(before i go on, let me throw in here that i love what i do.  the morning show is an absolute joy to be part of.  ellen, jayme, jeff, coop and jay are a riot to work with and there’s nothing else i’d rather be doing — other than traveling the world on the back of my lottery winnings.  and when we say, “thanks for listening, we appreciate it,” we mean it.  without you, there’s no show.)

but it’s saturday morning at 5:30 and i’m writing this post.  and i’ve been putting it off for two hours.

i will guarantee you that way over in st. louis (lees summit, st. louis, same diff) where ellen lives, she’s been awake for some time too (matter of fact, let’s log on to face book and see if she’s there…opening a new tab…logging on…checking…hmmm…not on right now…doesnt’ matter.).  the rest of the gang’s probably stirring too!

the question ellen and i get the most is probably “what time do you wake up in the morning?”  ask almost anyone in morning radio and they’ll tell you that you never get used to the hours.  but as i sit here listening to a barry cd one of my colleagues insisted i check out (can you believe fescoe is such a rabid manilow fan?  first time i met him, he came up, shook my hand, said, “my name’s bob. her name was lola. she was a showgirl.”  and it’s been downhill ever since.) i’m coming to realize that you really do get used to the hours — (read: your body orders you around on weekends).

so for those of you who never see this hour of the day, here are some of the things you can go out and do at 5:30 in the morning on a saturday:  niecie’s is open and serving breakfast (hello mr. perry), qt is selling everything but their really good chocolate cookies with white chips, drive through fairway and mission and see how little time it takes to get a cop following you (works at all hours, but potentially expensive), go into the office and…nah.  entertainment options outside the house at this hour are limited (but at least the manilow music has agitated the cats into a fight).  this should be fun to watch.

oh…and one other bright side, we set our clocks ahead tomorrow…so in a day, i’ll be writing this at 6:30.  hooray!

i had just returned from an amazing 9-day mission trip in central america.  (what a tremendous experience.  if you have the chance to do something like that — and you’re easy going, like to help and can deal with not having a tv, your computer, your cell phone…water, etc. — do it.)  the show is going well.  i continue to keep the weight off.  my cats think i’m the coolest.  i mean, it’s been a great week.

until today.  having purchased a new laptop (at a hell of a price — all hail microcenter), nobody, not even the engineering and IT departments can get it to work.  great.  next time i’ll just set the cash on fire.  but grand scheme, i can get that taken care of.  a minor annoyance.

so today, i’m leaving the office right?  i walk out the door.  there, sitting before me, gleaming like a beacon in the night, is the $800 miracle that is my ‘99 ford escort — the one with 170k miles on it. the one we relentlessly make fun of on the show.  the one with the rust and scratches.  the one ellen claims i drive “like a bat out of hell,” (as if it’ll go over 37 mph).   the one that no one can believe i actually paid a full $800 to buy.  so i hop in…nothing.  turns over but won’t start.  and eventually starts to make a noise that no earthly (man-made or otherwise) creature should ever make.

dead.  i could fix it.  but then again, i could buy 4 more miracle escorts too.

so i send out an email asking if anybody knows anybody looking to unload a used car.  the answer i get comes from my boss…the program director.  his answer: “ummmm, jayme.”

jayme is the exec producer of the show  and the owner of the only car in the lot that’s worse-off than mine (i mean it’s an utter disaster.  it’s a miracle to emerge from it alive.)  (i’m glad she doesn’t read my blog.)

and on top of that, manifesto is closed.

really?  really??

thanks gateway.  thanks escort.  thanks neil.  thanks borrowed liquor license.  you shall not destroy my outstanding mood (which i think almost drove ellen to violence on more than one occasion this week).

but…could one of you please come pick me up at 3:15 monday morning?

last week, i took some time off, but not for vaca, rather for a mission trip to nicaragua.  and what an experience it was!

cccckc has been doing mission trips all over the world for years but nicaragua has become a regular event.  20 of us left last saturday from kci and returned yesterday afternoon (28 feb).  here’s one of the neat things about the trip, half of us had never had the nicaragua mission experience, the other half had.

anyway, you can check some of the pix from the trip at facebook.com/ejbecker and you can read about the trip from my perspective (stream of consciousness is really big in nicaragua) and lori’s perspective right here. we kept blogs about our adventures.

thanks for checking it out.

- barack obama — for outlining the way forward in afghanistan and laying out the timeline for bringing the conflict to an end.

- jay leno — now he’ll answer to a cable company…the company that airs all the shows people switched to when he went “prime time.”

- texas charities — specifically the ones dressed in the green fuzzy suits denying free christmas toys to poor children (because they’re illegal).

and…

- the three iron! (’nuf said.)

that’s right, it’s that time of year when along with the merry christmases and happy new years’s (pronounced yearz-uhz) we might say happy holidays — not because we’re pagan, not because we don’t want to offend someone, but because it’s another acceptable greeting people use during the holidays (notice we call them “the holidays” as there are indeed multiple holidays in close proximity to one another).

anyway, i have to remind ellen to be ready for the emails that will come in accusing us of being p.c. or crazy libs or any number of other things we may get called when, for the sake of variety, we choose to say happy holidays instead of merry christmas.

of course, when i do get email like that, the one thing that always comes to mind: that’s the spirit!  (sigh)

what’s wrong with people?

you can literally drive another car through there.  every time i go to the m&s grill, some one is parked like this.  i’m not kidding.  it’s like there’s a disturbance in the magnetic field in front of the restaurant…it’s like being in “lost” only hawaii is waaaayyyyyyyy over that way.

tonite’s brilliant parker was from illinois, the land of lincoln.  you could fit two abe’s end to end in that gap.

anyway, the reason i’m convinced it has something to do with the natural forces of the earth and not bad parking, the cops never mess with these cars.  they roll right on by without a second thought as if they know that stopping to rebuke the driver/parker will only suck them into whatever unhuman vortex of parking chaos rules the east end of country club plaza.

that’s why i only visit those parts.  the west side is much less prone to such anomalies…and cap grill-goers wouldn’t be caught dead parking their own cars.

this morning…er…saturday night it was kansas 3rd district congressman dennis moore in the moments immediately following the house vote on a healthcare (why isn’t that a compound word yet?) overhaul.  only got to about half of the questions i had prepared for the interview, because the congressman said he had other interviews to give… and had to cut our chat off.  here’s some of what we didn’t have time to discuss, questions i really wish he’d had time to answer.

what’s being cut from medicare and how are the affected people supposed to make up for it?  will this eventually drive the private health insurance industry into extinction?  republicans say this will raise taxes on the middle class and small business.  are they right?  immigration was an issue with this bill.  will illegal immigrants be able to buy insurance through the government marketplace?  how much jail time are we looking at if we don’t carry insurance?  and how worried are you that your vote will put you out of a job in a year (that was the last question he wouldn’t let me get in)?

if you missed the interview, check it out.

but at this time of year i am driven once again to wonder why “fun size” candy bars are fun.  when i was a kid, trick or treating as the pillsbury dough boy (no pillow necessary then), i had the most fun when somebody handed me a full size snickers or a two pack of recee’s cups.

a small 3 muskateers, milky way or snickers was not fun.  it was inconvenient.  you knew that you would have to eat at least two to be satisfied (and that meant a fight with mom. dad would side with me as long as i slid him a pb cup under the table).  and if you only had one, you were faced with the tough choice of which “incon size” bar should chase the snickers — there’s no good answer.

executive producer jayme tells of her t or t memories where the best houses were the ones handing out “pop.”

that puts things into perspective for me.  given the choice between a fun size snickers and having to endure the word “pop,” i will grit my teeth, and choke down the candy bar.

then sometimes at 4am, noway steps in and throws a scandanavian monkey wrench into the works. 

about 4:01 this morning abc’s michael barr, anchoring the national news broadcast, announces breaking news that the prez has won the nobel peace prize in oslo.  at that exact moment, everyone in the newsroom looked at each other and said:  “really?” 

two seconds later, we threw this, and this and this out the window and began reshaping the show and the round table.  we hit the phones to get you reaction from people who know the prez and the issues.

we refocus the questions for our guests, the way we get you involved changes (expanding from asking for comments on email or facebook to opening up the phone lines to get your feedback and talking to you on the street), and we shift our delivery to accommodate a sustained flow of information develops all morning long.   

oh and we do traffic and weather every ten minutes since there were 102 accidents this morning.

and we look ahead to the rest of the day and make sure you know what you need to know before glenn, rush, s&p and darla grab the torch from us and carry it forward.

and then, bob comes in with biscotti and suddenly everything seems so much easier to manage again.

thank you norway.  thank you president obama for a fun morning.  and thank you bob for the best biscotti in the world.

Team names are the best, right?  You can tell that some teams take just as much time thinking up just the right name as they do putting together just the right BBQ sauce recipe.  (And by the way, Howlin Wolfe’s BBQ catered the KMBZ party at the Royal on Friday and talk about a great recipe!  These guys need a restaurant!).  But a team name isn’t what you’d expect to catch your attention and make you ask, “Really? Can I say that?  Really? (Chuckle like a 9 year old).”

We had one of those moments this morning.  You can find the link by going to our highlights page.  See if you can figure out which team gave us pause.