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Tuesday,
March 26, 2002
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the pinball of old...this was the playing field of my favorite machine
"The inspirations of today
are the shams of tomorrow - the purpose has departed."
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customer contact When the alarm sounds at 3:30AM it's definitely too early. But I get up and go about the business of getting ready. My sweet husband makes coffee. I sip some while drying my hair, thinking how overly long it's gotten, must get a haircut. In getting my stuff in my car, I knock over an empty box full of aqua blue styro peanuts. Those will be underfoot between the cars for a while.
It's dark. I aim my car east and drive. When La Grange arrives, the McDonald's is still closed so their sign isn't easily seen, signaling the exit for Weikel's. But I catch it anyway, refill my Nissan cup and get a sausage and cheese roll. I'm listening to an Elmore Leonard novel on tape and I don't like it overly much except for interesting references to the Civil War, reenactors of same and blues music. It's something to stay awake with. I get into 'slow and go' just beyond Katy. It's still pretty early. I consider sitting in my car, maybe leaning the seat back and sleeping a bit. But I don't. I go into the office, go to the bathroom, find a place to sit and drag out some paperwork.
I am tired, but I fortify myself with coffee and listen to speakers and customers. I make my usual observations about myself, my customers, my colleagues, silently. Some interesting things come up. During these events, listening to customers, drawing them out on issues, I often have ideas that I believe are brilliant, at least for just a moment. Frequently they aren't. They are stupid over-engineering ideas. But. I try not to stop them coming. Some good comes from brainstorming, if you don't think everything in the flood is a brilliant idea.
We have lunch and breaks, learning from our customers, puzzling over their problems. I go off to check-in at the hotel. Then meet up with the customers for a casual Mexican buffet at Dave and Buster's. We play some shuffleboard and pool (I watch actually), talk business and otherwise. I wander through the video game area. It's been a while since I wandered through such a place. A young man dances on lighted squares (it's some sort of game) and another boxes with wired gloves and a video screen. Everything looks way too complex. I only find two pinball games, both overly electronic and poorly lit. I go back to talk some more, discussing with my Dutch colleague the satisfying clunk-clunk-clunk of winning games on the pinball machines of our youth as we drive back to the hotel. We stop in the bar for a nightcap and other people wander in but I stop after the one drink (my second of the night) and go get some welcome sleep.
One of my readers writes that Graham Greene died in 1991. Somehow it's satisfying to know these things.
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179
JUST
TYPING