A day in the life...

"How's it goin' over there?"

"Do you like Houston!"

"What is it that you do there?"

All questions I'm being asked every day it seems. I figure this would be a good next blog, maybe these will run fairly sequentially. I'll let you know what I do on a dat-to-day basis, as I know it now; all of this will change REALLY soon with our 11-game home stretch that starts Friday.

Yikes.

6:30 a.m.: Alarm clock goes off. Honestly, I didn't REALLY know there was a "6:30" in the morning too. News to me. This is my wake up call, currently my phone alarm has "Turnin' me on" by Keri Hilson that sings to me.

7:05 a.m.: Head into the kitchen to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. My biggest find/savior in college was a coffee maker that is programmable. I make instant oatmeal (one splenda, finger-full of dried cranberries), fill up my mug and stumble out the door. No, I don't stumble because of my night before activities, I stumble because its SEVEN O'CLOCK!!!

7:15 a.m.: Click "Minute Maid Park" into my navigation. Actually, I have it down now. Roll out of the driveway.

7:32 a.m.: Traffic starts on Texas 288. This is RIDICULOUS. Notice that I get up TWO hours before I have to be at work. If you know me, you know that getting up at 6:35 to be somewhere at 6:50 is completely possible.

*note: you can faintly see the skyline in this picture. Why does it take so long?!

7:38 a.m.: Same dinky Police motorcycle rolls down the shoulder cruisin' along like it's a lane. Ugh.

*actual speed limit it seems

7:55 a.m.: Still in traffic. Thinking about how I'm going to make the, "Congratulations, you're the dumb dumb that made everyone mad today," stickers for the car wrecks. Trying to tell myself I'll be there on time.

8:15 a.m.: Pull into Minute Maid Park. Exactly an hour later when I live 22 miles from the stadium down a 65 mph highway.

8:20 a.m.: First one in the office, followed closely by my neighbor, Kara, the Foundation intern. Usually head to grab coffee if it's made (I don't know those dinosaur coffee makers).

8:25 a.m.: Turn on my computer, start going through my e-mails.

9:00 a.m.: My... hm... I say I'm her "little buddy." MJ, Media Relations Coordinator. She is my supervisor of sorts, I do what she does so that I learn how to do it.

9:15 a.m.: After catching up on a few things, talking with Brittany, Community Relations intern, about how we can't find a Starbucks, we start our work.

Work:

• Daily Clippings- this is where we search 25 different newspapers/Web sites for ANYTHING written about the Astros. We put it onto a Web site that makes a nice little print out for us; however, we take that print out, copy it into a Word document, format it how we want it, cut out any articles we find in the newspapers, then make CRAZY copies. These are delievered to various people around the office.


• Stat packs: Ok, so Luther put it perfectly when he wrote me on Facebook one day. I have ALWAYS considered myself a "stat rat" which basically means I like to watch numbers manipulate in baseball/softball. I realized I'm not even in the animal family in comparison to the MLB, not even another rodent. Here's our conversation:
  Luther Woodall
  you mean, you don't know who had the highest ERA after the 3rd inning of night games that fell on wednesday when the team was wearing black hats but the outfield wore blue socks, during batting practice? C'MON CHELS.. GET IT TOGETHER
  Chelsea Wilson
  bahahahaha exactly luther!! im lookin' up though now, and it'll be documented in a min!! i'll even let you know if your coached sneezed during the play call and how far the last booger flew!
  Luther Woodall
  YESS!! YES!! NOW YOU GET IT.. umm wait.. was that the batting coach or the third base coach?


• That's exactly how it is! (Ignore that bullet over there <----I can't seem to format this how I want without the bullet.) We go through this pack and underline EVERY time the Astros or the team we're playing is mentioned. Then we make MORE copies.
• Minor league reports: The Astros have 6 farm teams total. For these teams, we write reports on how EACH days games went. We look up who pitched, his "line" (outing totals), which way he throws and details on the hitting. This is fun to write, but it's very fact based and there's little, literal, space for fun jargon.
• Post season guide updates: So ALLL those stats that we find and configure, go into separate spread sheets (ssssss) that will go into our post season media guide. We detail
• EVERYTHING that happens. Everything.E-mail: We e-mail these to the other team, our office and broadcasters. I made my first rookie mistake the other day when I sent the Clips to Arizona, because that's where they had been the few days I was learning it, and I got the response, "Hey Chelsea. You might want to send these to St. Louis.-The media person from Arizona" Ugh... their series ended.

12:30 p.m.: Lunch.
1:30 p.m.: Come back from lunch. Get back to the tasks that we have that day.

...................................day continues....................................................... (super ellipses)

5:30 p.m.: They PUSH you out the door here. "You're going to work such long hours when the team's here, you need to go home."
5:35 p.m.: Try not to run over people in the parking lot with Hoss.
5:43 p.m.: Hit traffic on 288. Ugh.
6:35 p.m.: Pull into the driveway. Yup. Solid hour of traffic both ways.
7ish p.m.: Make dinner for me and Michael, my "roommate." Hang out with him in the living room talking all sorts of different topics, playing on my computer, thinking about what to wear the next day.
10:00 p.m.: Make lunch for both of us. Sandwich (has been cajun turkey, munster, spicy mustard and ranch dressing), fruit, cheese rice cakes/peanut butter pillows, Fiber One bar. Coke Zero and an energy drink for me.
10:30 p.m.: Iron clothes for the next day.
11 p.m.: PASS OUT. This is why I'm not stumbling the next morning. I don't DO anything, I'm just becoming an old lady! Ahh!

Then, it starts all over. Same routine so far.