An Eleven Year High

I started my first job in Colorado on April Fool's Day in 1996. I'd requested a start date one day later, but that would make payroll more complicated, I was told.

On the my way there, a state trooper pulled me over, officially for signalling for only 90 feet rather than 100 feet when changing lanes, suspecting the motives of a scruffy single young man (the shaver was deep in the trunk some place after the multiday trip) in capacious old Chevy Caprice with a sagging trunk full of my belongings and New York State plates. He asked what I was up to, and I showed him the job offer letter I had in the front seat, but I doubted he'd believe it. I wasn't sure that I did. But, he did, let me go with a warning as I bit my toungue over the false pretenses behind his reason for the stop. I made it to my first day of work. After 9-11, I probably would have experienced something more like Tia Carmen in Sunday's edition of the comic strip Baldo, hauled off so things could be sorted out later.

A baker's decade later, I'm still here in Colorado, which, despite a wave of foreclosures and a tech bust, remains far more properous than Buffalo, New York, from whence I came.

Yesterday is also the day we have designated as our cat's birthday. We don't know the exact date, but April 1 is pretty close to the mark. He's a twelve year old fat cat. He hasn't made any aggressive moves on the family fish lately, so we let him stay and feed him.