Monkey Puppet

You may have caught a puppet by the name of Fillup Munkee on Good Morning Cleveland.  The puppet befriended us on our facebook.com page – http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Good-Morning-Cleveland/31240467549 .  From there, we looked at his page and found all sorts of videos.

To make a long story short, we ended up inviting Fillup (and his handler) down to the station for a tour.  Today was the day that Fillup was here.  He is quite a monkey.  Stay tuned in the upcoming days to Good Morning Cleveland – I’m sure we’ll have a new Fillup Munkee video.

Time To Regulate

I just realized how much I love projects. Especially those that involve using tools. On my 25th birthday my Dad bought me some awesome mechanic’s tools. On my 29th birthday my Papa gave me a miter saw and a circular saw. Those were two great birthdays. But, since I no longer have a house and no place to work on my car I haven’t had a reason to use my tools. It’s one of the things I miss.

That all changed when my rear power window wouldn’t roll up. I could tell by the sound that it needed a new regulator. My heart began to palpitate. Not because my window was stuck in the down position but because it was an opportunity to use my tools!

I rushed home. Adrenaline pumping. I took off the door trim and manually finagled the window enough to get it in the up position. The feeling was awesome. I ordered the part and fixed the window myself. The job was easy and exciting because I had all the right tools. I saved about $250 bucks.

Conquering my regulator made me realize not only how much I love my tools but also how much I love learning and a challenge. But, there is one thing I’m confused about.

Why don’t I have this same enthusiasm when it comes to cooking? Perhaps my handicap is due to the fact that I don’t have the right tools such as pots, pans, measuring cups, spices and plates. Cooking can be intimidating when you don’t understand what these things are or how to use them. I just learned what a colander was two weeks ago.  Thanks to my broken window regulator I’m going to make an effort to buy some “tools” for my kitchen. Stay tuned. I’ll let you know if it helps.        Kimberly Gill

Holiday Pictures

We all have holiday pictures either from us as kids or from our own kids.  Aren’t they great?  I love looking back at old pictures of my sister and me growing up – they’re always worth a good laugh.

Now that I’m a parent, I get to take these pictures!  I have plenty of my daughter, when she was 3 or so, screaming on Santa’s lap.  As you can see below, she likes Santa now – it’s her brothers that need some work!

Courtney is happy. Max is not. Tommy is halfway across the room!

Do you have any pictures that tell a great story?  If so, send them in an e-mail to me at kenworthy@newsnet5.com and we’ll try to get them on Good Morning Cleveland.

Otherwise, you can post comments below.

Lessons Learned

By now you know I’m not the best cook. I don’t think I’m a horrible cook it’s just that I don’t cook very often. You’re usually not very good at something you’ve never really tried-right?

I come from a family of great cooks. My younger sister could fry eggs when she was only seven but I didn’t see the need for learning this valuable skill.  Recently, this feeling has changed. I am now far away from all the great cooks in my family and I’d like to start taking better care of myself. My life is changing. I’m getting older and my stomach can’t handle eating double cheeseburgers everyday the way it used too.

Deep down inside I believe I can do anything. Especially when I have the right tools, the instructions right in front of me and a great teacher. It is for those reasons that I thought I’d have no problem making Roasted Red Pepper Cream Soup over the weekend. It was a recipe from Claudia who is one of our Production Technicians and a great cook. We talked about what I was supposed to do and how simple it was to make.

Armed with recipe in hand and a pot I borrowed from Claudia I left work excited. I had planned all day how I would go about making the soup. I would go to the grocery store on Friday, cook it Saturday morning and eat it for the next six days.

After my grocery store visit –all those plans went out the window. I was so excited that I couldn’t wait until Saturday morning like I’d planned. I was like a kid that couldn’t wait until Christmas morning to open her gifts. The anticipation was killing me! “I’ll get a jump start on the soup tonight (which was Friday)”  I thought to myself.  I should have been patient as there were a few questions I wanted to ask Claudia before starting-but I figured, ”I’m a smart girl–I’ll figure it out.”

To shorten what’s already become a terribly long painful story, I figured out a lot about myself after making soup. Number one, I learned that I need some cooking lessons. And number two, I learned some valuable life lessons.

I learned to be patient and ask questions when there’s something you don’t understand . Had I asked ahead of time, I would have known not to use the entire container of chicken stock when I only needed two tablespoons.

I also learned to pace myself.  I should have made sure all three onions were cut before I turned the stove on to saute them. By the time I was done cutting the onions all the oil burned out of the pot–so I burned the onions. I also should have peeled the onions before I cut them.

Lastly, I learned not to give up. In life there are times when you might burn the onions but keep trying.  That’s what I did this weekend. After ruining the first batch of soup I returned to the grocery store Saturday morning bought all the ingredients again and made a near perfect batch of Roasted Red Pepper Cream Soup. I am very proud of my accomplishment and I look forward to cooking something again very soon. I’ve included some photographs of my experience. The recipe is also below if you want to try it. I’d love to hear your comments.

If you have a recipe that’s not too advanced that you’d like to share,  feel free to email it to me at gill@newsnet5.com. I promise to peel the onions first.

Until next time,

Kimberly Gill

Breaking News

If you saw our noon newscast on Thursday (12/4), what you saw is not an every day occurance in the business.  What you saw was actually – breaking news.

Former Ravenna police chief, Michael Swartout, had been holed up in his home for 38 hours by the time we were going on the air at noon.  He had shot a gun toward his adult son and was now holding police at bay, threatening a “conflict” if anyone came inside.

At noon, there was nothing to indicate that the “standoff” would be coming to an end – but it did.

At about 12:30, we strayed from our scripted copy to show that there was significant police movement outside the home on Lakewood Road.  We spent a couple of minutes recapping what had taken place over the last couple of days and then went back to our scripts.

Within about five minutes or so, we got word that Swartout was coming out of his home.  Here’s where things got tricky.  We had to decide fairly quickly whether or not we wanted to take that video live.

1. We knew that Swartout had threatened a ‘conflict’ if anyone came into his home.

2. We knew that he has numerous weapons inside his home

We decided to take it live and I now know that if a gun was seen, we were going to get out of it. 

Right as we took the live video, Lee Jordan and I were holding our collective breaths.  Lee was actually describing the scene at the time, but it looked like Swartout had something in his coat or was holding something.  What we all feared is that he had a gun and was going to pull it out.  What would happen next wouldn’t be something that we wanted to see – nor would it be something that we would want to show on live TV.

Fortunately, he walked over to a law enforcement officer and surrendered peacefully.

It can get pretty tricky when dealing with situations like this.  Our top priority though is to the viewer – we want to bring as much accurate information as we can – but we don’t want to show a man being killed by police on the air.

Breaking news is a part of the business that still gets my blood going.  I love it when events are happening live and we have very little time to prepare – I think it makes for very compelling television.  When you have people all around you who are prepared for anything, it makes your job a whole lot easier.

Thanks to everyone who helped out yesterday.

Pete