and a lighter is a magic match

"Hey, how much does a router cost?"

"It depends on the router, maybe $120."

"That much?!"

"Well it depends. What are you going to be doing with it?"

"Well my kid says he needs to buy a router for his laptop."

"Oh, that type of router. I thought you meant a wood working router. Maybe thirty dollars."

"Do you know what's unbelievable? You can be sitting on the beach with your laptop on the internet. How do they do that?'

"Radio waves." I said as matter-of-factly as I could.

"That's unbelievable."

"Radio's been around awhile."

"But how they can get on the internet without any wires and stuff."

"What about the cellphone in your pocket? There are no wires there. It's the same technology."

....

I guess I'm depressed.

It's like I'm walking in a meadow. There is no wildlife and no sound. The lack of sound is like one finds at four in the morning, no cars, no birds, no crickets, no anything. The type of silence that makes you wonder if you're deaf or not. I can see the tree line all around me but no matter how far I walk I get no closer to the trees. There is no wind and there no humidity, the sunlight is hazy.

Just me walking, alone, going nowhere.

....


I set my phone on the bar. I usually keep my phone in my pocket unless I'm expecting a phone or unless I seem to be getting a lot of phone calls. My phone isn't new and it has no extra features. It's just a phone.

"What happened to your phone?"

"I was changing a tire for someone and my phone was bothering in my pocket so I took it out and set it on the sidewalk and when I went to stand up I put my hand right on it and scraped it over the sidewalk," I answered the waitress.

"Why don't you get a new one?"

"This one still works. It's just roughed up a bit."

Fifteen minutes later the other waitress asked about my phone. I was wondering why my phone was being noticed this day.

"He was changing a tire and leaned on it," the first waitress answered for me. I confirmed her story with a shoulder shrug.

I was slightly envious of her brevity.

....

I got my upgrade version of CorelDRAW. Corel probably isn't the best graphics suite but I still think it's the best deal out there. I started using Corel years ago mainly because it come with a boatload of fonts and clipart before there was a boatload of fonts and clipart collections out there.

I got my first version of CorelDraw after the owner of the real estate company got involved with some charity that provided day care and elder care. She devised a fundraising event which is still popular and successful today, although we are no longer involved in it. An ad book was part of the event and she collected money for ads past the publishers deadline which the publisher didn't like to much and basically told us that we would have to provide camera ready artwork. All we had was a laser printer and a copy of Wordperfect with three standard fonts which we could bold, underline and italic.

I was a little pissed off and said if we have to do camera ready art work I know there are packages out there that can do a lot better than this. By the next event we had a copy of CorelDRAW and we ended up doing about a third of the ads and nearly 100% of the next events ads.

And that my friends is how I got my start in desktop publishing and design.

and I'm still no artist.

...

So the guy goes, "How experienced are you? Because I have a question."

Now, I'm not a brain scientist or a rocket doctor or anything, I'm just some lowly municipal worker but I've been around awhile, not forever mind you but enough to know some things and if the guy wanted a brain scientist or something he wouldn't be calling my number.

I'm not much for bragging and I'm even less on people questioning my abilities so I say, "Why don't you give my the question and we'll go from there."

"Okays" is what I think I hear him say and this is my blog and I can make anyone seem stupid if I wish to and I's wishes too.

Anyway, he tells me his question and I's sez you's ain't allowed to do's that and he ax whys nots and I sez cause your mom's a ho but he doesn't like it when folks calls his mom a ho so he gets all up in my grille....


"Oh what's that boss? You would actually like me to do some work? I guess that's only fair. This posts sucks anyway. Yeah, I started out kinda serious and then it seemed to get saturated by ridiculousness."