"Hurricane Ike: Relief 4 the Community"

This weekend my internship teamed up with the Salvation Army and the Southeast Texas Food Bank to collect items for people in Southeast Texas affected by the hurricane. It was fun being at KBTV4 during this. They had 2 big trucks outside of the studio to collect all the clothes, toys, personal items, and food. I forgot to bring food with me the day I went to my internship, so I had my fiancee take some up there the next day. My mom said we were covering 2 things in 1, because we bought Newman's sauce, and all the proceeds from his sales go to help the needy. I'm interested to hear how much they actually collected, because I was only there on the first day. They collected stuff for 3 days. Everything they collected will stay here in Southeast Texas and help the families that lost everything from the storm.

It was cool to be there during the shows though. It's fun working on Live shows like that. I mean yes all the shows are live, but it's exciting to do stuff live on location. During the 5 PM show, I was in the control room just listening to the director telling the 2 cameramen what he wanted them to shoot. It was awesome how amazing they were at getting him what he wanted and running all over the place to get a good shot. I'm used to BYU Daily News, where if we had a Live shot outside the camera sits on a tripod and doesn't move. So it was really cool to be able to see what both cameras were shooting and how the director would take one and send the other one to go find something else.

During the 6 PM show, I was actually outside with the Live shots. I was a grip for one of the camera guys. I told my parents and fiancee I was a grip, and they were like that's great... what's that? It made me laugh and then I explained that it was a fancy term for someone who holds the cables for the camera guy so he doesn't get tangled up and trip over the cords while he is running all over the place. That was still fun even though it's kind of the low man on the totem pole job. I got to look all important and what not. :) Dana Melancon, Chief Meteorologist, kept telling me how good I was at my job. He is really funny.

It's nice to see how many people come out and try to help the community when disasters happen. Hopefully everything can get back to normal soon. Even the high school football game got into it. My old high school played their rival yesterday. That game is called Mid-County Madness. Well this year, they had everyone wear red shirts in honor of Bridge City (hit hard during Ike) and called it Mid-County Kindness. The shirts were red with the cardinal on it for Bridge City, but still had the bulldog and the Indian for Nederland and PN-G. They played the game last night and then today was Mid-County Kindness. They gathered several teams in groups of 10 and went to Bridge City to help out. Sadly PN-G lost, but it was the spirit of the whole thing that mattered.

This week I get to go out with the reporters at my internship, so we'll see how much I like reporting by the end.