I’ve got text journals going back for what seems like years, doing an annual “year in review” and what to look forward to, for myself, in the coming year. What was last year like? The big mistakes, the great triumphs? Looking back helps me cast forward, too. I had dinner with Bubba last night.
It started with the weather, see, in the morning, the forecast was for rain, but it was warm and sunny, sort of. Scudding clouds, but nice, nonetheless. I opted for shorts, figuring the forecasters were off their mark. Bubba calls me on the way home, “You on the bus?” No, but I was walking over the bridge, and heading home, thinking about a can of chili and some cheap, easy-to-make Frito pie. And long pants.
“Is it chilly out?” Which prompted my lame attempt at a joke. So instead of something quiet at home, we trooped on over to a Delaware sub shop for the Monday Night special, which, bang for the buck, is a pretty good deal. $5 for chips, drink, and a huge roast beef sandwich piled high with peppers and onions, all grilled up and toasty.
One guy was working, and until we showed up, he was all set to call it a night. Before we ever got the sandwiches, though, Bubba’s chair broke, and in his valiant save, he managed to dump diet coke all over the tabletop, but fortunately, he missed the chips and ourselves. Not off to a good start. I was mumbling apologies and trying to find the humor in it all. Sandwiches were good even though we had to sit at another table. Not like the place was crowded. We were the only customers.
“Ah, man, that’s okay.”
“Yeah, well if I’d hurt my back, I would’ve sued you for tens of thousands of dollars,” Bubba replied.
That lone employee, in a rare display of emotion, looked bemused, sotto voce, “Ten of thousands? Not very likely, not this place.”
I was most near done with my sandwich when it fell out of my hands and splattered on the floor. While I’ sure, at one time, that floor was clean enough to eat off of, I wasn’t much in the mood for pushing my luck.
As we started dissemble towards the door, mumbling apologies to that one, lone employee, he offered us the rest of the cookies in the display.
“We bake them fresh every morning, either you take them or I throw them out. Man, I know how it is when you’re high like that.”
I got three-quarters of meal, plus a free desert, and while we did make a huge mess, some of it wasn’t our fault. I’ll admit, I just didn’t have a good grip on that roast beef, my hand was slick with grease and hot sauce.
2002 wraps up just like last night’s meal. It was a year of three-quarters, and some pretty good flops. Two hours into 2002, I found that Robert Earl Keen was a Capricorn. I also discovered that some bass fishing jokes don’t translate to other fisherman.
I automated my delivery system. I finally got a grip on Cascading Style Sheets. I found out that horoscope columns are not selling very well-if at all. I’m wondering if content is still king, like I was so oft-assured, at one time.
I did trim my operating costs, got it down to bare bones. Doesn’t cost much to run this place now. All it takes is time. And a reliable host plus a dependable net connection.
One of colossal failures in the last year, one I have to admit, is my complete and utter inability to break into local media in any way, shape or form. Never have been able to crack the Austin circle. Which always reminds me of a story about a local band. Actually, several local groups are like this: they can fill a stadium abroad, but locally? They can hardly get a gig at the opening of new car wash. I’m in good company.
This was also the first year that I trimmed what I do down to just a few tasks. One if the weekly column, and the other is web journal. Of that, I am happiest. Plus, the weekly now has a publication date of Thursday – that was new in 2002. Used to be Mondays, and that was a headache. The traffic pattern was a horrendous on Mondays dribbling to trickle by the weekend. These days, I get a crunch for the first four hours the scopes are live, then it tapers off, but to my mind, I like the Thursday schedule. The website’s traffic patterns are lot better with more weekend hits than before. I can count on one hand the number of web traffic reports wherein I’ve had less than 100 hits an hour (real page views, not just “hits”).
I also launched the “free” e-mail delivery, but I’m probably going to move that a real subscription form some times. Thanks for that little necessity go to Yahoo, Hotmail, and the other free web-based e-mail sources. I’ve spent way too much time administering an e-mail list. I don’t know if that’s a win or a loss. I remember one week, shortly after I added the “suggested donation” part, thinking that it was too much trouble to hook up a phone line, plug in the laptop, and send the scopes out. I was about to let one week go by, when I got a couple of bucks shot down the tube. Even though it’s merely chump change, each paid subscription goes a long way to towards defraying the cost of running this outfit. And when those dollars dropped in the jar, I felt as if I had some kind of a moral obligation to go ahead and send out copy.
Pull out the laptop and find a phone line. The place where that’s the most curious experience is in the Alpine-Marfa-Ft. Davis area, one of my favorite spots on the whole planet.
At one hotel, I had to pull the bed out from the wall to get to the phone jack. At another, I had to amble down to the lobby to “borrow” their house phone.
For that matter, there are a couple of places I’ve stayed out there where there is no phone. That’s cool.
2002 will soon be behind me. It’s just like the weather, “shorts or pants?” Or it’s like that meal the other evening, some of it fell out, but I’m not sure I want to touch the part that fell on the floor. However, the joy I get from my weekly, and this journal? Just like free cookies that aren’t stale. That doesn’t suck.
