when this is all over, i'm going to need a nap

i'm going to have to try really hard while writing this to not sound like i'm bragging (or humblebragging, which is slightly different and much funnier) so bear with me.

i've had a pretty amazing week this week, professionally speaking. 

after about seven months at the radio station going from intern to producer and learning all kinds of things i never thought i'd know, i'm having my first all by myself on-air shift this saturday morning from 8am-10am.to say this came out of nowhere wouldn't be entirely accurate but it was very much a zero t0 60 thing over the course of this week.

sure, i talk during the morning show but morning radio and being a disc jockey are totally different animals. i'm nervous and excited but mostly, i'm just surprised. 
when i got into journalism in college, i really fell in love with public relations especially since it meant i could still write. i never thought radio would be a career path, even after i first took the internship, and while most people wouldn't disagree that i could make a career out of talking, it's still scary to think about changing paths, even so slightly. 
at the same time, i'm very excited and so thankful to everyone who has helped teach me and so lucky for this opportunity. so please listen (in tennessee on 107.5, in mississippi on 96.1 and elsewhere on the website link above)!

moving on.

i drink tons of coffee every week to the point where i think i might be comprised of at least 20% pure caffeine. hey, we all have flaws. but this week i had an exceptionally great cup of coffee because it was with Suzanne from the East Memphis Moms blog. I saw on twitter (follow me @raquelhinson) that she was looking for guest bloggers and after a few emails, we met to talk and she was awesome! Her youngest and reed are the same age so there's also a possible play date in reed's future. it was really nice, she was beyond encouraging and seemed really excited to have me write for her blog. she also did a mom spotlight on me which was very flattering, so thanks Suzanne. 

all moms in the Memphis area: follow this blog, like it on facebook and then take advantage of all the cool stuff around town she finds for us to do with our kiddos!

and my last bit of cool news is that i'll be hosting this little party at Gould's in Collierville:

alright, i'm done. i promise. happy thursday all. 

this week in Memphis

As part of my job on the morning show, I'm up to date on the things that are of interest to Memphians in general (particularly females 18-34).
with Memphis in May, this month is always pretty happening for the Bluff City but this year things are just plain ridiculous. 

You'll see what I mean.

MemFlood

if you're on "the twitter" you have probably seen this hashtag, along with the MemStorm during all the tornado watches/warnings. Things are getting serious. with all the rain fall we've been having the missisippi, loosahatchie and wolf rivers have no where to go but up. As of noon today the mississippi was at 42.3 feet & rising ahead of the predicted schedule as are the wolf & loosahatchie rivers. Follow @memflood on twitter and go to staysafeshelby.us for the latest information. 

ps thank you weather lords for holding off on the floods over Music Fest weekend. I still needed rain boots & the tornado sirens did go off on Sunday but otherwise, it was all good. I'd hate to see what it looks like today after 86 thousand people (maybe more?) stomped around for three days.

Memphis Grizzlies

Memphis is a basketball town, there's really no doubt about it. In years past, the Tigers have been the root of the basketball fandom but the Memphis Grizzlies have come from the bottom with a vengeance. Over the weekend, the Grizz defeated the Spurs in the first round of NBA playoffs and won game 1 of the second round against the oklahoma city thunder. grizz fever is literally contagious in the city of Memphis, with the home games 3 & 4 already sold out.

if you're ready to hop on the bandwagon, the radio station I intern for, the Q is having a game 2 watch party at Maria's Cantina in Southaven tomorrow night. 

Memphis In May Celebrate International Week

supposedly this is a huge point of Memphis In May, to pay tribute to an international county. this year Memphis is honoring Belgium. though fellow blogger amanda referred to me in high school as "a rolling scroll of information" I don't know tons about Belgium so if you're interested in partaking, trot on over to the i love memphis blog where Kerry Crawford has all kinds of ways you can celebrate all things Belgian. 

in other Memphis In May News...
all of the flooding leads the powers that be to thing that Tom Lee Park, where most of the MIM festivities are hosted, will be underwater in the new few weeks. our pretty famous, and awesomely tasty, barbecue fest is going to be moved for this reason. word on the street is that it'll be moved to Tiger Lane, where University of Memphis students tailgate for football games (as seen below).

anything else in Memphis going on that I left out?

Five Things

1. Save Davis-Kidd Booksellers.

If you're a Memphian, you may or may not have heard about how the building which currently houses Davis-Kidd is up for auction. It's my understanding that the auction has already taken place but there is apparently some chance of keeping the bookstore at its current location according to the stores facebook page if the Laurelwood Shopping Center can help the stores owners.
Davis-Kidd is currently the only non-used bookstore left in Memphis proper after the closing of Bookstar in January. Write an email, help save a book store. 

2. It's Music Time in Memphis

Abandon all hope for non-frizzy hair and put on your rain boots because it's almost time for the Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival. Or for the people who actually live here, it's almost Music Fest Weekend. I have a unique opportunity this year since I'm interning for one of the sponsoring radio stations, I shall essentially be living in Tom Lee Park next weekend. This is one of the most anticipated Music Fests since I've been old enough to go forth and hear music in the mud with thousands of Memphians. The full line-up is here and if you're going, stop by the Q tent!


3. Speaking of Internships...
I have no picture for this but in case we aren't facebook friends, I thought i'd whore my blog out to solicit for summer interns. if you're interested in radio and can get school credit, email me your resume at rmiranda@memphis.edu. 

4. Harry Potter Mania

I've been what some people refer to as a Potterhead since about the seventh grade. The first time I read each of the books, I finished them in one day. I even went to the midnight release of Half-Blood Prince with some girls that lived on my dorm floor. It seems fitting that leading up to the release of the final film chapter of the saga (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2) I'd be knee deep in the books and films all over again. I'm writing a 15 page research paper on the books & films for my Children's Literature final. 
If there's a single person reading this blog that hasn't read Harry Potter, do it. If you live in Memphis, I will lend you the books. Asap.

5. The Chewbacca Dog

I'm quite certain that this is the only dog Adam would let me have and we would call him Chewie (of course). Life as a nerdy couple would nearly be complete, save for when we have millions of dollars and get a boat and name it The Millennium Falcon. 

taming the chaos

about three times a year (fall, spring & summer semesters) i have to do what I call "taming the chaos" of my family. for my fellow students out there, it's always challenging to coordinate a work schedule, a school schedule, a social life, perhaps a greek organization....it's hard. or at least it was until I became a mom/wife/student/intern-turned-producer whose husband has a full time management position.

i'm not whining. trust me. I know how fortunate a young family is to be employed, educated and still have some time together, particularly in this economy. 

actually, i'm bragging. 

my dear friend Nathan has long since been a strange combination of impressed & petrified of my organizational & time management skills that have only been more finely tuned since becoming a mother. 

And I wanted everyone else to share that mixture of awe and fear.

nathan & I looking a little bit like siblings. 

which is only fitting since his girlfriend (ellie, the best friend) & my husband look exactly like brother & sister. 

see what I mean?

anyways, in the face of all of that madness, i've found that i thrive in the situation and my organization skills are pretty top notch as of late. 

just to be a little bit more specific, here are the many elements of scheduling that I have to organize:

Adam's Work Schedule. 

i have to do my best to keep him as the opener most mornings (as that is where he is a rock star) while i work on a morning radio show. 

i also have to do my best to arrange around adam's weekly game night which is ever changing due to two of the players being university professors and another being a PhD student. 

Reed's Child Care Schedule. 

in case anyone doesn't know, reed is 2 and a half now. 

he goes to a parent's day out twice a week for about five & a half hours a day.

we love it, he loves it. he really thrives in the social interaction. 

however, sometimes life starts before the 9am drop off time (life like a morning radio show maybe?) and that's when creative scheduling comes in handy. 

My Class Schedule

the longer i'm in school, which who's really keeping track (please nobody keep track), the harder this piece of the puzzle is to manage. 

the higher division classes are harder to schedule because there are fewer of them, particularly in a program on the smaller side like journalism. 

my 1st semester back after having reed I took 15 hours. 

I stacked my classes primarily on Mondays & Wednesdays and then had 2 classes Friday mornings. 

this fall, i'm looking at 1 class monday/wednesday/friday, two classes mondays & wednesdays, two classes on tuesdays & thursdays.

Oi with the poodles already. 

The Morning Show

 this one is probably the most fun & the hardest to work into my life. 

adam opens every morning at Starbucks, save for his 2 days off a week (if that). 

he gets there at 4:30am. I have to be at the radio station at 5am. 

we have a small child. 

see the problem?

but i love it, so I tame the chaos. 

and in case you're wondering why dear Nathan has ever been scared?

it's my desk calendar. 

(complete with a color coded highlighting system)

the above + my iPhone are my biggest lines of defense in the war against disorganization. 

what keeps you organized? 

and would you like lessons in the art of arranging your life via color coded highlighters? cause i could teach that class. 

TV Time

I told all my faithful blog readers what was on my fall line-up and now that spring has sprung, it's time for an update. 

Bones

As is the case with nearly every popular show, I jump on the bandwagon 4-5 years late (except The OC, I was there from the get-go). Anyways, I've been in love with David Boreanaz since the third grade so I'm fairly surprised it took me this long to get into it but thank God for TNT reruns. It's far wittier than Law & Order and the sexual tension between Booth & Brennan is so thick you could cut it with that week's murder weapon. Tune in, friends. 

It's on Thursdays on FOX at 8pm.

Bethenny Ever After

 Formerly of The Real Housewives of New York City, Bethenny Frankel is a natural foods chef, author and overall bad ass entrepreneur. Can you tell that I like her? Her new show is about life after marriage & baby and how to juggle them both with running your own empire. (Side note: Adam got me a bottle of her Skinny Girl Margarita- it's delicious and only 100 calories a bottle. I may start drinking on the regular again). I find Bethenny hysterical and refreshingly honest and you get a Bravo reality show without the table flipping and bitch slapping you get with the Housewives shows.

Also, check out Bethenny's website for awesome recipes.
It's on Mondays on Bravo at 9pm.
On a related note, due to my awesome internship, I got to talk to Bethenney on Tuesday!

Big Love

I watched the first season when it originally aired and then went to live in the University dorms where students having HBO just isn't a priority for the folks over at Resident Life. 

With adulthood came the option to have Netflix and thus, I've been watching this wonderful series. Currently I'm in the midst of season 3 and it's just fantastic. Oddly, when TLC began to air the reality version, Sister Wives, I was just super creeped out.  Plus, for all the Memphis folks, it's a good opportunity to support our local gal, Ginnifer Goodwin.

I believe the series finale just aired (if you value your life, you won't tell me how it ends) but pretty much everyone has Netflix so that's where you should watch it. 

And in case I have any male readers, Adam is currently obsessed with BBC America. Namely, these two shows:


Top Gear

&


Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

what are all of you watching? is there a must-see television (as Elspeth would say) show that I'm missing?

So What Do You Do There?

I've been at a loss as to what to blog about and my dearest Elspeth is convinced that people would find reading about my internship interesting. So if you get bored, blame Ellie. 

As a refresher, I'm an intern (currently the only intern) at 96.1/107.5 The Q, more specifically on the morning show with Maney, Riley & Alexis Grace.
I get to do some technical stuff like the timing of the commercial breaks that isn't that easy to describe without a bunch of radio jargon that I barely understand myself. So if my day seems light, that's the stuff I'm leaving out.

A big part of what I get to do is topic gathering for the show. Any ideas, blog readers?

 I've also been learning to edit the audio clips that we use throughout the show, like the movie clips Maney plays early in the morning or the American Idol clips we play on Thursdays and Fridays. Or I've edited the promos where Maney & Riley talk about the next days show, which is probably the most complex bit of editing I've had to do thus far. And a big thank you to my wonderful teacher, Riley, for showing me how to do that.


My favorite thing to do is to write the E! on the Q! blog since it's more my niche, clearly. Though it does come in handy that I tend to agree with Riley on the celebrity gossip since it is a first person blog written from her perspective. So if you're bored at work and want to read a raquel-blog and I haven't updated this one, mosey on over to there. And clearly, I am only talking to Robyn when I say this. 

Other than the above, I do a lot of typical internship tasks: getting coffee, making copies, running to the printer, answering the phones.

Btw, some shameless promoting right here: listen to the Q next week, Alexis Grace has a commercial out for her new apartment at Centennial Gardens and I helped her write it! And the T-I-G-E-R-S spell out at the end is me & Alexis.

Also it should be noted that while I love what I get to do at the radio station and the opportunity is priceless, I'm pretty excited that I've found a friend and reed's future wife out of the deal. Official blog shout-out to Alexis & Baby Ryan :)

And now I'm off to get ready for the Memphis Premiere Bridal Show. A perk of my internship? Getting to go all of these events.

I don't know about Samtana, but here's what we've been up to

Yesterday Robyn chastised me via text message about not updating my blog so here I go, despite a lack of inspiration. Hopefully, I won't bore you readers.


Lately, my life has consisted off my school, reed, adam (barely, sadly) and my internship (which i love). Sleep, a social life and blogging have taken a backseat. The only way I've kept up with the television shows that I watch is my need for background noise while I do homework. Side note: fellow Glee fans, Finn & Quinn again? Sam & Santana (heretofore referred to as Samtana)? Really, Ryan Murphy?


Anyobsessed, here's a look at what the Hinson's have been up to recently:

Reed & I went to Muddy's. I loved the look on his face in the picture. 

Our goods. The Frankly Scarlett on the left was Reed's, the Tomboy was mine.

Pajama Day at Reed's school.

I posted this picture on Facebook and it's the background on my phone but on the off-chance that I hadn't thrown this picture in someones face, I figured they needed to see it. Those are Thomas the Tank Engine jammies, though the top is covered by his sweatshirt, tucked into cowboy boots and topped off with a cowboy hat. The kid has style. 

Baby Ryan & Baby Reed.

 My new friend Alexis and I have had a few playdates with the kids. As I expected, reed promptly fell in love with the older woman (Ryan just turned four) and followed her around asking to shower her with attention, hugs and kisses. Ryan, being the independent girl that she is, will hug reed when she feels like it but would rather he respect her personal space. If there was ever any doubt, male-female relationships are complex from birth.

Reed got way too much stuff for Christmas so we tried to space out the opening of presents. However, it's snowed a lot this winter and when it's not snowing, it's bloody freezing so playtime options have been limited. This week, we cracked open the Lego's and Adam built reed the tower he kept asking for, though we have no idea where he even learned that word and it's relation to Lego's.

And lastly,

The beginnings of this week's snowpocalypse. 

This was the worst snow so far. While the first one of the winter stuck around a little longer, the ice that followed was awful and nerve wracking to drive on. Next winter, I'll be needing a Valium prescription before I attempt to drive again.

Happy Weekend All :)

And the Nominees are...

Alright well I'm a day late and a dollar short on this one, but technically, I've already blogged about this. Check out my first piece for the E! on the Q Blog, if you please. I think I wrote all of 3 sentences but I did correct the grammar & punctuation of every news outlet that posted Oscar noms and put the titles of movies in quotation marks.

However, that was an opinion-less post and this will assuredly not be one of those. There weren't very many surprises in who did get nominated but there were a few upsets and I'll get to those in a minute. First, here are my predictions for the majority of the categories.


Best Actress
I wish I could say Annette Bening (The Kids Are Alright) but I'm going to have to give it to Natalie Portman (Black Swan).


Best Actor
I'm going for Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) for an upset over Colin Firth (The King's Speech).


Best Supporting Actress
For both of the supporting roles, I'm being consistent with the Golden Globe winners from The Fighter: Melissa Leo.


Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale.

Best Original Screenplay
Christopher Nolan for Inception


Best Adapted Screenplay
Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy for 127 Hours based on the book Between a Rock & a Hard Place by Aron Ralston.


Best Director
Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan


Best Animated Feature Film
Of course I'm going to say Toy Story 3. The only other film nominated in this category that I've seen was How to Train Your Dragon and it was not my thing.


Best Picture
I'm going to say The King's Speech but it's highly likely that The Social Network will repeat their Golden Globes victory.

Check back after The 83rd Annual Academy Awards air on Sunday, February 27th to see if I'm right.

And now for the upsets.
In the Best Actor category, many people expected Ryan Gosling to get nominated for his role in Blue Valentine but his on-screen wife alone gets the nod. In The Fighter Christian Bale got nominated for playing Micky's brother, Amy Adam's got nominated for playing Micky's girlfriend and Melissa Leo got nominated for portraying Micky's mother but Micky himself, Mark Walhberg, got no love from the Academy.

Julianne Moore did not receive a nomination in the Best Actress category for her lesbian momma role in The Kids Are Alright.


Mila Kunis proved that, unlike for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, it takes more than being dirty with Natalie Portman in Black Swan to be a Best Supporting Actress nominee, according to the Academy.

Probably the biggest upset was in the Best Director category with Christopher Nolan for Inception. Really? Did they watch the movie? This is actually the second rather large snub Nolan has gotten at the Oscars for Best Director; the first was for The Dark Knight.

And there you have it, in case you didn't already know most of what I just wrote.


I'm off to work on my Oscar goal: to watch each of the movies nominated for Best Picture. I'm halfway through The Kids Are Alright right now, The Social Network is up for tomorrow night and I've already seen Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception & Toy Story 3. Only 4 more to go!


Feel free to comment and contradict me, I'd love to hear it.

First Day on a Brand New Internship

A few friends/blog readers have called, texted, facebooked and smoke signaled to ask how the 1st day of my new internship went. However, different friends have different priorities; Por ejemplo, even though Robyn & Ellie are sisters they were concerned with varying aspects of my first day. 

Ellie wondered how the work was and if everyone was nice while Robyn was mostly just worried about what I wore. She tends to be the most concerned out of anyone with how cute I look at any given point. 

In case anyone is new and confused, I started a radio internship this week with 96.1/107.5 The Q here in Memphis. I'm interning for the morning show so listen on your way to work, blog readers of the Mid-South.
To answer Elspeth's question, yes, everyone has been super nice and not all that intimidating. I feel pretty relaxed and at home, particularly for only working one day thus far. Now, I'm sorry to disappoint but as I didn't want to totally freak out everyone & to retain a modicum of professionalism, I didn't take pictures on my first day. I will, however, be ganking pictures from Facebook as to provide visuals of what everyone looks like.

Look, it's Maney! He hired me and I think he's already regretting surrounding himself with yet another woman. However, he seems reasonably impressed with my work ethic, though I have a sneaking suspicion that previous interns have lead him to be impressed that I tied my own shoes and can type up a resume so who knows?

It's Riley & Alexis Grace!
I actually met Riley a few years ago when I interviewed her for a journalism project about people in local media and I thought "Who better for me to interview than a Puerto Rican woman?" It turns out, no one because I got an A and had fun doing it. In an attempt to find me a nickname that isn't Rocky, Riley thinks it should be Mini as in Mini-Riley. I'm taking it as a compliment. If you have suggestions, Maney is taking them on Twitter @ManeyandRiley. Please be nice. 

The American Idol fans will recognize our hometown girl Alexis Grace from a few seasons back and, in case you didn't know, is part of the Q morning show. She was really sweet and we bonded over a mutual love of Dr Pepper & the fact that Adam is our favorite barista at Starbucks. Also, we're both mama's and I'm pretty sure Reed is in love with her adorable daughter Ryan :)

Hopefully I'll get to the point where I can take pictures real stealth-like and show the super secret inner workings of the studio to my wonderful blog readers.

Adam & I are sleepy so goodnight and good luck, all.