Ah, the smell of blooming gardens & spring!

What a treat to be able to spend part of my afternoon with wkyc meteorologist Bruce Kalinowski and his lovely wife!

In Cleveland, there seems to be a show at the I-X Center every weekend.....we are lucky because throughout the winter -early spring, we actually have 2 home and flower/garden shows to get us primed for spring! This week, a Home and Garden Show has been out at the I-X Center....

wkyc has manned a stand every day to allow our customers to meet our on-air personalities, to acquaint the viewers with our facebook and twitter information as well as allowing people to sign up for an ipad.

While I was on hand, it was a blast seeing how many people came up to Bruce telling him how much they love him and enjoy watching him on the weekends....Bruce was the very first weathercaster on the Weather Channel. Exciting factoid!

I also brought along some candy to pass out to any little kids or adults who were still young at heart!

I liked interacting with the viewers, taking in their comments --good and bad and getting a handful of story ideas as well.

The people you meet. They are tremendous!

The downside of being behind the scenes is that people don't know you...though they are still just as nice. And once Bruce left for the day, I still carried on, but it is more difficult when people don't readily know who you are.....nonetheless, I still like volunteering at these events to interact with our viewers!!

I was able to sneak away and take a look at the absolutely beautiful gardens in the gallery...which give such hope that soon, very soon, those same plants and flowers will be blooming outside everywhere around town!

All in all, a very successful day spreading the good news about wkyc, sto, and all of our websites!!

News Desk Nuggets

The winter of 2010-2011 has brought us some kind of snow event, ice or rain storm, or temps in the 40's-50's every couple of weeks. Regardless of what is happening, most days we've had beautiful sunshine, which just makes everything seem better!

As we usher in February 2011, Mother Nature does not disappoint as we welcome yet another approaching winter storm.

With snow storms come hundreds of iAlerts into the Channel 3 Newsroom. The iAlert computers have been hot all winter long spewing out the school closings. There has been so much snow, state legislators are working on expanding the calamity days again to a reasonable number to deal with Cleveland, Ohio winters.

Please, if you have an iAlert account, read over your information packet and follow the easy steps to close your school from home via the phone or computer. It's quite an easy process. And the idea is so that administrators can close their schools wherever and whenever they'd like to throughout the day, night or overnight. However, at times folks have been making it much more difficult than it really is by not typing in the correct day for schools to reopen or the closing to expire.

We are in the midst of February sweeps as we continue cranking out stories our viewers can use to enhance their lives, inform them, help save money, and get healthier in the new year. Added in of course investigative pieces from The Investigator Tom Meyer and special stories from every one of our reporters throughout the month. Be sure to catch teases for upcoming stories on facebook, Twitter, YouTube, wkyc.com as well as on air at Channel 3.

And, unfortunately, for this news desk chick, it will have to be an 'award-less year.' I was quite fortunate last year to win my 8th Emmy award and my 14th Press Club Award. However, in a year with budget & pay cuts and a rocky economy overall, I'm letting the deadlines for the local Emmy Award entries and local Press Club Award entries come and go. I'm very proud of my work from 2010 and could have come up with at least 1/2 dozen stories to enter. However, entries = lots of money! Basically, you have to pay for your membership fee and then an entry fee for each application.

The award rat race will have to get along with one less rat!