Texas Flood

If you’re a news watcher, you’ve probably heard “Sherman, Texas” bandied about on the national news. On Monday, we had buckets of rain fall on our area. This railroad bridge/underpass is somewhat close to our house – same part of town – and is about 14 feet deep. I used to take this route to school in high school, and to see it full of water like this was just… amazing. Monday evening there was still at least 7 feet of water still standing, and on Tuesday morning they were just beginning to get out all of the mud.

There were, sadly, also a couple of fatalities in the area (here and in Gainesville, just up the road). I don’t know many of the details but it was just shocking to be in the middle of such a weather event so close to home. Several members of our church were affected, including my dad’s boss, and a friend of our family who had 4 feet of water in her house and lost everything, including her piano and all of her music.

We are fine, though… the worst damage for us was that Ryan had to work a 12-hour day in wet socks and didn’t even get to eat pizza with the rest of the newsroom. I put together a proof-of-performance spot for our coverage that I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on, which feels good. Our crew really did a great job covering the floods.

Festival Fever

Festival Fever

Originally uploaded by sarahsmileTX

This weekend we made an appearance at the Madill Sandbass Festival. I got there early to set up, but it ended up taking a long time because I was all by myself. One of our photographers showed up and helped me finish up the small details. Things went mostly smoothly after that… we were right in front of the Terrapin Races (pictured) which was sort of cute… all these kids with their painted terrapins, watching as they were let go and then scrambling to catch theirs after a winner was named.

I was there until the middle of the afternoon, sunburned (despite sitting under a tent all day) and dehydrated (despite drinking Gatorade all day). I came home to a few spotty thunderstorms moving through our area, and laid down to rest for a while.

I got cleaned up and Ryan and I commenced Date Night. We went to an art gallery opening, which was fun and interesting… I’d never been to an opening before. After that we drove down to Dallas for a delightful dinner at Saffron House, a great Indian restaurant we’d been to a few times with Janette. We went to Barnes and Noble to browse around until closing time at 11pm, then came back to Sherman.

I’m excited about future Date Nights… the plan is to do it every Saturday that we can. Next week’s a big one… the Norah Jones concert in San Antonio!

Rough Morning

With a fire this morning and not enough sleep, the morning wasn’t as smooth as it usually is. Especially in our J block. But the show goes on. Usually we are very on top of what’s going on…(I’m not talking about with news, but just in the general flow of the show). I think we finally found our way, though.

The Spurs are in the NBA Finals for the fourth time in eight years. I stayed up way too late watching the game, but I couldn’t be torn away. The announcers couldn’t have been more on the money saying that with the amount of precision, efficiency and coaching the Spurs have, and their record in the playoffs/finals, you have to start bringing into the conversation that this team is one of the greatest teams of all time. So true. And yet, with their popularity, talent and team dedication, these guys are the most humble. They aren’t the Dennis Rodman’s of the NBA (ironically, Rodman did play for the Spurs). You have to respect how much they are respected, especially within the San Antonio community.

On the topic of talent, you know this new blog is now here. And I’m hoping that I can bring a lot of talent to it. To church, is another story. Time and talent sheets are due in so that we can let the church leaders know in what capacities I’d like to serve. I’m not sure, exactly. Because even though I do a job that is in the public eye, I believe I am a very private person, and would just rather sit back and watch. That’s not to say that’s not okay, but I think when you hold a job like mine, people automatically expect your seemingly forward nature to shine though.

I just sat back in my chair, and oh, it felt so good. So maybe it’s time to just sit and think…