I hate cliches. I avoid using them like the plague as much as possible. And when I'm editing other people's writing, I draw big red ugly lines through them. Yep, that bad. You're probably wondering what any of that has to do with the picture at the top of the page. "There are plenty of fish in the sea." That, my dear readers, is a dating cliche. You know, one of those things that people who are in a relationship often say to their friends who are perpetually single.

That particular dating cliche is #2 on the "19 Things You Should Never Say to a Single Person" list. A writer for Glamour magazine asked her friends and Twitter followers to submit their most hated adages. You can read the article for what they actually had to say about them. As for me, I'm going to share my favorites from the list along with my response.

When I was single I heard all four of those quite regularly. The last most frequently from family members. And when I first started dating the boyfriend and certain family members found out about it, they called and asked me if it was a myth... Looking back on that conversation I guess I should have responded, "Because I'm so pretty!" Hindsight's 20/20.

So, I'm overly stressed and not getting enough sleep these days. Not to mention today is the first day of the year's second ratings period, and I'm trying to get all my crap together so I can move next weekend. Why am I telling you this? Well, what it boils down to is this: I need a break. And since I don't get vacation time yet, the only thing I can actually take a break from is this. My brain is tired and I think I'm on the fast track to a burn out, so don't expect a whole lot of posts from me. I will try to keep up with your posts though.

I've been sitting here trying to think of a way to gracefully get into my topic for this morning, but I haven't had any luck. So I guess all that leaves is for me to just jump right into it.

Jobs are stressful, yes? I know mine is, especially during ratings periods. It's stressful right now, too. We're in the process of changing some things with my show, which as I've probably told you before means middle-of-the-day meetings, and that means my sleep schedule is majorly disrupted. This is the third week that my sleep schedule is being thrown out of whack. Hopefully it's the last week. But that's neither here nor there...

CareerCast put together a list of the Top 10 Most Stressful Jobs in America for NBC. They based their results on 21 different stress-causing factors like environment, competitiveness, advancement opportunities, and risk of unemployment. There were other things thrown into the reasons for each of the finalists including how many hours you work and when you work them.

10. Real Estate Agent (what?)

9. Advertising Executive (having to please other people is always stressful)

8. Public Relations Officers (i.e. public speaking)

7. Highway Patrol Officers (high risk of danger)

6. Commercial Pilot (totally don't get this one)

5. Police Officer (apparently they're completely different from highway patrol officers)

4. Surgeon (makes sense)

3. Taxi Driver (this one made me lol)

2. Corporate Executive (I'm sure that high salary helps)

1. Firefighter ('cause there's no way walking into a burning building ISN'T stressful)

FYI: I think my job should have made that list. First of all, I work crazy hours. Secondly, you never know what's going to go wrong when you're working with news. Third, we work with some crazy people (see some of my older posts). Everything we say or do is being constantly criticized, whether you're behind-the-scenes or on-camera. It doesn't matter. Every little mistake is pointed out and even your best isn't good enough for most people. We get ugly emails and phone calls all the time. We're always working toward a deadline.

Don't get me wrong. I love what I do, but being a journalist is extremely stressful.

peace

Let me start by first saying that the little guy right above my typing is completely misleading. This is anything but a peaceful post. It is, however, about a frog attack. Yes, that's right. Frog Attack.

So I was browsing the AP wire looking for something remotely interesting to post to our website (we all know how much I hate this part of my day) when those two words - Frog Attack - literally jumped out and captured my attention. Who could resist a slug like that?!

This old guy in Port St. Lucie, Florida, attacked his roommate's son with a five-pound ceramic frog. Apparently the son hit the old dude in the eye... but a ceramic frog? Really? Isn't that overreacting just a little?

I mean, sure. Getting punched in the face isn't the same as getting to kiss a frog prince, but picking up said frog and bashing the other guy in the head with it just seems extreme.

Apparently the cops thought so, too. The old guy was arrested and charged with aggravated domestic battery.

Okay, so this week has been hectic. Not as hectic as last week. I've actually gotten significantly more sleep this time around with the exception of yesterday. (Of course, that could be because I keep falling asleep at my desk.) So, Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I was attempting to eat my midnight snack-lunch when I realized my throat felt really tight and I was having a hard time swallowing. So I whipped out my trusty compact brush-mirror and a flashlight and proceed to examine the back of my throat only to discover that it's absolutely covered with nasty white pus pockets. TMI, I know. But this will explain my lack of effort in yesterday's post as well as my lack of post for Tuesday.

So my mind goes from "Where the heck did those come from?!" to "Oh, no what if it's strep?!" to "I don't want to go to the doctor!" But I did go to the doctor where my strep test came back negative thankfully, but I did end up getting a shot. That sucked. I'm a baby when it comes to stuff like that. I want someone there holding my hand and sometimes I cry. Not even kidding. Needles are my weakness. But anyway. They gave me a shot to bring the swelling in my throat down - my tonsils were so big they were almost touching each other - and then prescribed me two medicines to kill the sinus infection I've had for like the past two months thanks to all the lovely pollen floating around.

So now you know what's been distracting me. Stupid pollen.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend, now that I can breathe and swallow again (I know there's a "that's what she said" in there but please refrain). The boyfriend and I are supposed to be going down to a zoo at the beach where I can, get this, climb up a ladder and be up close and personal with a giraffe! Words can't describe how excited I am about this.

Couples are supposed to talk, right? To keep their relationship healthy and stuff, but apparently there are certain things all couples should be talking about to make their relationships happier. I discovered this through Yahoo - "9 Things Happy Couples Talk About". According to that article, couples that discuss heavier topics rather than gossip have happier relationships. They used data from a study of college students to compile a list of things couples should talk about.

Embarrassing Moments: If you can't share those with your significant other, who can you share them with? Right? I have a lot of embarrassing moments. That's what being clumsy does for you. And knowing that we can genuinely laugh about my awkwardness is refreshing, especially since I know he's not making fun of me.

Political Viewpoints: Not sure I agree with this one. I don't enjoy discussing politics at all. And I work in news.

Fears & Insecurities: Understanding the things that worries each other is essential in understanding who they are as a person.

Childhood: You know we all like sharing stories of all the crazy things we did as kids. It's fun and very enlightening.

Past Relationships: This one is touchy, but I have to admit that the boyfriend and I have done this. We don't compare each other to our old flames but we have discussed why previous relationships ended.

Family Life: This should be a no-brainer. How your significant other interacts with his/her family can tell you so much about the type of person they are.

Current Events: Welcome to my life. I live in current events. I am after all in the news business. As for everyone else, it's really not that hard. You've got different interests, so share them with each other. And who knows, you could develop a shared interest.

TV & Movies: This seems like it doesn't fit in with the rest of the list, doesn't it? Well, when you move past the shallow conversation about how hot the main characters are and get into the deeper stuff like what motivated the characters to do something or the plot twists, etc., it makes more sense. These kinds of discussions, in my opinion, shed a lot of light on a how a person interpret his/her surroundings.

The Future: This doesn't necessarily mean marriage, a house and kids. But don't you want to know what your significant other's dreams and aspirations are? What goals he/she is working towards? If you don't know those things how can you expect to have a future with that person? 

I haven't had anything to talk about lately really. Plus I've been busy at work to the point that I honestly don't think about it until I'm going to bed. Today's another one of those days where I don't have anything to talk about, so I'm going to share a video with you.

I really enjoy Rhianna's music. I especially like her song "Rude Boy." So I decided to look up the video, and let me tell you. It is so weird. I mean, it doesn't really have a plot which is okay but it looks kinda like a Bob Marley wannabe kinda theme and all the floating mouths are creepy. Not to mention her clothes... and the weird beehive hairdo in that one part. So just watch it and  form your own opinion.

Move over Megan Fox. There's a new best-looking woman in town. Her name? Christina Hendricks. That's her eating some watermelon up there. By the way, when I got this picture from Esquire its default save name was "christina-hendricks-hot-watermelon".

Now if you're like me you didn't recognize the name Christina Hendricks, so I'm going to tell you who she is. She's the star of the show Mad Men, which I've never seen. I'm not even sure what network it airs on. Anyway, she received the title of best-looking woman through a poll of more than 10,000 women. That's right. Women. It's part of Esquire's issue that's dedicated to "the fairer sex."

You can read more about all that here. And on to what I want to talk about...

I like that a redhead with blue eyes was voted as the best-looking woman for Esquire's women edition. As bearer of that title, Christina Hendricks wrote a "Letter to Men" for the issue. It was funny and very much true and I suggest you read it. Anyway, here are my favorites from her letter:

I'm going to start this off with an apology to those of you who read and comment. I haven't been ignoring you, your comments or your posts on purpose. Last week was really crazy. So crazy, in fact, that I barely had time to post and actually didn't even realize I hadn't posted on Thursday until Friday. Whoops. So, yeah. I'm sorry I've been neglecting you guys and I can't really promise to get caught up anytime soon.

Sunday nights/Monday mornings are the worst days (relatively speaking) for me, mainly because I revert back to a normal schedule, i.e. I sleep during dark hours, for the majority of the weekend. What that means is that even if I get a chance to take a nap for a few hours, I rarely fall asleep because I've had a full night's sleep the night before. So I end up coming to work with an hour or two of sleep or none at all. Today it's none at all. So right now I'm running on pure adrenaline, the effects of a 30 minute power nap (courtesy of my break) and chocolate. The crash is inevitable but lucky for me still a few hours down the road.

Some exciting things are happening at work. Remember when I told you about the changes my team and I were going to propose to the boss last week? Well, she totally went for them and took it a step further, which was way more than we were shooting for. Nonetheless we're extremely happy/excited about what's to come. This week we're actually going to reformat the entire show to make it more viewer friendly and improve the flow. Here's what the show looks like now:

In other words, it's really intense for a morning show. We don't want to lessen the validity of the show or turn it into a talk show, but we are going to bust up some of the news and break down some of the weathers. We're even going to add in some new segments. Right now we're shooting for a Pet Tips and a Pediatrician Corner kind of thing. The problem we ran into when trying to come up with new stuff is that a lot of topics are very gender-specific and our audience is actually pretty 50/50. So we decided that pets were male and female friendly and kids were always a good direction. Plus, no one else in this area does anything like those and we wouldn't be competing with our other shows that have live elements.

Basically, things are about to get really interesting at work. Our ratings were up in the last sweeps and we're about to be in another. We're getting to try out new ideas and I finally feel like I really know what I'm doing when it comes to producing a quality show that people actually want to watch.

So if you've been paying attention to the news at all, whether it's through television, newspaper or the internet, you should already know about the volcano erupting in Iceland yesterday. You should also know about all the problems it's been causing for flights. But amid all the dangerous levels of ash clouding the skies and screwing up air traffic control, it's really been quite a beautiful natural occurrence. I'm not going to repost the photos I've been looking through, but I am going to provide you with the link to them. Go look and enjoy and have a great weekend.

This is going to seem like the most random topic ever, but I assure you guys that this is actually a really current thing for me right now. So I'm just going to come right out and say it:

It's true. Recently I've had multiple run-ins with chickens. And I'm talkin' about whole herds of chickens. Do chickens gather in herds? Whatever. These were a freakin' herd.

One day last week I was driving to see the boyfriend, and that's when the first encounter happened. I had seen the herd that morning on my way home but thought nothing of it. They were still in their respective yard, albeit extremely close to the road. I'm talkin' they were right up to the edge of the road doing that little scratch-dance thing they do. But like I said, I didn't think anything of it although in hindsight I guess I should have clued into the foreshadowing of events to come.

So that afternoon I was on my way back, to see the boyfriend right? Well, these chickens live at the house on the corner of the road I turn onto off of a busy highway. It's not like I can come to a complete stop before turning onto this road because there's always traffic. So I cruise into my turn onto the road, which happens to immediately cut into a turn (retarded, I know) and is also on a slight incline so you can't see anything. Basically, if a road could have a blind spot this would be the epitome of one.

So I turn onto the road and right as I top the little incline, there they are. 20 chickens - I'm not exaggerating their numbers in the least - in the middle of the road. Just chillin', doing the scratch-dance thing like they were going to find worms or bugs or whatever it is they eat in the pavement. I panicked for about two seconds, convinced I was about to take out the entire herd. Luckily the little buggers are faster than they look. They split like the crowd in that one scene from Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift, creating a nice little avenue for me to drive through. Which was a good thing because I'm not up to date on the protocol for running over an entire herd of chickens.

I mean, would I need to go knock on the door? What would I say? 'Cause I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be too accepting of the fact that I massacred their herd of chickens while they were attempting to cross the road (now would be the perfect time to throw out a cheesy "why did the chicken cross the road" joke, but I'll refrain).

That's not the extent of this story. Oh, no. The next time I was on that road, the herd was on the wrong side of the road just waiting for me. I saw them when I rounded the curve before the stop sign, the unnaturally large rooster at the front of the pack. I was paranoid that they were going to demonstrate their amazing speed and dart in front of my car, but they just watched me while they did their scratch-dance.

These chickens used to be corralled. I'm not really sure how they escaped, but apparently a couple of them were really ambitious. Actually, these next two chickens are probably just rogue chickens from other herds that are trying to hook up with the daredevil herd.

A few days ago when I was on my way home from work I encountered a lone chicken just outside of the city, casually walking down the side of the road like a hitchhiker. At first I thought this thing was a dog. That's how big it was. Big and white. And where was he heading? Towards the road chickens.

Then on Sunday morning when I was on my way home from the boyfriend's house, I passed another lone chicken, also big and white. This time on a country road in the middle of nowhere. He was trying to cross the road to get to a fenced-in pond where there are ducks. At least I think the ducks are real. I'm not sure. Sometimes they look fake. But that's not the point.

The point is that I've had way too many chicken encounters in the past week. And no matter how funny it sounds when you say it, playing chicken with a herd of chickens really isn't fun.

I kind of feel like Peter Griffin in his epic battles with the Giant Chicken.

In light of anything interesting to talk about, I'm resorting to this article I just read (but forgot to get the link to) about disciplining children. More specifically, it was talking about spanking and the long-term detrimental effects it has on kids. Now I don't know if you're pro- or anti-spanking, but I was spanked as child when I misbehaved. That's not to say my parents took every opportunity to "beat" me. Let's clear this up right away: spanking and beating are two different things.

See? Big difference. My parents never beat me. Never.

Now, here's the thing. When I was growing up, all it took was a few spankings to learn how to behave. I didn't have multiple time-outs. I wasn't put on restriction. I knew better than to act out, whether it was at home or in public. I won't say I was afraid of my parents, but I was afraid of my parents.

Kids today are completely different. Their whole mentality. For the most part, kids in today's society are horrible. Almost to the point that I don't want to have any. They're given so much at such an early age it's as if they start to think that everything is beneath them or something. What happened to the days when kids used their -gasp- imaginations? Played outside? Read?

Now kids just sit on their butts all day long playing video games and surfing the internet, and when they're not doing that they're constantly talking or texting on their cell phones. Or driving around on a seemingly endless supply of gas that they're not paying for.

I can remember a time when going out to a restaurant was a treat. Now I base where I eat on whether there are children inside, and most of the time if there are kids dining in I keep driving. I can't count the number of kids I've seen throw a fit in a public place in the last 10 days while their parents stand by looking at a loss of what to do.

Parents take away car keys only to give them back in two days because they don't want to be saddled with driving their kids places. Cell phones are given back after mere hours because parents don't know how to deal with their kid being a brat over not having one.

Ultimately, those methods don't work. Now I'm not advocating the use of violence towards children. But, in my opinion, a little physical discipline would go a long way in curbing the growing number of hellion children populating the planet. Just think about it. If they continue to grow up this way, they're going to destroy the planet because they don't get their way. And as the future leaders of the world, they'll have every opportunity to do just that.

In my experience, the above is 100% true.

Let me give you an example. On Saturday I was on my way to see the boyfriend. We were on the phone while I was driving, right? And he was flipping through channels looking for something to watch.

Boyfriend: Holy sh*t!
Me: What's wrong?
Boyfriend: You should see this chick's boobs. They're huge.
(he had stumbled across a syfy movie about a monster gator)
Boyfriend: Oh my God. She's running. She's wearing a thong bikini.
Me: Thanks for sharing.
Boyfriend: These other two chicks are hot, too. One's a redhead.
(the big boobed one is warning them about the gator apparently, but they don't believe her and get eaten)
Boyfriend: Oh. My. God. (almost breathlessly) She's crawling. Gaht-almighty.

He DVRed it so he could rewind it and show it to me when I got there. How sweet, right? I thought so.

I've been sick the past few days so I honestly have nothing blogworthy to talk about. But I do have something to show you. This is stemming from Christina in Wonderland's topic on Thursday. Well, indirectly. She was talking about Lady Gaga, who for the most part I'm a fan of. I absolutely loathe the disco stick song though. I loathe it so much I haven't even deemed it necessary to learn its name.

Anyway, Christina admitted to recently starting to dig Lady Gaga's music and specifically mentioned Poker Face. So I told her if she liked that song she should check out Chris Daughtry's version, which is all rocked out and cool. Well, that comment prompted a whole lotta responses about Daughtry singing that song, so I decided I would find the video and share it with my readers.

So, here you go. Chris Daughtry's version of Poker Face.

For the past couple of weeks work has been pretty cool. The hours still suck (working from 11pm until 7am will never be cool), but in spite of that I really do enjoy my work and the morning show has become like my pet. We've been trying new things and are working on making the show more interactive, which will be challenging but oh so rewarding.

Take the Friday before Easter, a.k.a. Good Friday. On the spur of the moment, I got this idea that the kids who watch our show (you'd be surprised at how many really do) would like to see Gina and Martha dye their own Easter Eggs. So we did a 3-4 minute egg-dying segment at the bottom of each hour. And it was awesome. I'm not sure if this will work, but here's the link to the video our graphics op posted on facebook.

We want to do more stuff like this to break the monotony of a news-heavy two-hour broadcast. Bringing in guests, even if it's only for the second hour, is going to prove difficult because of the early hour, but there are definitely things Martha and Gina can do to make the show more morning-friendly.

Here's a list of some of our ideas:

I would love to hear some of your ideas for things you'd like to see if you were watching my show. You can email them to me at ashton@wtvy.com or aking46599@gmail.com.

I don't watch a whole lot of t.v. outside of the news these days. So when I do watch, the best part of what I see is often the commercials. So today, I've decided to become commercialized!

No, seriously. I'm going to share with you some of my favorite commercials, current and past. Feel free to pick your favorite and/or share your favorite commercial with me.

Funny Nationwide Auto Insurance Commercial @ Yahoo! Video

This idea actually worked out better in my head. I have several other commercials on this list, but was unable to find them. So you're just going to have to settle for those three. The Sometimes Y one makes me laugh every time it comes on in the mornings, which is often.

The station I work at is a CBS affilliate, which is great. I love CBS. Most days. Other days I want to fire them all. This is one of those days. There wasn't a tease for Money Watch. The MedWrap VOs were a repeat of yesterdays. The NewsWrap Top Stories video never showed up. The mine explosion package was 30 minutes late. By the time my anchor got here I was ready to pull my hair out. So, just in case you were wondering, CBS is fired.

And on to today's topic!

Last summer was arguably one of the best summers of my life. I spent a week in Costa Rica, visited the Pike Lakes (which was really just a series of overgrown ponds) often, and was dirt poor. That last part doesn't really fit in with that list, does it? Actually, being poor really enhanced the experience of that summer. You never realize just how good the little things are until you can't afford the big things.

All of my roommate and my money was being sucked into rent, utilities and gas. Then the restaurant she was working at closed so for a month she was unemployed and I was making squat working at the school. That's when we started subsisting on spaghetti and pancakes. Now there's not much you can do to spice up spaghetti, but there's a surprising amount you can do to add some variety to your diet of pancakes. My roommate and I had a box of just-add-water pancakes and a myriad supply of random things in our kitchen cabinets. After about two weeks of eating just plain pancakes, we got pretty creative. You'd be surprised at the things you can add to pancake batter without destroying the pancakes.

1. Hazelnut Coffee Creamer: it works the same way it works in your coffee. it adds just a hint of hazelnut flavoring to your pancakes.

2. Funfetti Sprinkles: you know the funfetti icing? well, eat the icing or frost a cake with that but save the sprinkles. mix them in your batter. voila! funfetticakes.

3. Vanilla Extract: this is more subtle, but it definitely adds variety.

4. Chocolate Chips: this should be a no-brainer, guys.

Now, here's the trick. Cook you up a whole bunch of different varieties. I'm talking way more than you'd eat in a single setting. Then mix them all together in a freezer bag and stick them in your freezer. That way when you go to get breakfast/lunch/dinner, it's like reaching into a prize bag. My roommate and I lived off of these babies for a month.

Sometimes being awake all night has its advantages. Today is one of those times. I'm getting to watch the launch of the Discovery space shuttle. Sure, I've seen video playback of shuttle launches before, but I'm watching a satellite feed of it actually happen. As a matter of fact, I'm about to go record it for my show.

Now that record has been pushed and the volume turned up loud enough so I can hear when they fire up the engines, on to the blogging. I really don't have anything to talk about. I've been thinking about things I want to write about but the Discovery launch threw that off this morning. I'm not complaining though. I'm actually pretty excited about getting to watch it as it's happening.

I've always had a fascination with space. In fact, when I was younger I wanted to be an astronaut. That was back before I figured out I'm horrible at math and science. But when I was in fifth grade, our class took an overnight trip to Space Camp in Huntsville. And then when I was in 7th grade we went to the Coca-Cola Space Center in Columbus, Ga. Both of those trips were awesome.

In other news, check this out:

I went to the beach this weekend with the boyfriend and we went to Bass Pro Shop while we were there. They had a saltwater tank so we stopped to look at the monster fish. That's the biggest one. It was literally as big as me and probably could have eaten me.

So, I don't know how much news stuff you guys follow. I personally follow a lot of different news sites. That doesn't mean, however, that I know everything that's going on in the state I work in, the country or the world. I just like to have a general knowledge of what's going on.

Getting slightly off topic... it actually really bugs me when people hear/see/read something, whether it's political/sports/local/national, and they don't know what it is so they automatically call or text me to ask and then if I don't know they get mad. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard, "You work in the news. You should know!", or something along those lines, I'd have a pretty nice chunk of change.

Back to the point, here's something I have noticed recently, via Yahoo news, the AP wire, someone's blog, etc. A lot of celebrities are coming out of the closet so to speak. Not that it was that much of a surprise, but Ricky Martin just came out a few days ago, and just this morning I stumbled on this headline:

So I clicked on it, like I'm sure you'll do, to discover that Paquin has announced she's bisexual through a public service announcement for Cyndi Lauper's Give a Damn Campaign. It's a campaign to raise awareness of hate crimes against people who are of sexual orientations other than heterosexuality.

I'm not going to get into my opinion on sexual preferences. I'm straight. I like men. I have a wonderful boyfriend. But that doesn't mean I'm not supportive of this cause, and I think that everyone knows and/or cares about someone who has already suffered or could possibly suffer from this type of crime.

Your sexuality is your business, just as my sexuality is my business. We all have to face the consequences of our choices including our choices of who to love, but being the victim of a hate crime shouldn't be one of those consequences.

I didn't really feel like writing today so I decided to regale you with an Easter comic from Cyanide & Happiness. Click to make bigger. (that's what she said)