November 18, 1994
Dear Everyone:
For the record, I didn't
vote all those
Republicans into office last week. My
usual rule of always voting against the incumbent had to take a backseat
to
Mike-I-Can't-Get-Elected-in-Texas-so-I'll-go-to-California-Where-They’re-Crazy-Enough-to-Vote-for-Anybody-Huffington.
I wasn't exactly impressed with
his claim to have spent all his own money on his campaign.
It's not what you might call an
original thought. After all,
Ross Perot used it
two years ago. And look where it
got him. Nor was I responsible
for re-electing Governor
Pete-Three-Strikes-and-You’re-Living-Off-the-Taxpayers-for-the-Rest-of-Your-Life-Wilson.
So there.
Last week's Training Session in
Versatile
went even better than we had expected. I
attribute this to all the extra hours we put in preparing for it.
“Jerry” and I still ad-libbed
just about everything, simply following the User Guide Module; but there
were no real disasters. What
really worked out well was having the other three Team Members (“Mimi”,
“Miranda” and “Nelly”) "working" the room, making sure that everyone was
keeping up and helping the "stragglers".
Once we got past the first Training Session, I decided that I could
relax and actually spent a weekend
not working on the project.
I finally found time to do the
ironing. For three weeks I've
been scrounging in my closets, looking for something to wear so I
wouldn't have to take time away from the project to iron something.
Just goes to show, I've got a lot
of clothes in that closet. If
necessary, I could probably have gone another couple of weeks.
I also decided to clean off the patio, a job that turned out to be a
little larger than I had originally planned, due to a pair of mice who
had set up a terribly happy
little home in an old dresser that I keep out there.
Seems they discovered the plastic
bag of bird seed in the second drawer. Unlike
my mother, who buys 60 pound bags of dog food for the raccoons in the
backyard, and “Jeannie”, who would go out and buy bread especially for
her ducks, I had no desire to become the Earth Mother goddess of field
mice. The bird feeder will remain
empty until I can find a sealable container for more seed.
On a happier note, the self-diagnosed
tendinitis in my
right arm has diminished significantly, due in part to my being
conspicuously left-handed as much as possible; and, perhaps, because I'm not
dragging quite as many folders home with me every evening as I was
during the summer.
The Great San Francisco Newspaper Strike of 1994, all eleven days of it,
has ended. Of course,
The
Chronicle was printed every day of the strike, but it was
pitifully thin. All it had to
offer was news. “Alice’s”
father-in-law confided to me, when “Alice” and “Kelly” were getting
married, that he'd visited San Francisco once and found that there were
no newspapers in town.
He meant no "real" newspapers,
like
The Boston Globe
or
The New York Times.
This is true.
San Franciscans (and the rest of
us in the Bay Area) don't want a "real" newspaper.
We want
The Chronicle, thank you very
much.
On the first day back on the job, the
Chronicle TV columnist blasted
the local TV news programs for failing to cover the strike in more depth
and detail, the way "real" journalists would have.
In my opinion, he's missed the
point. People who watch TV aren't
looking for "news". They're
looking for "bites". And people
who read newspapers, the only ones who really cared about the strike
(excepting, of course, the management and workers on both sides of the
strike), don't pay much attention to TV news.
Still, I'm glad the strike is over. I
wasn't looking forward to having to read the review of the new
Star
Trek movie from
The Washington
Post. Those people have a
very strange sense of humor.
Saw
Interview With
The Vampire last weekend. (I
was really taking it easy.) I
read the
book
when it first came out, largely because our cousin “Gladys”, who worked
in a bookstore at the time, pushed it at me, saying, "Buy this book.
The author is a friend of ours
and she really needs the money." Needless
to say, the author, Ann
Rice, is doing very well for herself these days.
Because I read it so long ago, I can't say how faithfully it follows the
book. It does seem as if the
makers couldn't decide if it should be a horror story or a comedy, so
they tried for a little bit of both. Sadly,
the film is dedicated to the late
River Phoenix,
who died just as they were starting filming.
Christian
Slater is a tad too old for the role of the young interviewer, but I
guess they had to go with who they could get when they could get him.
The best news is that I'm scheduled to take vacation next week and it
looks like I'll be able to do it. “Mimi”
can work on preparing for the first part of the Conversion while I'm off
and we'll begin the week after Thanksgiving, assuming the new Server
arrives and gets installed in time.
The bad news is, of course, this means no letter next week.
Have a safe and Happy
Thanksgiving.
Love, as always,
Pete
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