I’ve been going through kind of a rough patch lately. There have been health issues, some personal stuff, and some challenges at work. All of those hitting at once has been…a lot. I think I’ll get through it. I mean, I always have so far. But sometimes, the days are just tougher than it feels like they should be. I know you can relate.
Professionally, I had a couple of those days in the past week, notably last Friday and this Monday. Our nightside guy was out of town, so I was tasked with manning the desk alone from 3-11:30 p.m. for a couple of shifts. It’s not usually a huge deal. It’s just that the later timeframe generally incorporates more aspects of the job that aren’t exactly my favorites. So getting through those later shifts is always a little bit of a war of attrition—the shift wears me down, and I just have to survive to the end of it.
And then the storms came.
It’s my own fault. Obviously. It’s karmic retribution for blathering on here about how I really don’t care about the weather.
“Oh, you don’t care?” Friday evening seemed to ask with a sneer. “Well, you’re about to care whether you want to or not.”
I live in the desert. And it’s an area that just isn’t equipped to handle large amounts of precipitation over a short duration of time. And that’s exactly what happened in the Las Vegas Valley last Friday when an absolute deluge struck.
It was rough.
We had one ongoing article just for road closures and the like. The scanners were overly active, chirping and buzzing with the various details about the elements catching people by surprise. We had it all. Extreme rain. Flooding. Water rescues. It was noteworthy and, more specifically relevant in this case, newsworthy. One poor teenager was killed while playing around in the water on his home street. An elderly man was rescued by a passing good samaritan, who saw the victim struggling to stay afloat in a washed-out street. And a homeless couple was rescued from the infamous tunnels below Las Vegas, riding a mattress to a point where they could receive assistance and be safely extricated from the flood.
I did not enjoy my involvement in any of these stories. So naturally, most of them carried over into more coverage on Monday, when I was again manning the desk solo.
Are you allowed to say that it’s been a long week when it’s only Wednesday? In this case, the description seems apt. I’m tired. Emotionally. Mentally. Physically.
I’ll get into some of the health and personal stuff at another time, when I’m feeling like I’m in a better emotional state to verbalize what’s been going on. But for now, I’m just doing my version of what so many other people in Vegas did over this past weekend: weathering the storm.
MOSTLY UNRELATED NOTE: They have drawings at the station from time to time in which they give away tickets to various events. Due to a combination of scheduling issues and my interest (or lack thereof) concerning a lot of the events in question, I had never even entered before last week. But I arrived at work one day to see that tickets to UNLV Running Rebel football’s home opener were up for grabs. The drawing should have already passed by the time I tossed my virtual hat into the ring, but I gave it a shot anyway…and I won!
The Rebels now play at Allegiant Stadium, the spectacular home of the Las Vegas Raiders that looms ominously just west of the Strip. Allegiant is an impressive facility. The seats were nice—Club Level, which, in this instance, meant that you essentially made your way past a couple of nice bars en route to the actual seats. The game was fun, and it was even tinged with a taste of Northwest Arkansas, as former Razorbacks assistant Barry Odom is now the head coach at UNLV. The Rebs scored on their first play from scrimmage and never looked back, routing little Bryant College from back in Rhode Island.
It struck me how awe-inspiring that game must have been for the visiting squad. Bryant is a school with less than 5,000 students and here they were, in Sin City, playing in the very stadium that will host a little event called The Super Bowl in February. Mid-game, the skies opened up again and heavy rains pelted the domed roof, providing a cacophonous background soundtrack to the action on the field.
On my way home after the game, I snapped this pic from the wheel of my car. I’ll take it as a good sign. Pot of gold at the end, and all that.
I hope everyone out there had a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend. Thanks for being here.