Author: John Bollwitt

I hate waking up before the alarm goes off. More so, waking up with less than three hours to go. I set my alarm to the FM so I’m aware that things are working on that side of operations. However, this is leading to a certain distaste of classical music. I have nothing against it, but it’s the thing that rips me out of the comfort of sleep. I’m developing this association of unhappiness with that situation into my enjoyment of all good things musical. This morning didn’t help.

The natural thing to do when you wake up in the middle of the night is to hit the bathroom and go back to bed. You’ve probably done it millions of times and not given it much thought. It’s just what you do. With dawn a few hours away, I went through the routine.

Being so busy this week, I was so tired last night. I knew that I had a few more precious hours when all I caught was the clock saying it was somewhere around four in the morning. At that point, I collapsed back into bed. When I fell, I hit the wall with the back of my head. Curling onto my side, I knew that I was tired enough that I could probably fall asleep before the pain set in. It worked…

…until the alarm went off.

Coming home late from the station, it’s hard to just hop into bed. The last bit of time that I spend at the station I actually do a chunk of nothing, gearing down to make the venture home. When I get home, I have to unwind once again. I fuss with my laptop, play my bass, watch TV(as long as I can stand it), and read some of my book. This is what you do when you’re single. You find things to pass the time. Thing is, I’ve been doing this since I was a little kid. One part comes from the need of being self entertained, being the youngest and in the midst of a busy family in some difficult economic times. At the same time, you never said you were bored in my family. That would put you in the midst of some task, inside or outside the house.

All the food this week is catching up to me. I feel like crap tonight. Today, pizza and oatmeal raisin cookies, and those are my favorite kind of cookies. Ugh…

AND!… Soulwax came out with another album in August! It totally slipped by me. I also have it now. It is good, and I am happy.

You know, I have a great boss. In fact, he’s so great, he nominated me to help out with the fund drive by any amount that I could. Of course, I don’t mind lending a helping hand. After all, I love the station and everything that we do there. However, it would have be great if he would have told me in the first place rather than getting the schedule and finding out that I had to work last Saturday morning and this past Monday morning. Let’s not forget, this is radio. We strive to be there as you wake up, no matter what time before dawn that might be.

There has been a little down time in the recent days. At this point, I’m mainly on pickup duty for a few of the meals we are having donated for the week’s event. Of course, that’s all going to change. The digital AM transmitter arrives tomorrow on top of another ISDN link up in the morning. My life is just a ball of perpetual motion.

That reminds me… Baseball. My heart still sings a sad tune for the Cubs, but these playoffs have been phenomenal. I’m also going to invoke a philosophy commonly applied to the current presidential election; Anyone but the Yankees.

There is no need to go grocery shopping this week! All food will be furnished by the station, and I cannot complain. It’s just a fortunate thing that comes along every six months where we ask for donations from our listeners. On top of that, we get food donated to help us through the marathon of listener solicitation. From subs to gourmet food, pounds are being packed, bellies getting bloated, and sleepiness being fought with ounce after ounce of soda and coffee. It’s a good time.

I haven’t had much sleep in the last few days, but that all changed yesterday afternoon. I got out of my station duties around noon yesterday and collapsed into bed an hour and a half later. Woke up just ahead of six, ate some food, and fell back into bed around seven. Eric was in town from Kansas, and I figured I would use his phone call as an alarm clock while I took yet another nap. Woke up around ten, no phone call, figured might as well keep sleeping because my body said that it could use some more. Up at nine this morning, and I’m still feeling tired, but at least I’m thinking straight.

Checking my phone as I am heading into the station today, there’s a voicemail from Eric. However, the call actually came in at nine the night before. I slept right through it, even though my phone was in its charger, just feet away from my head. I slept through the ringing, I was that tired. Makes being a little upset that Eric didn’t call last night pointless.

Sleep deprivation is how this week started, and that is exactly how it is going to end. In fact, I’m going to very little editing to this post in order for you to get the full effect of the tiredness that is going through my body at this very moment. Of course, you’re probably wondering if I’m alright in terms of physical and mental health. Don’t worry, I’m just fine… I’m just me.

Jim and I took the plunge on Wednesday afternoon and dropped the new console into the FM control room. Once you cut the wires, there’s no going back. All our preplanning and preparation went out the window as soon as that happened. The realization came to both of us when he counted on his hand all of the cables we forgot to make prior to this. There in lies another reason why typing is a bit difficult right now; my fingertips are quite tender from making audio cable after cable, attaching the required end to them. Clip, strip, crimp, solder, repeat. I wish it went as fast as it is to say that.

I’m tired now. Need sleepy. Java House in a little more than six hours.

Disconnect pretty much sums things up. We all have nights where we go to bed only to find ourselves restless. Tossing, turning, literally fighting with your mind and body just to get some sleep. Then you fear getting up because if you do, you might miss the opportunity and make yourself more awake. You lay there. You keep thinking about relaxation techniques that maybe you can employ to help things along being that the ones you are used to have failed horribly.

Maybe relieving your bladder will help? No, you don’t have to pee that bad. What else can I do? I could make a cup of tea. You know, “sleepy time?” That would help, but that might really wake me up more than I already am. And what happens if I get really tired while I’m waiting for the water to boil? I guess I could always turn off the stove and just crawl back into bed. That would also mean no tea, so maybe I need the tea in order to…

Too late.

You finally feel asleep, but it’s only a hour later. This process will repeat about four more times before the alarm goes off. That’s in about four and a half hours.

Bugs are invading my apartment. I love having windows that face south and west, but these damn things love the sun as well. They follow wherever the sun beats down on the most. Last night, I woke up to find one crawling on my face. They don’t bite. They don’t sting. At worst, they stink. Drives me nuts.

This long week finally drew to a close, but the work at the station is hardly close to being done. I fell into bed last night only to sleep for around eleven hours. I’m still tired, but I went running this morning. If I take a nap now, I’ll suffer the cramps later. On top of that, I’ve been sucked into the baseball playoffs. I’m handling the end of the Cubs season better than I anticipated. Now I can focus all my energy on disliking the Yankees and Braves. Go Sox!

The onslaught of ISDN link ups just never seems to stop. In fact, as soon as I’m done with this, it’s time to collapse into bed as I have to get another one up and running with NHPR again prior to the Java House workout. Back to back ISDN’s over the midday today. It’s pretty neat when you know a professor on campus who happens to be the head book reviewer for The World coming out of WGBH in Boston. I tell you, they edit that stuff so much to make it sound that good. That’s probably obvious to a lot of people, but seriously, it’s a good thing for these guys. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s just they have so much information that spews forth from their mouths with all sorts of names that are incredibly hard to pronounce, yet alone remember.

John Freyer linked up with BBC Scotland during one of their live afternoon programs(keep in mind, seven hour difference with it being noon our time). It was an absolute riot. I know Freyer from a show I did with him over at KRUI and other chance meetings we’ve had; great guy, smart, incredibly funny. This has me convinced that working for the BBC would be absolutely insane. Perhaps fun and enlightening, but insane. It could have just been the live show atmosphere during their drive time hours, I’m not too sure. Anyhow, it was an absolute treat. Loved every minute of that one.

Burning the candle bright this week. Time to crash.

Killing a little time, I’m sitting here in one of the production studios doing an ISDN uplink to New Hampshire Public Radio. Sure, it’s not the most populated state of New England area, but there is still a lot of interest there in terms all the political hoo-hah going on right now. In fact, it’s pretty amazing that they want to talk to a guy from Herbert Hoover Library as an expert in these presidential debates going on. From small state in the midwest to small state in the extreme northeast, I’m only a small link in making these two areas discuss political ideology.

The other thing that mystifies me a little bit is how this conversation going on over data lines in the room on the other side of the studio glass will affect the decision of some one in another state. That’s not much different than having a conversation with some one over a cup of coffee and arguing over such things, but where do most people get their influence over these issues? And somewhere in New Hampshire, some one is going to talk about something they heard on their radio this morning, be it in a coffee house or drunk over a beer at a pub, and somewhere in there, indirectly, it’s my fault some one will get into a political argument. That’s too neat.

I’ll miss you, Rodney.

Summer is finally coming to an end for me. There’s a month of the World Series playoffs left in the year that will be baseball. It’s been a good year for the sport, regardless of my long standing love for the Cubs. Towards the end of high school and beginning of college, I never gave much thought to the sport. Deep down, I’ve always loved it. I would spend hours upon hours with kids in my neighborhood playing game after game. Paul, Chris, Mark, Brian, Andrew, T.J., Jerry, and other names of kids I can only recall faces and slight memories of.

The park where we used to play across the street is still there, but it has changed a lot. Gone are the dirt bases that were ground into the grass. Home, first, second, third, and even a pitchers mound. A lot of the times, we would have three against four when it came to teams, hauling our gloves and bats on our bikes, BMX or Predator if you were cool enough to own such a pedaling machine. I recall very vividly one of the last few games we played there. With the nearby church parking lot full for some event, some one cranked a hit into “right field”, putting a beautiful spider web decoration into a worshiper’s windshield. I don’t know where everyone went, but we peeled out of there in different directions at light speed.

It’ll be a long time until spring training rolls around, but I’ll manage. After all, I think to be a true baseball fan, you have to be laid back and have a good sense of patience. I’m a Cubs fan. I think I have that nailed down pretty well.