Weather Men

Yes, this is how sad my life has become. I'm blogging about the weather.

Or, well, about weather men.

See, I checked Yahoo US this morning, as I do. And my "Local News" is set to Ft. Lauderdale, since that's where I lived for a dozen years before we came here.

And Bryan Norcross is retiring from TV.

Now, if you've never lived in South Florida, ths means nothing to you. But if you did...especially if you lived there in August 1992, as I did...this is like God retiring.

When Hurricane Andrew hovered around in the Atlantic, just a baby storm--category 2, I think--all the other forecasters told us not to worry. Andrew wouldn't hit us, they said. Just forget about him.

All of them except Bryan Norcross, anyway. Which is why, when we woke up that morning and discovered Andrew had not taken the turn all the other forecasters said he would and was in fact heading straight for us, Bryan Norcross became a hero in South Florida. And stayed that way. He stayed with us on TV through the whole thing, and we watched. (Okay, sort of. Channel 7's news coverage during the storm was much more entertaining, because Channel 7 has Rick Sanchez, who was one of the biggest buffoons on the planet. He and hi co-anchor--I want to say Jessica Aguirre--were down in 7's bunker, and Sanchez was sprawled out in a lawn chair like he should have a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and several times the camera actually caught him trying to look down Aguirre's blouse. That, coupled with the dumb things he said, made 7's coverage highly amusing.)

Anyway, we all watched Bryan. And kept watching him. Every time a hurricane threatened, you heard his name invoked all over the place: random strangers at Publix or the gas station or wherever asking "what does Bryan say?"

So it's sad. And it's made me think of the other weather man I used to watch all the time, Bob Richards (St. Louis), whose story is told in the link by AA blogger Byron Crawford (with particular emphasis on the racial aspects of the case). Bob killed himself by flying his small plane into the ground, after his obsessive threatening phone calls to an ex were leaked.

So I guess I don't have much luck with weathermen. Or rather, they don't have much luck after I leave their cities--although to be fair, Bryan is the head of his own company and is in fact moving up in the world. So I guess it's a mixed bag.

It's funny how anchormen and news personalities, even local ones, have such an impact, isn't it?

Oh, and here's a little rant for the day. Is it too much to ask that a doctor actually pay attention when you tell him the problem? Faerie has had what I think is a reaction to the immunizations she got last week, in the form of blisters on her sweet little bottom (things always start on her bottom, poor baby. You should have seen when she had chicken pox, it was awful. And one day she will want to kill me for posting this. Anyway. So I took her to the doctor, because I called and they said I should bring her in.

The doc barely glanced at her poor little wounds. Ignored me when I told him what I thought it was. Interrupted me when I tried to explain my she-has-a-very-reactive-butt theory. At one point he actually said, "If it was a reacton it would look like little blisters!" To which I repled, "Well, it did, before they popped." He ignored that, too.

In the end I don't think it matters much; he gave me some ointment and that's probably what would have happened either way. But I hate being ignored when it comes to my baby's health. I'm her mother; I know her. I mentioned she had a slight fever today, he said, "Kids get fevers." Wow, really, you freaking NHS hack?

Bottom (heh) line? "Give it a few days, we'll see what happens." Just like when the doc famously told the severe-bronchitis-inflicted hubs, "Give it a few days, and come back if you start coughing up blood." Or one of hubs's co-worker's boyfriend, who broke his foot and was sent home without even an x-ray and instructions to come back in a few days if the foot didn't feel better, and they'd do an x-ray then. Meanwhile he got to walk around for a week with a broken foot and the equivalent of Tylenol for the pain.

Weather, hurricanes, suicide, butts, feet, and the crappy NHS. We're covering all the bases today.