Thursday, January 12, 2006

25 years ago today

Today was my 25th anniversary working at the newspaper. My co-workers thought it would be fun to get me 25 balloons, one for each year, not realizing just how many balloons that would be. The good news is, I now have the only cubicle with a door.


They had to root around in the prize vault to find something to weight the balloons down, and came up with this:


It's an old trophy of a newspaper carrier from God knows how many years ago. The freshly filled balloons had so much helium that the trophy barely held them. It would sit on the ground, but if I nudged it the slightest bit, it would go sliding across the carpet.

In the afternoon, we had a cookie cake, and even after sharing it, I still ended up bringing half of it home. They also gave me a gift card to Barnes and Noble. All in all, it was a good day.

I got a couple of tickets to go to an exhibit opening at the Art Center Downtown, so Terry and I went there after work. The exhibit is "Sleeping by the Mississippi" by photographer Alec Soth. It was the perfect art exhibit for writers. Terry was a little baffled by the stark photographs. I told him how a writer would look at them - first seeing "it's a guy in a chair" - but then asking yourself more questions. Where is he? Why is he dressed like that? What's that on the wall behind him? When Terry said, "He's a Marine, and the plates belonged to his grandmother," I knew he was starting to Get It.

1 comment:

Kathy Keller said...

Congratulations! You are persistent. That is absolutely wonderful. There must have been times when you wanted to throw it in sometime during those 25 years yet you stayed. Wow!