Author: John Bollwitt

At 38,000 feet, somewhere over Montana or Idaho… or somewhere… I’ve had a panic attack. I think I forgot my ipod at home. That’s such a horrible feeling. Sure, I can live without it for a week, but it’s amazing to realize how built in to my life it has become. And suddenly I feel myself hoping that I did indeed leave it behind and it wasn’t jacked from my bag somewhere between there and floating in midair.

It’s difficult to sit here in business class and type this with out wanting to rock out in my seat while listening to what I can on my laptop. I’m rocking out while other folks read the Wall Street Journal or do other important looking things. I’m off on holiday. What’s not to rock out about?

It’s been a tough past forty-eight hours. When you’re going on a trip, there’s so much to do before you actually leave. Life and work ramps up before the vacation can really begin. Then you’re so wiped out that you need the beginning to the vacation to kinda catch up and get ready for the rest of it. Then once you’re ready for that, vacation is over. Time to go back to the real life grind and you need another holiday to regroup from the vacation. Such a vicious cycle.

I’m off to Vancouver. Yeah, British Columbia. Canada. I’ve lived life this long and never been to the country north of home. I have to keep telling myself that this is an international trip. I keep freaking out as to if I’ve forgot my passport or not. Everyone I talk to tell me that I’ll love it there. “It’s your kind of town.” I’m not sure what that means, but I am pretty sure it’s going to be a wonderful time that will go by faster than I want it to.

Baseball is good. Hockey is good. When there is actually hockey to be talked about, that’s even better. Why it has become that I enjoy these two sports more than any others out there, I can’t really be sure. For a short period of time, I came to not care about anything involving sports in any aspect. The olympics are probably an exception; why it is that the 1,000 meter medley or ski jumping has the ability to captivate my attention for two weeks during a given two year cycle will forever be a mystery to me.

What’s even more interesting is that during the all-star game last night, my DVR kicked in to record the new episode of Rescue Me. The channel changed automatically on me, and it didn’t really bother me too much. I watched it instead. I’m such a sucker for pop culture. Plus I knew that while I got ready for work this morning, I could watch Sportscenter and get all the highlights I needed. I mean, we all knew the american league would win anyway. After Lee and Ramierz left the game, what was left to watch?

I have a heavy walker living above me. I can’t be too sure, but I think this person just moved in recently. I just did not catch it or was around to see this happen. For all I know, there is a whole herd of people living up there. And I’ve been in that apartment before. In fact, it’s identical to mine, and I know that it’s not very small. However, it’s not exactly big enough to run laps in like this person apparently does.

This person obvious likes to tromp around on the heel of their feet. It gives you that nice resonance to boom through the entirety of my place. To me, doing this always seemed worse on your feet. Wouldn’t you be better off wearing something to protect your heels from the pounding upon the floor?

I know some people who do this at work. You can hear them coming down the hallway, and that says a lot because these are cement floors we’re talking about. If it’s a comfort issues, that’s one thing. If you are doing this because it’s better for your feet, I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one.

I’ve been able to land some freelance gigs again lately. It’s nice to have some extra income, but the little recordings themselves have some interesting content to them. It’s like going to lecture in college, but this time you’re actually interested versus fighting off the urge to sleep. Historical facts and data that come from people who are the experts in the area they are talking about. They’ve wrote the book and proven it to be valid. Next thing you know, they’re on some sort of documentary about the subject. I can say, “Hey, I recorded that person’s voice once and got paid by the hour to do it.”

Life has been busy. It’s like I have a job or something.

These are the lazy days. It’s too hot to want to do a whole lot when you have the spare time to enjoy some spare time. And when you get that spare time, it’s nice to just do nothing because the rest of the time you find yourself to be busy. It is better than not having anything to do, but even I like to put the world on hold and relax. I don’t mean getting rest to catch up on everything you’ve been doing on your time off. I mean whole hearted, relaxing down time.

This year’s campout? Not so much down time as much as just going all out to have a good time. Granted it was pretty lazy in its own right, but combine the heat with ultimate frisbee, swimming in the pond, running around, eating lots of brats, and consuming some choice beverages… I almost need a weekend to just sleep so I can catch up on the sleep I didn’t get while I was there. Still, it was a great time. Pictures to follow.

There is no better way to celebrate a busy week than to have a busy weekend. For instance, I saw Batman Begins. I have to say that I was really happy with the movie. It’s been a while since I’ve really found myself so into a movie that I really hoped that the good guy was going to save the day. Of course, this is Hollywood, and he usually does. However I could give examples where that’s not the truth but if I told you the names of those movies and you haven’t seen them yet, then I’d just spoil it for you, wouldn’t I? Batman kept me pretty entertained though. I like it when I can forget that I’m watching a movie and get lost in a story like that for a couple of hours and then have to pee really bad when the credits start to roll.

The campout returns this weekend to Burlington. I’ve been planning on this for months. I’m pretty freaking excited. I don’t think I do enough camping these days, so it’s nice when I get the chance, even if it’s just for a night. It should be good, but those who can’t make it will be sorely missed.

Storms around here are vicious. This time of year, nothing can be certain. Take today for example. A slight chance of storms turned into horrible winds and rain in some areas. Taking a drive to Fairfield to scope out some things for a road show on Friday, telephone polls were snapped like a twig not much taller than myself. Power was out to much of the town when we rolled in to scope things out. Made it a little difficult to test things when there is nothing to make things go.

It’s strange how life can be when something you never tend to think about is suddenly gone.

For a while there, so many people were wondering where the so called summer was. It was cold. Not just chilly for this time of year but cold. And now… it’s freaking hot. There wasn’t any in between or gradual warm up to the heat we’re enduring these days. It’s here. We all must suffer now, but I love it.

We’ve been going full force into the install of the HD transmitter for the FM. Combine the heat from the weather with that of two TV transmitters and one FM radio transmitter and you get a hot, sweaty, tired me by the end of the day. This isn’t the type of work that you would commonly associate a broadcast engineer to do. I never imagined that drilling holes through ten inches of concrete would be apart of my career, but sure enough we’ve done some of that.

The fun part is coming with the power to be hooked up to the cabinets in the next few days. Knock on wood by I still have my hands intact and no cuts or scrapes to speak of… yet. Bruises are usually a given.

Don’t get me wrong, but it’s June, right? Ok… Just checking. I could have completely swore that it was January just the other day. Now I’m not saying that based on the weather. This morning I actually turned on the A/C for the sake of the humidity in my apartment alone. It’s just that time has flown by this year. It’s hard enough to believe that as of tomorrow I will have been working at the station for two years to the day.

It’s been rough getting back into the swing of things since getting back. I think I’m still living everyday like I’m still on vacation. I came back to everyone still in step with how I left the place. This is good and bad at the same time. Good in that I’m brought quickly up to date on what’s going on. At the same time, it’s very easy to suddenly understand how much I needed to get away. The same can also be said about some of the people I’m working with.

It’s amazing that as a culture, I’m surrounded by people who take time off so they can do more work elsewhere in their life. I like my version; getting away and doing little else than enjoying good company with great people.