A night away from the family...

Being a morning show host actually has a lot of responsibilities. I know, I will give you a second to stop laughing. This time of year we are vital when it comes to school delays and closings. So I HAVE TO be at work. So Tuesday afternoon I am keeping an eye on the weather. They are calling for another couple of inches of snow, blowing and drifting. Pretty bad forecast. I head home for a little while to see the wife and kid. Every hour or so I look out at the highway half a block from my house. As the afternoon turned to evening I see the cars in town going slower and slower. So I know the 19 miles of "country" driving I have to do must be getting pretty bad. I make a tough call to drive back to Marion to sleep in a hotel that the station hooked us up with.

I pack a bag with a couple days worth of cloths. Kiss the wife, hug the baby and head out for the first night away from the wife in almost two years. The drive back to Marion was not too bad. There were spots where the snow had drifted pretty good. So far I think I could have stayed home. But better safe than sorry. I get to the Hotel Marion, and they set me up with a room. I go check it out. It will suit me just fine. Nothing special.

So I do what I always do when I go into a hotel room. I look through all the drawers. The reason, when I was a kid, we were on vacation in Niagara Falls, and I found 40 dollars in one of the hotel drawers. Now, in over 20 years, I have not found a dime since, but you never know.

After that I kick on the TV and find Fox so I can watch American Idol. Call the wife, and give her all the info about room and phone number. We watch Idol together talkin' about who we like. After that I decided to go see if there is any one I know at the bar downstairs. After about 20 minutes of the smoke, I go back to the room and sit back watch some TV and play around on my laptop.

Finally bedtime. Of course I knew I was not going to sleep as good as I would at home. But let me just tell you...the heater in the room rattled like an earthquake every time it shut off. Which woke me up about every 45 minutes. Ugghhhh! Then at around 12:30 or 1:00am....some brainiac from the bar decided to do laps around the parking lot on his snowmobile. Double Uggghhh...Alarm goes off at 4:15 and I am up for the day.

Ends up the roads were fine for me to drive in that morning, and I could have slept in my own bed. But this is the price you pay to have a "Life in Headphones."