Bill Roper's Journal

Over dinner after rehearsal, the conversation turned briefly to my family's first car, a 1955 Dodge, probably the Coronet model, and definitely with a less snazzy paint job than you'll see at the link. Our car was white. And white. And more white.

We drove that car from before I was born until we were ready to come back from Guam in 1964, when my dad sold it to an airman who was looking for what was turning into a bit of a beater by that point. But that's what the ravages of three kids and a dog can do to a car.

There was the time when we lived in Kansas and were crossing the Arkansas River. Now this was long before kids had to be strapped into car seats, so my sister and I were in the back seat and my baby brother was safely tucked between my dad and my mom in front. This would have been just fine, except that the shift lever for the automatic transmission was horizontally mounted in the middle of the dash. This put it in perfect range for baby brother Mitch to kick the car into reverse gear.

Fortunately, my dad was paying attention as the car lurched backwards and shifted us back into drive before we could either get hit by traffic or find the edge of the bridge. I do suspect that was the last time that Mitch rode in the center front seat of that car.

My father was a man of interesting theories. (Stop laughing, daisy_knotwise!) One such theory said that if you're making a trip from Kansas to Illinois with three kids and an Irish Setter, the place to put the Irish Setter is in the trunk of the car. Well, it was a big trunk.

I'm sure that Scott the Irish Setter wasn't thrilled by this. I mean, the people were all up there, while he was in this black hole.

Did you know that an Irish Setter can push his head through the cardboard behind the backseat so that it's sitting in the rear window like a little bobblehead? Of course, the kids were delighted to be able to pet the dog. The dog was delighted to be able to see what was going on.

My dad, maybe not so much.

Too many people that I know are unemployed. It's certainly true that some of this is due to the annoyingly sucky state of the economy, but I suspect that some of the job-seeking strategies that are in effect may be self-defeating. If you have any reason to suspect this might apply to you, please feel free to read on. The rest of you are welcome to ignore this.
( Pontificating inside )

It's the New Year, so I really felt like I should get on the exercycle again this morning, something that I haven't done (between colds and holidays) since getting back from the cruise. I hit the button to start the timer and found that it didn't start.
( Tales of recalcitrant objects... )
Work, by contrast, was relatively calm, despite the boss and the new QE director being in from Stamford to visit. Doug, the guy who runs our programming group, was supposed to fly to Stamford tomorrow to make a presentation -- we'll see if he makes it out (or back!) given the weather forecast.

I ducked out of work and met Gretchen for dinner, then headed home for a hour-long conference call about which I'll say more later.

Gretchen made cocoa later in the evening and we sat in the living room, enjoying the lights on our lovely Christmas tree which will have to be coming down shortly.

On the other hand, if we've got 12 inches of snow, they'll be in no hurry to take it away. We'll see what happens.

When I ran across the (completely false) story about the fellows who tried to use a bullet as a fuse in a car with catastrophic results, it brought to mind the following (completely true) story from my past.
( Tell us a story, Uncle Bill )