Jungle Love

Music helps me write.
Just about every time I start a new story at work, I put on my headphones and enter the sound-proof chamber.
I learned back at the LTN how valuable music and a set of headphones can be. I worked right next to an old hippie reporter guy who loved the sound of his own voice. I, on the other hand, hated the sound of his raspy smoker's voice.
I embraced the practice of listening to CDs on my computer with headphones so that I could block him out and concentrate on the task at hand.
That routine has been quite handy working in a larger news room with even more conversations going on that I can't help but listen to.
Over the years I discovered the wonders of Pandora and Yahoo! Music for my listening pleasure.
Most days when I put on my headphones I'm getting down to business. I typically listen to a few of the same channels: Adult Alternative, Pop, Country, Coffeehouse.
But yesterday I made a radical decision. I've been a grumpy pants all week at work so I decided to change things up in an effort to hoist me out of my rut.

I put on the 80s. And it worked! I wrote lots of stories and pepped right up.
Now, I can get burned out on the 80s but it seems this week called for those old tunes (the ones that remind me of school, my old Ford and friends whose faces I haven't seen in decades). So I went with it and put the car stereo on the 80s station on my way to work this morning.
It was fabulous! I relived my teen years riding down the highway in my Kia.
Tears for Fears
Billy Idol
Kim Carnes
Pat Benetar
It was a great drive to work - all except for the 18-wheeler that scared the crap out of me as I tried to merge onto the interstate. But some Jungle Love helped me shake off that experience pretty quickly.

Bathroom inspector

My mom teased me for years about my bathroom inspections.
In fact, if I brought it up today, I'm sure she'd chuckle.
Ever since I was a little girl old enough to go to the bathroom on my own, I felt it necessary to come out and report on the conditions. Was it clean? Did it have good-smelling soap? Was it crowded? Was there a sitting room?
I was reminded of my former bathroom reports today when I went to the work bathroom. Our facilities in the newsroom are pretty good. There are four stalls. Someone comes in and cleans them... mmm... I think every day.
All was well until there was a water heater issue. There was leaking and a loss of hot water. Suddenly a sign was stuck on the bathroom door and work guys started walking in and out of the newsroom and the bathroom for days.
Every once in a while the restroom would open back up for business but there was still no hot water.
I finally had to resort to taking the long walk to the bathrooms by advertising. These trips resulted in a few conclusions.

There are a lot of women over there. You never get a moment alone in there!
The floors are dirty. There are often pieces of toilet paper strewn about, and I think it's smaller over there.
I did not enjoy the week of displacement. Not one bit.
Thankfully, things are back in order this week. There is hot water, clean floors and solitude :).
These things may not seem important until they're not there.
Oh, I also realized that I'm still a bathroom reporter. Not only because of my desire to post this entry, but because of a stop me and the husband made last week on our way home from Raleigh.
We stopped at a mall and we both had to go.
I went into this tiny bathroom with one stall. It was FREEZING! There was no lighting over the toilet. The water was cold. I couldn't conduct business in such shabby conditions so I left.
As I was telling The Mister about my experience, he chimed in that his was the same.
I then realized that he didn't think it was worth mentioning. But me? The original bathroom reporter? I was on duty and ready to inform.

Lovable Lincolnton

When the Downtown Development Association decided on the slogan Lovable Lincolnton, I thought it was pretty cheesy. Let's call a spade a spade. It is cheesy. But I was feeling the lovableness of Lincolnton Sunday (and thought Valentine's Day would be a good time to throw it out there).
This isn't the greatest story ever told, but I'm going to tell it.
I met up with one of my two favorite redheads for coffee. A not-so-lovable element of Lincoln living is that lots of businesses are closed on Sundays, including two different coffee shops that we attempted to visit. So, McDonald's it was.
I haven't darkened the door of a McDonald's in quite some time. And I didn't eat there so don't look at me like that. I got an ice coffee with skim milk and sugar-free flavoring, thank you very much. It was yummy. But that's not my point. I'm getting there. You know how I tell stories.
I'm in line waiting for the right time to settle into a booth and do some catching up when I hear, "Mommy!" I look and my daughter is in the restaurant with a couple of friends and a mom. We start talking about how funny it was that we ran into each other. Then I look at a neighboring table and there's my father! Neither my daughter nor my father noticed the other was there.
We did lots of laughing and greeting, then I got to sit down to visit with my gal pal. I look past her and see one of my daughter's friends going through the drive-thru. He's got a big grin and is waving at me.
A little later my daughter's boyfriend and his father jog past.
There are times I crave and relish in anonymity. There are other times I bask in the smallness of my little town and getting smiles and friendly waves every which way while merely going out for a cup of coffee.

Dirty Diana

I'm not much of a nickname girl. Maybe it's because for the first 13 years of my life everyone knew me only by a nickname. That's right. You've all heard it. DeeDee.
That was the name I learned to write. It was on all my notebooks. People sometimes called me Dee - which was extremely odd years later when I discovered that was my stepdaughter's nickname.
Anyway, I shed the nickname when we moved to Charlotte when I was 13. It was at this time that I pictured the older me. The successful business woman me being called DeeDee. The Superior Court judge me with DeeDee on her name plate. The 60 year old me possibly lacking respectability because of my name.
So, I decided I would become Diane.
Diane is my middle name. I was named after my loving aunt who died of cancer when I was too young to remember her. I'm told she loved me like I was her own. She loved to babysit me and tell people that I was hers. She was a beautiful blonde.
My first name, Dorothy, was given to me in honor of my grandmother. Oddly, I was really never close to her. She was a hot, partying redhead who liked to drink, smoke and play cards. I feel she would be someone I would've wanted to be friends with in another circumstance.
So Dorothy Diane became DeeDee for more than a decade.
These days, I'm straight up Diane. A few people call me by nicknames. Dee and DeeDee have stuck with some. My friend Carla gave me a nickname back when I was 16 that she still uses when I call her up - Dirty Diana.
I was not a "dirty" teen so don't get the wrong idea. But you know. Michael Jackson sang the song and it was catchy.

I thought of my nickname yesterday when I was out working on a story. I was at a shooting range writing about guns. (Well, getting material for the story. I still haven't written it. I'm supposed to be writing it right now actually.)
For the first 30 minutes I was the only woman there. Lots of guys kept coming in. They would buy boxes of bullets then go into the room with the targets and start firing. There were all sorts of targets. Some with shapes. Others with animals. The ever popular person silouette. There were some funny ones for sale that no one bought while I was there. One with a guy who had a turbin on. Another alien-looking dude.
So I'm not a gun person, but I got a little excited when the manager offered to let me shoot. He showed me the tiny bullets he was going to let me use. I saw the ear muff things and the safety glasses. I started getting anxious and antsy.
I started picturing myself as a type of female Dirty Harry. Yeah. Dirty Diana firing off some rounds.
Turns out, the manager was all sorts of busy and I got tired of waiting.
So I took a raincheck.
I hope to invoke my inner Dirty Diana in the future. But you can call me Diane.