Today Is The First Day Of...

Okay. Here we go. Going to try and keep a commitment to blogging on a regular basis here. I've kept the timetable I've set for myself this week. I've done my taxes when I said I would, I worked on painting the study as I planned for myself. So now I'll keep the momentum going. One of the bloggers whom I admire said he'd be updating his recommended blogs links, eliminating those who don't regularly update...and I don't want to be one of them. (The Frumpy Professor...the learned gent who inspired me to blog in the first place...) SO...I had myself a lesson in customer-relations today. I went into a hotel gift-shop to buy a couple of birthday cards...(Amazingly, they have a decent selection of locally-crafted cards) I only had a twenty-dollar bill. So the clerk-lady politely harrumphs that she's been hit with twenties all morning so she'll have to close the shop to get some change. I politely apologized twice and said that we all had to to what we all had to do...I tried to have some empathy as well as getting the basic service that was supposed to be on offer. Because God knows, in my job as a flight-attendant, I've been host to some unreasonable requests and conditions that went WELL beyond my job-description. She was basically polite as she said good-bye. She just wanted to vent her frustration a bit. When your employer doesn't give you the tools, it CAN be frustrating... Last week, on the heels of an AMSTERDAM trip(for my airline,) I rented a car from the airport and pointed the car northward to Marston, Quebec to visit my dad. Part of the reason why I went there was to see my Uncle's sugar-shack but the weather wasn't going to cooperate. Mild, intermittent snow-squalls with low temperatures. God, The Universe, or Whatever provides BALANCE. I learned that my dad had been blessed with a new television channel: LONE STAR. All Westerns, ALL of the time. Back when I lived my dad fifteen years ago, watching them on a Saturday afternoon with him became a habit and I learned to appreciate the genre. ESPECIALLY after seeing the original LONESOME DOVE television series with him. So we hunkered down, cracked open some beers and soaked up some RAWHIDE, BONANZA, GUNSMOKE, HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL; BORDERTOWN, LONESOME DOVE:THE OUTLAW YEARS,(loosely based on the Larry McMurtry canon.)and even THE LONE RANGER. I relearned that there some damned fine storytelling going on set on those dusty, muddy streets of the American frontier, the classic struggles of humanity were being played out behind those swinging saloon doors. Plus they were so MYTHIC, reflecting a seemingly simpler time DURING a time when America felt good about it's own identity, morality, and strength. Good guys wore white, bad guys wore black...A morality play set out on the prairie. These days the same tableaux of human drama are played out in law-firms and courtrooms. Great stuff, really. And to think, there was a time when I was only into science-fiction, super-hero stuff. I've added some more lowbrow culture to my palette. Anyway, it was good to see my dad again. AND his two dogs. I returned home and was held up at the US Border for 45 minutes...(Something to do with the Rhode Island license plates?) As I went down 3 South eventually morphing into 93 South, I listened to PETE SEEGER'S LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL 1963 and RYAN ADAMS "COLD ROSES". Perfect on-the-road music. But still, I hate the whole prospect of travel. And in my sixteenth year in the travel biz, I'd rather just stay at home and watch DVD's of whatever or listen to music. All for now...GaP