Wednesday

May 31, 2000

"Truth lights, but money warms."

Anonymous, Cynical Quatations by Jonathon Green

mom was always the colorful one

another month rolls off

I am getting organized. Really.

See I scanned this one slide and put it away in an archival slide sheet (labeled 'Mom and Dad') in an archival plasstic box. Of course, I have a stack of others out of the same plastic holder, unsorted spilling across my desk at home. I'm in Houston.

The slide? My mother in the 70's. Put another way...my mother about the age I am now. We all pass through the stages.

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I worked for a few hours at home. I drove to Houston to miss rush hour on both ends. I worked a few hours in my hotel room. I could have gone to the office and gotten a faster hook-up. But then I would have been driving from there to the hotel in rush hour. It is very close, but the traffic is still maddening. The customer dinner is here next to the hotel. So I can avoid the madness a little.

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The drive over is always a time for comtemplation. I listened to an Instant Genius tape about the Stock Market. (No, I didn't learn anyhing especially new but it was entertaining.) I started an (abridged) Dick Francis tape ("Second Wind"). I love the way he has these gentle yet terribly resourceful characters and all this detail about horse racing and some other field or fields. In this novel, it's nuclear arms and meteorology. I don't think they ever make movies of his novels, though. I wonder why.

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Here is a list of things I saw on the drive over:

� A neighbor watering a flower bed in a bicyclye helmet

� A billboard declaring Austin 'City of Ideas.'

� A beat up van, that hesitated to see if I'd honor a yield sign, with a bumper strip that read 'I Am A Child.'

� A guy launching a stream of spit out one of those little sliding windows in the back of a cab on a flat bed truck.

� An ostrich loping across a field.

� A highway ramp hanging into nothingness. (It's been that way for years.)

� Two young guys in a white mini-van, the passenger tossing a soda cup in a smooth arc over the van to hit the car on the other side from me and the driver following this by running a red light.

Boring? You decide.

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I had dinner with some customers. Interesting customers, interesting dinner. I bought 'Dogma' on the pay TV.

I'm boring. I'm on a slow modem. Goodnight.

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