clear Up]Vocal Music of Crete
No Name Given[Cooking of Goanna]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Fairfare Ciocarilla[Mariana]Bar Baro- World Wide Wedding
No Name Given[Hills and Land]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
No Name Given[Horse Driver's Song]Afghanistan
No Name Given[Retribution]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
No Name Given[Yar-lung Tin-sang]Dhama Suna
No Name Given[Children Song]Red Sands Dreaming (A Global Cultural)
Nguyen Le[The Rice Dream]Tales of Viet Nam

I put on the VHS tape for Counterspin and went off to put up things. I couldn't do it, so I reviewed some of the Celtic music CD's from Wednesday. The one from Emerald Rose was okay, but not great. I was a bit surprised by that. They seem to be a good group.

The guy from Crete showed up with his girlfriend. She is from... Romania. I was a little astonished by that. I chose two countries at random and got a guy from Crete dating a girl from Romania... They're both in Bryan, Texas. Doesn't that bother you a bit? Maybe not.

Anyway. The guy listens to a little of all the songs on the album and says, "They're all so sad." I had no clue what he was talking about. So we put on the Romanian music and the girl says, "It's all gypsy music." She was bit upset by that. I had heard that the Romanians and the gypsies do not get on well. So the girl finds this Greek music album on the shelf and we play it. The guys says, "Ahhhh... it's worthless. Tourist version of the songs." So he says he will get me some REAL Cretan music. I wanted to drop my mouth on the floor, but I could not figure out how to say no. Then he says he's part of a local garage rock band. He gives me their CD. The girl wants to GO. She has somewhere she has to be. I give them a volunteer form for the station so THEY can be DJ's, subtext: Say, you don't like how I do it... Come do the job yourselves. I gave the guy my email address and told him that I needed the names of the songs on the album. No telling whether he will get back to me.

The rest of the night was spent switching from satellite to satellite for the programs we air from direct satellite feed. At 7pm, I was ready to GO, but then discovered that I had not put away the CD's. It took forever, it seemed.

I got away about 7:30pm. I got back to my apartment and discovered that I had some computer work to do. A weird data base from China had come in and the school wanted me to get it into a SAS data base. I couldn't bring myself to budge from my apartment, so I went to bed without finishing up.

This morning, Saturday, began too soon. I was supposed to run the trash pickup. I prepared by printing out some maps. The guy from the project showed up and we were off to Hilton. It was COLD outside. No one else showed up for the project. I picked up some trash and we called it a day.

When I got back to my apartment, I went over to the computer center and downloaded all the Chinese data files and burned them onto a CD. When I got back to my apartment, I had lunch and got the woman at Indiana State to upload the last two files. I need to go over and get them as well. Maybe tomorrow.

I took a nap then went up to the station to cover the 4-5pm loads. I cued up Jim Hightower and Earthsongs (both on CD's) and tried to cue up Alternative Radio (on VHS). The latter started too soon. I mean, the satellite feed had not been recorded at the right point. No telling why. I screwed up the top of the hour changeover by saying that Alternative Radio was next, because I forgot what show we were playing next. Then I recovered and played Jim Hightower followed by Earthsongs. At 5pm, I told the audience again that we were joining Alternative Radio in progress. No telling what the listeners made of all that.

I left the station and came home and I have messed around all night.

I got a weird email from a guy in Emerald Rose. He wanted to know which station I was with. I was set to tell him that I did not particularly like his album, when my computer locked up. When I restarted, I simply said that if he wanted feedback, I would give it to him. Who knows I could have changed all of creation by doing it that way.

A guy named Allan Harris put out an album dealing with the West from the Black perspective. I reviewed it for the station. I was going to complement him on it, but his website is too weird for me. Look at it yourself. The guy is asking $15K for someone to be his executive producer. That's too strange for an unknown to ask. Yes, he wants you to give him $15K and you can become his close, personal friend.