over-rated

some people are going to be mad at me for saying this, but i think new years eve is the most over-rated holiday of the year...actually, let me re-phrase that..going out on new years is the most over-rated part, not new years itself. i went out last year and it was fun, but really, do i want to be in a bar where i can barely move because there's so many people? no thanks. if i had my choice, i would rather be at home with just a few i am close with.
but maybe i'm just being negative this year because i'm doing a story for the 11 pm newscast and wont be able to do much either way!

everyone be careful tonight and no drinking and driving...it's not worth it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

this is part of an e-mail my uncle matt sent me today...

"Keep at it with that news--somebody out there needs to tell people the truth and you reporters are democracy's front line. Keep em honest and make sure tell the little guy's story--never side with the great over the powerless.Have a great new year, Love, Matt, Megan and Nola."


it's really encouraging for me to hear/read this once in a while. sometimes, when i'm going through the daily news grind, it's easy to get caught up in it all and just try to slam the story out by deadline...sometimes, it's good to be reminded what it's really all about and how much influence we can have...and never to abuse that power

reading that makes me feel proud of what i get paid to to do everyday for a living.

like to watch building's blow up? here's a 1 and a half minute video of the best implosions of 2007...it's cool!

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/12/29/year.ender.explosions.wivb

i'm back safe and sound in chapel hill :) the flight back was easy...non stop! got a little rough on the landing but other than that, it was just fine.

i made it back to my place and was happy to see that i remembered to turn all the lights before i left. i was not so happy to see that i neglected to turn the heat off! i was gone 9 days. the heat was on 24/7. i was not there. it was on about 74 degrees. i'm dreading this next bill...

i've got a ton of stuff to unpack, groceries to unload, laundry to do, and i would still like to make it to the gym sometime tonight and it's already 4 pm...guess i should get on that! :)

beautiful baby!

i would like to introduce you all to the most beautiful little baby girl on the entire planet (well, at least until i have my own one day :). this is my new cousin, Nola. she's 6 months old and i am in love with her...actually, i havent met her just yet, but i love her! my uncle matt and aunt megan have been married for 10 years and this is their first child...she is so precious and my mom says she is such a happy baby and so sweet. i cannot wait to play with her!

Baby Jesus stolen; but not for long!

this is really funny. here's the background: every Christmas the city of Wellington (where i live) sets out this large nativity scene off one of the main roads. well, for the last three years in a row, someone has stolen the baby Jesus. apparently, replacing baby Jesus is close to a thousand bucks so it's pretty pricey. this year, again, somebody stole Jesus. however, the city put a GPS locator inside the baby so they would be able to find it when it got stolen! and guess what? they found it! it was some 18 year old girl who took it. but how smart of them to think to put a GPS in it? i would never have thought to do that! that would have been such a cool story to do if i worked around here...interview the person whose idea it was to put the GPS in. (sorry, i'm always thinking like a reporter...frieneds will tell me about something that happend to them for example, and i'm always going 'that would be such a great story!' lol what can i say? it's in my blood!)

anyway, here's a little 15 second piece FOX NEWS aired on it in Shepard Smith's show "The Fox Report." check it out (there's a different story that's on first, then it goes to the Jesus story).

http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player06.html?122807/122807_fr_america&FOX_Report_Across_America&Across%20America&Across%20America&US&-1&News&72&&&exp

it's very possible that i had the world's best hamburger and fries yesterday. i went to meet carrie and aimee in palm beach gardens for lunch and we went to this place called "Five Guys." i had never heard of it but apparently it's a chain and they have them in cincinatti, st. louis and a bunch of other places. oh. my. gosh. it was unbelieveably good. if you ever have the chance to go there, go. carrie is one of my old roomates from college...she, aimee and lived together when we were at UF. it's so great because the three of us, no matter how long we haven't seen each other, it always feels like we just saw each other the day before . that is a good feeling!

so how's this for saving something for the last minute? i need to turn in my 2008 benefits to work by monday...i have so much stuff to look at and havent even started. how long have i known that my benefits were due on december 31st? ah, since about september. apparently, three months notice is not enough notice for me! maybe my new years resloution will be to stop putting stuff off that i hate doing for the last minute...

i think i may have found a basketball league to join in january! it's actually a men's league but you all know i can play with the boys...and i'll probably be better than a lot of them too! i have to check and see what times the games are at though because if they're at like 5 pm, it's not gonna work. there's a friend of mine at work, courtney, who played in college too and she plays in a women's league that starts in the spring...i definitely want to play with them, but the only problem is i thinik the games might be played about a half hour from where i live. ill have to see how many games there are and at what time. i havent played a game in more than 4 months (the wednesday night game!:)...i miss it!

today is my last full day in florida :( plane's at 10:30 tomorrow morning out of ft lauderdale...and it's back to the news on monday! cant wait to see what kind of dying, death and destruction stories will be awaiting me when i get back (lol just kidding...we dont have a lot of those in raleigh, thankfully!)

jealous...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm3XpkWrtQM

im very jealous that our web anchor, Page Crawford, got to interview Stacy London for a segment that she does! stacy is a fashion stylist on the TLC network...she'll probably look familiar once you see her...i love her because she is so sassy (in a good way!) apparently, Page and Stacy go way back as you will see on this clip...fyi, page is such a cool chick...and she and i are around the same height which is very exciting...it might be hard for most people to understand why that is, but when you spend your life being taller then 95 percent of the MEN in the world...it's very exciting to be around other tall females! you automatically have a special bond with each other (ya know, sleeves, skirts and pants are always too short...hard to find shoes...sick of people always saying "you must have played volleyball!" (ive been getting that one recently.)

christmas is over!

somehow, christmas has already come and gone. how did it go so fast? we visited my grandparents in ft. myers on christmas day, which was a lot of fun...and we also ate enough food to last for the next week! lol ive decied that instead of flying back to raleigh, i'll run instead...even then i'm sure i won't have burned off all the calories! haha the way i see it, what fun are the holidays if you dont eat a lot?

yesterday was a busy day. we drove back from ft. myers and then i hung out with aimee for the rest of the day. actually, she and i did a LOT in a rather short period of time. here's the run down...prepare to be amazed because we did all this in like 5 hours: first, we dropped off a couple christmas presents at the house of these 2 little boys she tutors on the weekends. random side note while we were there, aimee mentioned she hadnt been feeling well lately and the aunt of the two boys then put her hand on aimee's shoulder and started praying over here pretty much out of the blue. not kidding. i'm a christian and i love Jesus too, but can she not go around doing random stuff like that to people she just met 7 minutes ago? awkward moment. after that, we went to Field of Greens to get something to eat then it was off to the mall for about 2 hours where we did some shopping and got 10 dollar manicures (nails are lookin' good today). then we went to a sushi restaurant for dinner and went over to Coldstone for desert (the cake batter ice cream is AMAZING!). after that, it was on to Publix (for those of you who have never been to the south, publix is equivalent to kroger), then had to drop something off at her boyfriend's place (where the two dogs proceeded to jump all over me until i almost wanted to kick them...it's like they know they annoy me and they're trying to force me to love them because it's some kind of game to them...one of them even tried curling up next to me on the couch! it's not that i dont like dogs...i just dont like annoying ones. sorry, i'm off on a tangent!) and then it was back to my house to hang out for about an hour and a half before she left. it was a fun filled day though...always is when you're with your best friend :)

this afternoon, i will be tackling the daunting task of cleaning out my closet. this should be fun!

"it's beginning to look a lot like christmas"

whoever wrote this song (forgive me that i don't know the singer!) obviously didn't live in south florida! seriously, it was 80 degres out today. after spending a couple winters up north, i must say that i've been having a hard time getting that christmas feeling. still, i do love the christmas lights on palm trees! but c'mon...could the temp at least be 65 or so? that's all i'm asking...

shopping was slam dunk today. i got to the mall around 10:30 and it was practically dead. i'm not even kidding. around 11:45 it started to get really crowded though...but i found presents for everyone i was looking for and that was the main thing!

the tradition with my family is that on christmas eve the "kids" (me and my brother) get to open one present. my brother got this thing called the "pocket fisherman." it is hilarious looking! it's like a mini-fishing pole...ive never seen anything like it before! tomorrow we are going to visit my grandparents in naples and they live near a pond to he's going to try it out. i told him that he could use it, but probably not around anyone else because he would get made fun of! i plan on making fun of him a lot tomorrow when he's using it...mature, huh? hey, when you're a girl growing up with a brother, you have to learn to dish it out (and take it, at the same time!). my present was a book by Suze Orman (you may have seen her on TV before...she gives advice about financial planning). i actually asked for the book because i need to be more informed about what to do with my money, where to put it, what to invest in...stuff like that (luckily, my parents and brother are good with that as well so they can give me advice too).

i still cant believe i have this ENTIRE week off! i'm going to enjoy it as much as i can!

you just gotta love mom for making christmas cookie's (and other types of deserts) and letting me be the official tester! hey, it's a tough job, but someone has to do it! (and it's a good thing i workout a lot, too! haha)

getting together with my dad's side of the family tonight was a lot of fun! we ended up going to my aunt and uncle's house, who live in stuart (about an hour north of west palm). i havent seen most of my relatives there for about a year and a half so it was good to catch up to them. my two cousins, gregory and jason, have gotten so big! they're 19 and 21 (i think) and they're both taller than me by at least an inch and a half. between them and my brother, i am now the shortest one. it didn't used to be that way...

tomorrow, im getting up at 8 and going to the mall because i still have presents to buy for three people...dad, brian (my brother), and aimee (my best friend). way to save it for the last possible second, huh? the stores are going to be packed...i bet mostly with men who are buying stuff for their wives or girlfriends lol my family and i are going to mass at 3 pm and then we're having christmas eve dinner together. looks like another busy (and fun!) day for the Hills family :)

i hope you all already got your shopping done!

cute little kids

our sports department does a really popular segment called "pint sized pigskin." once a week, we send a photographer to a little league football game to cover it...then our anchor puts a story together about it and they are HILARIOUS. the kids are SO funny, the music in the background adds drama, the way our sports anchor uses this insanely melodramtic voice make these pieces awesome.

here's one of my favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjeMP6IkHiw&feature=related

check it out! it's only three minutes long and i promise it will put a smile on your face :)

sweet home...florida :)

well, i made it to florida!

the airport was pretty busy this morning in raleigh...nothing like dealing with a million other people trying to get through security at 5:15 in the morning! there's such a difference between flying really early in the morning and in the afternoon. on the early morning flights there's basically nobody talking...at all. but if you get on a 1:30 pm flight, everybody is chatty with everybody. didn't have to deal with that today! i pretty much slept the entire two hour flight (and i even was sitting in the exit row so i had some extra leg room...i need it! haha)

i got to my parents house and hung out with them and my brother for a little bit, read some of my book, and took a nap on the hammock in the backyard (it was a beautiful out!). as i'm sure you can tell, it was a VERY stressful day. lol

the next few days is going to be filled with eating a lot and seeing relatives (just like everybody else). tomorrow we're going to my grandparents in the evening...aunts, uncles, cousins will all be there in full force too!

meanwhile, i will be trying to stay sane through it all!

procrastinate

why is it i ALWAYS wait until the last minute to pack for a trip? it happens every time and never fails. i had plenty of opportunities to at least START packing on thursday....still, it's 9 pm on Friday and i have yet to even put a suitcase on my bed to start putting clothes in .

and my flight is at 7 AM tomorrow! that means i basically need to get up by about 4 or 4:15 and leave by about 4:45. it only takes about 20 mins to get to the aiport, but lord knows how long the security line's going to be...you just never know so it's always smart to leave too early then too late. i know that today was really the big travel day so i'm hoping it wont be too bad tomorrow...we'll see how that goes!

next time i post, i will be back home in sunny west palm beach, fl! i cant wait to see all the palm trees decked out in christmas lights! lol a lot of northerners think putting christmas lights on palm trees is really strange but to me...it just tells me i'm back home!

great to be a florida gator!

it's times like, this i'm proud to be a florida gator! (just kidding...but it is pretty funny!):

HARTFORD, Conn. -- It was the plea heard round the world. "Don't tase me, bro" - shouted by a Florida college student as officers removed him from a speech by Sen. John Kerry - tops this year's list of most memorable quotes, compiled by the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations.

the "bro" at the end of the statement is definitely what made this statment famous. the whole thing rolls of the tounge nicely and it's also funny that the kid called a police officer "bro". if he had said "dont tase me, man" instead, nobody probably would have heard anything about it. he basically coined a phrase without even trying...i think that would be cool to say something and then everybody else either starts saying it or has heard of it before. maybe i should put that on my list of things i want to accomplish in my life...lol (well, i'll put it at the bottom of my list!)

unc is pretty much a ghost town right now...which means there is very little traffic around campus which is nice! i have to say that the infrastructure around chapel hill is much better then in morgantown so traffic flows better. honestly though, im not sure how they're ever going to fix that problem in morgantown...i just dont see where they could possibily widen or even add more roads.

guess we'll just have to leave that one to the planning department, huh? :)

i'm always so impressed with people who are good about sending out christmas cards....because i am so bad about it! i got a card from a girl friend who i've known since we were in first grade, chrystal, yesterday. she and i havent been in touch in at least 6 months and i havent seen her since...geez, i think it was june 2006 at her wedding in florida. but it was so wonderful to get a card from her...and also a picture of her and her husband. i also got another card (and pic of her and her husband!), from my good friend, carrie, from college...if i had to put her under a category in my yearbook, it would be "most likely to keep in touch with you after graduation." and i mean that in a good way! :) i think some people are just born good at keeping touch with others...

below is a story from today...it's a good reminder why you should not leave your indoor christmas lights on when you're not home or sleeping!

http://www.nbc17.com/midatlantic/ncn/news.apx.-content-articles-NCN-2007-12-19-0023.html

so i'm really excited about the fact that my station is in the process of getting our newsroom completely remodeled...it's starting to look so good! flat screens all over the place, high tech looking desks and lighting...i cant wait to see the finished product! also, our studio is getting made over as well with an enitre new set! it's going to look so awesome...supposed to be finished in January.

and...

all the new hires will finally be getting our professional photos taken to be put up on the website! in early january. i'm also excited about that. i guess i should start thinking of something clever to write in in my bio, huh? :)

the great thing about it (finally) starting to get cold out, is that no one ever goes to the gym because they don't want to go out in the cold to get there. tonight, it was honestly dead...and i was loving it! practically had the place to myself for an hour...granted it was also 8:30 on a sunday night so it's typically a smaller crowd anyway, but the cold weather was definitely contributing to the lack of people!

so the big news in morgantown today...

Coach Rodriguez is leaving to go to michigan. that school just snagged wvu's basketball coach a few months ago, and now it's taking the football coach. is there something in the water over there or what's going on? (ah, it's probably money i'm sure). i was reading some of the comments online about how people are feeling about it and everyone is pissed at him big time....actually, you'd think the man just killed 100 babies by the way everyone's reacting to this. as they say, this too shall pass...the sun will rise in the morning and football will still be played at wvu whether rod is there or not. i think he handled the whole situation pretty poorly, but what's done is done. it's a good thing the wvu students are on christmas break right now or there would be some serious hell raising going on i'm sure!

i did manage to make it to the mall do so some christmas shopping today. sadly, the only thing i bought were two books...for me! lol i have been doing more reading lately and i forgot how much i love it. i just finished "The Choice" by nicholas sparks (amazing...i read it in about two days), "Dispatch from the Edge" which is CNN's Anderson Cooper writing about his life and career (actually, that was the second time i read it), and today i bought "My Hands Came Away Red" by Lisa McKay which is a christian fiction novel and also "Perfect Match" by Jodi Picoult....i think i'm really going to like her books a lot because they seem to be somewhat similar to the types of books John Grisham writes (which i LOVE). im excited that i've started reading more again!

i'm hoping this will be an easy week for work because i want to just ride it out until i leave on saturday for florida for nine days vacation! :)

promo..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW7iA16l7x8

so, here is one of my station's new image promos that we're running on the air...i think it's pretty good!

tonight was a great night out with a couple of my girl friends from work, jaclyn and aisha. we had so much fun! we went out to eat this bar/restaurant in downtown Raleigh...awesome food and reasonably priced which is always good. it was great to be out with them!

when jaclyn called me earlier in the day to see if i wanted to go out i was like, well, im kind of tired and i think im going to stay in tonight...but aisha called me and convinced me to go and i'm glad i did! fun times with the girls!

well, considering it's 3:15 in the morning, i should probably get my party-animal self to bed :)

i cant believe christmas is less than two weeks away! and as usual, i've barely done any shopping so far. i'm going to try to take care of some of that this weekend. i also cant believe i actually got the entire week of christmas off...honestly, that's a miracle! i will be going home to FL next saturday and staying there until the following saturday or sunday. i'm happy about that :)

continuing my list of things i can't believe...

that ice storm in the mid-west is unreal. and it's about 75 degrees where i am...i would even venture to say that when i was walking around outside earlier today, i was starting to feel hot. the rest of the country's in an ice storm and we're walking around in shorts. something just doesn't seem fair about that!

story from today:
http://www.nbc17.com/midatlantic/ncn/news.apx.-content-articles-NCN-2007-12-13-0030.html

sometimes i get a major sense of de ja vu around here...it's little things that remind me of morgantown. for example, i'm assigned to cover the chapel hill area, which is a college town (just like morgantown). there are a couple smaller towns close to chapel hill called carrboro and hillsborough...which are the equivalents to westover and star city. university of north carolina's president announced in september that he will leave office in june 2008...now, the search committee has been put together to find the next president. i just covered hardesty leaving WVU and Garrison coming to WVU. and you know how the Riverside condominiums is the big controversy in morgantown? well here, it's a development called Carolina North.

funny how exactly the same completely different places can be!


you've all probably seen this before, but never ceases to amaze me:

Turns out the human brain doesn’t always see spelling...instead, it recognizes patterns:

Not Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rgh it pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

they can do all the reasearch they want and give all the scientific reasons they want as to how it's possible for me to read that paragraph and understand it, but it's still pretty amazing if you ask me.

moving on...

i think i've been officially southern-ized because i am officially addicted to sweet tea. i never drank it until i came to NC and now, i can't get enough of it!

Quick rant...

so i'm not trying to sound unsupportive of my florida gators here (i mean, i did graduate from there!) but if i see or hear one more thing about tim tebow being compared to superman, i'm honestly going to scream (for those of you who didn't know or may have been living on another planet, he's UF quarterback).

listen, i realize the kid just won the heisman...he's a fantastic football player, he's only a sophomore. awesome. i'm happy for him, i'm sure he'll have a wonderful life and career.

can we move on now?

all that being said, i'm sure tomorrow some UF official is going to be stopping by my place to take my diploma back from me for writing something as heinouos as that! lol


GO GATORS!!!! (does that make up for it? :)

i can't believe it was up to 80 degrees here today...on december 10th! being from florida, i'm typically used to hot weather around christmas time, but i've been spoiled the last couple years because i was in west virginia enjoying some TRUE winter weather. i'm not going to lie, i still get on WBOY's website a couple times a week to see what they're covering in morgantown (what i'm missing out on!) and i saw some stories about the all the snow that came last week. i sure don't miss driving in that mess, but i do miss seeing it! i especially love seeing it early in the morning when no one's had the chance to walk or drive through it....it looks so incredibly perfect.

on a different note, i'm thinking this blog is giving me a good spot to save my stories now...here's one from today!

http://www.nbc17.com/midatlantic/ncn/news.apx.-content-articles-NCN-2007-12-10-0034.html

so i'm going to give this whole blog thing a try. i know a lot of people that do blogs and after realizing that i enjoy reading about other people (some more than others of course!), i thought (rather self-centeredly) someone might actually want to read about me. i'm not exactly sure why, but they might! lol

those of you who knew me back in college know that i did livejournal for maybe a year and then it kind of fell through. this one will be a better attempt though! plus, even if no one else is interested in reading it, at least it's something i will be able to look back on when i'm 65 :)

before i get this started, i would like to say that i think the word "blog" is a word some man made up because "journal" and "diary" sounded too girly. i got news for ya...a blog IS a journal now matter how it's justified. period.

things you should/should not expect from my blog:

1. i never type in caps..sometimes, i even get too lazy to use correct grammar and apostrophes (see what i mean??) you will likely see a lot of this > ........ that's how a lot of people type scripts for their stories in broadcast...no commas, it simply means a pause. basically after almost two years in news, it's become a bad habit that i just can't seem to break.

2. don't expect to find me writing about the meaning of life because i won't. i will not be talking about things that are overly personal or things that have to do with my personal relationships.

3. you can expect me to type my posts in various shades of pink...it is my favorite color after all!

3. you can expect to read about my day and what i'm going through..and knowing me, i'm sure a lot of it is bound to be random, slightly funny, and typical stuff that you might expect from me (for example this weekend, i dropped a box of sushi in the lobby of the nicest hotel in Roanoke...anyone even remotely surprised about? didn't think so...i'll put it this way, if i HADNT dropped the box of sushi, THAT would have been the real shocker! lol)

well, thanks for reading this...and i hope i wont bore you all too much :)