Well I had a pretty good show this morning, except for a couple of mishaps. First, without warning the EAS (emergency alert system) machine started spitting out paper and making a nasty noise. This is nothing to be alarmed about, except the nasty noise was going out over the air. Eventually a voice came on which said it was a monthly test of the system. Worse yet, this happened not during music but during Artline, a recording of local arts events that I have to play at that time. It took me a minute or two to realize this fact and pull down Artline, so they may have both been broadcasting at the same time, I'm not sure.
I didn't really know what to do so I waited for the EAS thing to stop, got on the air and apologized for the craziness, and then played Artline again. I wasn't sure how much of it got played before the EAS cut in.
The second goof was, at the end of the show I forgot to read my last PSA. Normally I would just read two in the next talkset, or drop in one of the prerecorded ones, but it was during my last song that I realized it. Anne, the next DJ, suggested that I should wait for an instrumental part of the song and read it really fast. Which I did, including many verbal stumblings because I was stressed and trying to get it out as fast as possible. That must have sounded great. Definitely not one of my finer moments on the air.
On the other hand, I should be thankful that another mistake was avoided -- I had to go to the bathroom and made it back with only 8 seconds to go on the track that was playing. Geez! Just think, if I had lingered a few seconds over washing my hands, there would have been some nice dead air for everyone to enjoy. Which reminds me of a funny story that Christine, another DJ, told me about having to use the bathroom and not realizing that it would take her longer than usual because she was wearing overalls. And the next thing she had to do was a talkset, but she was totally gasping for breath because of having to run back up the stairs at breakneck speed. Well it's funny when someone is telling it to you in person, acting out the fumbling with the overalls and the gasping and so forth.
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