Well, I’m officially over the flu or whatever it was that laid me low Tuesday night and Wednesday morning- which meant that I signed on the station today. . . arriving not long after 5 am in order to be fully prepared to go on the air at 6 with a thorough local/state newscast.  I can’t say that spring out of bed at 4:22 is my idea of a good time, but there are some compensations that deserve mention.  One of them is that the whole rest of the day feels different in a good way; when you’re tackling tasks at 10 it feels like you’re in the middle of the day and in the heart of your prime.  Also, the dreaded early afternoon slump which typically hits me like a ton of bricks (I am sometimes in dire danger of nodding off during my 1:15 voice lessons)  is absolutely non-existent when I’m up this early.  I suppose I fade a bit earlier in the evening, which is just as well- it simply means missing a Frasier rerun which I’ve already seen a couple hundred times by now.

The shift itself is fun, too, in that there is the incessant challenge of “meeting the clock.”  What happens is that NPR’s Morning Edition is running most of the time, but there are these regular local breaks where we get to do the weather forecast, community calendar announcements, etc. You have to both begin and end those breaks at precisely the right time, right to the second- and that’s something that most people would find very difficult to do, at least at first.  You have to be able to speak intelligently while watching the time and timing yourself to finish up at just the right moment- and preferably while making it sound easy.   Bill Guy was a master of it- and so is his successor, Dave McGrath, who is amazing.  I’m pretty good if not quite a master at it, although in a week like this with all of this practice I’m getting to be pretty good.   So anyway, the shift itself is a stimulating challenge, which makes it a whole lot easier to be up and awake and alert than if I was just babysitting some sort of automated program or just playing CDs.  This is an invigorating challenge which I have enjoyed- – – although I will enjoy welcoming Dave back next week even more.

There is also the fun of being in this big building all by myself. . . the sense of freedom that if I were so inclined, I could strip naked and run up and down the halls singing opera arias at the top of my lungs.  Of course,  I’ve resisted the urge to do any such thing- if for no other reason than that the president of Gateway Technical College has his office right across the hall, and I would hate for him to come in early to catch up on work and have the shock of his life- and mine.  Finally,  there is the matter of how morning is the most beautiful time of the day – – – and that it’s only by signing on that I’m likely to see a sight like the one pictured above.   This is sunrise as viewed through the atrium of the BioSciences Building, right outside of the radio studio.  A sight like this is well worth the early rise from bed.