the ncaa tournament (crimson and) blues

It is a sad morning in Jimbo’s world. My beloved Kansas Jayhawks men’s basketball team lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament last night.

My son will graduate from college in a couple of months and the last time that Kansas lost in the first round, I hadn’t even met his mother. I remember the 1978 loss to UCLA, but not very well. It’s been a long time. We have kind of a basketball tradition around here. We respect our traditions more than we count the wins-- hence the court at Allen is named after James A. Naismith, the only losing coach Kansas ever had, but the guy who invented the game. But it never feels good to lose and the Jayhawks win a lot.

I remember the 1991 NCAA tournament when Kansas struggled in the first round against New Orleans (also a 3 seed vs. a 14 seed like last night), and we all figured it was a rebuilding year and getting to the tournament was a victory in itself. They handled Pittsburgh in the second round and we figured that was as far as they would go, because their opponent in the round of 16 was Indiana, a two-seed and a powerful team. We figured if the Hawks could keep it close it would be the icing on the cake, but when it was all over, Kansas won by eighteen. Next up was Arkansas, a one-seed, and one of the top teams in the country. Arkansas was a running team and quick on defense. They called their style “forty minutes of hell.” Kansas got down big in that game in the first half and we figured it was all over, but it had been a respectable season.

I still refer to that game as “twenty minutes of hell,” because an out manned Kansas team dug themselves out of a deep hole that only the true believers could have imagined, and there was twenty minutes of heaven. I was living in Lawrence at the time. When that game ended we went out on the front porch and there were fireworks and horns honking all over town.

You had to figure the run was over the next weekend when the Jayhawks went up against North Carolina, also a one-seed, in the final four. Of course the coach of Carolina was Dean Smith, one of the greatest coaches who ever lived, and one in a long line of Kansas Alums who shaped the world of college basketball, along with Forrest “Phog” Allen and Adolph Rupp, two Kansas legends. It may have been the best final four there ever was with Duke knocking off UNLV and when the dust had settled, the Jayhawks beat Carolina and went to the championship game.

Although Kansas lost to Duke in the championship game by seven, it never seemed like they were in it, but that was OK. There was a big parade the following Saturday and I remember it like it was yesterday.

When I lived in Lawrence, several times reporters for the Lawrence Journal-World approached me and I was quoted in the paper several times. On the day of the parade one of them asked me why I was there. I told him because the team had gone a lot farther than anyone thought they would and I was proud of them. He asked me, “Even though they lost?” I said yes, they played better than anyone could expect.

The quotation in the paper was something like “I came to support them even though they lost.” While technically correct, it sounded wrong. I threw away the paper because the quote made me sound chickenshit, so I can’t give you the exact wording. It taught me a lesson about how to talk and how not to talk. It taught me the dangers of using the words yes and no.

There were more good times than I can count with the Kansas basketball program. When I was moving recently, I came across the Kansas City Star’s story about the 1988 national championship game. I salute them for a great headline.

Danny and the Miracles Hit Number One

That was a Monday night I’ll always remember. There have been more final four appearances than I can keep track of in my head. There was the game in December of 1989 that the Hawks scored 150 points against Kentucky. There was the 1986 team that lost to Duke in the Final Four in Dallas-- arguably the greatest team Kansas has put on the floor since Wilt left. Greg Dreilling and some of the other members of the team cut their hair in the fashion of the great Clyde Lovellette. There was the team with Paul Pierce and Raef LaFrenz that came up short, also, but they were all great to watch.

And speaking of Wilt, I saw video of him the other night at Allen when they retired his number and, after years of being estranged from the campus, we all found out he still bled crimson and blue.

For all the seniors who played their last game last night, I’m sure it was one of the toughest evenings of their lives, but like me, they will always remember some winter nights on Dr. Naismith’s court, in Dr. Allen’s building down at the foot of Mt. Oread. While many an outsider will be amused at the tradition of the national anthem, the alma mater, the rock chalk chant and I’m a Jayhawk, those who have been there will understand. Winter will turn to spring and spring to summer, and then this fall, it will start all over again and there will be another basketball season. The seniors will pass the baton to the next class, and the underclassmen will carry on the tradition.

They can remember, as I always will, the last three words of Wilt Chamberlain’s speech when they retired his jersey.

Rock chalk Jayhawk.

Because here in Jimbo’s world we remember the past, celebrate the present and look forward to the future, even when the recent past gives us the blues.

some harlot on the phone left a message, i think

I hate to call a woman I don’t know an inarticulate whore, but some inarticulate whore left a message on Jimbo’s girlfriend’s answering machine today about a prescription my girlfriend mailed in through her new health insurance company. It seems that the company for which Jimbo’s girlfriend works has changed insurance companies and so my girlfriend now has a new place to which to mail off her prescriptions to receive her medication in the mail. They called this afternoon and left a message saying that my girlfriend needed to call their billing department. It took quite a while to decipher what the telephone number was. That was because the woman who called was not understandable. Hence, my calling her an inarticulate whore, despite my dislike of calling her that.

After much deliberation and eventually dialing a wrong number, we were able to ascertain the phone number and my girlfriend called her back, only to find their office hours are from eight to five and it was after five. At this point, my girlfriend, a normally mild mannered women resorted to swearing oaths.

Why, I ask rhetorically, has life gotten so difficult? Why have the ways of our youth been thrown upon the trash heap of our modern times? What has happened to the simple life in which the honest person received value for their dollar and service from service companies? Why has the service industry failed to perform a service? Why has the term service station become a misnomer? Why has our quality of life deteriorated so much this century? This is George Bush’s America, and it isn’t pretty.

It’s a damned shame that the only purpose the President serves is for you to tell your kids to stay off dope and booze, because you can see what it did to his mind. Now he has become the pimp of a brothel of inarticulate whores who are servicing us, but not very well.

I’m sure there are a small minority of you asking right now, “Jimbo, how can you blame the President for the failings of a service economy gone so horribly wrong?”

To which I simply answer:

Because.

Because it was better before him, and I am hoping it will be better after. It’s sure hard to imagine how it could get worse. But, we have been unpleasantly surprised before, so I guess it could happen.

But, we prefer to think pleasant thoughts here in Jimbo’s world.

beware of the ides of march

Today is the fifteenth of March. My sermon today is about the Ides of March.

Most of you are probably thinking, “Wow, only Jimbo would remember the one-hit- wonder rock group from the 1960s and their only hit song, Vehicle.”

“I’m your vehicle, baby, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go
I’m your vehicle, baby, by now I’m sure you know…”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the greatest song of all time, but I wasn’t thinking about them. In the Roman calendar, the fifteenth of March was called the Ides of March. You may recall it was the day that Julius Caesar was killed by some brute named Brutus. You probably recall, also, that Caesar was surprised that Brutus was a member of the gang of toughs that plotted to assassinate him. Caesar was reported to have said:

Et tu, Brute?

Roughly translated that means, “and you, Brutus?”

Had I been in Caesar’s position, I would probably have said something like, “Stop stabbing me, dude.” However, that probably wouldn’t have inspired someone like Shakespeare to write down the line for posterity.

You may also recall that in the story, a soothsayer told Caesar to “Beware of the Ides of March.”

Although I don’t think there is any particular reason to be afraid, I think we should all be careful as we go about our normal routines today and if you know anyone named Brutus, you may want to avoid him today. And if a soothsayer steps out of the crowd today to warn you to beware, listen to him, even though he probably doesn’t have any idea what he is talking about. Perhaps you should say to him, “Stop scaring me, dude.”

Anyway, have a good day and be careful.

Because you never can be too careful even in Jimbo’s world.

mail, lies and going postal

I received a couple of letters today. The first one was my paycheck and I was happy to get it. The other letter was an oversized envelope that was marked in bold letters, “Explanation of Benefits.” I just figured it was something from my insurance company and I opened it. I only open mail that I want to get or that is important, and I discard everything else, unread. It is my right to open and read only the mail that needs to be read. I throw away a lot of mail, unopened.

I am now so pissed off that I have to get it off my mind.

What was inside was a subscription offer for Forbes magazine. A few moments of my precious time has been taken away from me by a company that is run by some low-life bottom-feeding dirt bag who was once a candidate for President in the Republican primaries.

Some piece of shit rat bastard Republican has violated me and I don’t like it one bit.

First of all, I can’t stand to look at Steve Forbes. If there is one person who looks more disgusting than George Bush when he has that psychotic sneer, it is Steve Forbes every time you see him. And, if I see Steve Forbes more than two or three times a year it is way too often. I remember once, late last year or early this year, I turned on Squawk Box and Steve Forbes was the guest host. I turned it off really fast and I have only watched Squawk Box a couple of times since.

Why is it that the Republicans are not content just to destroy the liberties we have struggled for more than two hundred years to protect and to throw away our budget surplus and offer shelter and comfort to Osama Bin Laden, but now one of them has to stoop to junk mail. Is nothing sacred anymore?

The ugliest part of the deception is that the return address of the letter made no mention from whom the letter came. Just another in a long line of Republican untruths.

Lies.

Lies.

Lies.

I think we should make a solemn vow not to subscribe to Forbes Magazine.

Two years from now, I think we should all run to the polling place, sign up at the voters list, hurry to the voting booth and say:

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take these Republican's crap anymore."

And mean every word.

Because in Jimbo’s world we pull levers in voting booths, but we don’t pull punches.

the china syndrome

I read on Yahoo! this morning that there is a theft problem in Beijing. It seems that people are stealing manhole covers and selling them as scrap metal. This is taking recycling too far, as far as Jimbo is concerned. The story goes on to say that there are 600,000 manholes (and covers) in Beijing and that last year approximately 240,000 were stolen, and presumably recycled (the covers, not the manholes).

The story says that the Chinese are testing a new type of manhole cover that is made of non-metallic material, which supposedly will reduce the amount of theft. I’m not suggesting the Chinese are behind the times, but wouldn’t it be easier to do what we do here and tack weld the manhole covers to the rings into which they nest? Two half-inch welds, one hundred and eighty degrees apart.

Now I’m sure most of you are saying, “But Jimbo, manhole covers are made of cast iron and cast iron won’t take a structural weld. There won’t be any integral strength in those welds, and billions of Chinese probably know that.”

Yes, you are correct as usual, but therein lies the beauty. And, by the way, Jimbo knows his cast iron and has spent many hours over the past couple of decades up close and personal with cast iron of various shapes and sizes.

“If you like cast iron so much, why don’t you marry a chunk of it?“ you are no doubt asking.

Because it’s cold and when you talk to it, it doesn’t talk back. And you know, after you leave, it makes fun of you and it, and it’s friends, laugh at you. You know it does.

But, I digress. Since the welds will not penetrate to an acceptable depth for structural strength, the street crews who tacked them in the first place have the equipment to break or cut the welds when they need access to the manholes and then re-weld them when they are through, over and over and over. Someone who wants to “recycle” the manhole cover will have to invest too much time and effort to break the welds to make it worth their while, economically.

But, as I said, the Chinese are looking at new, non-metallic manhole covers and that has me worried. Perhaps over there they all drive smaller cars and the weight of the cars passing over the manhole covers may not be a problem. However, over here I would think the owners of super-sized SUVs would prefer the strength of good old cast iron under their tires as they drive over the manholes, rather than risking the weight of their vehicles breaking through the covers.

And what kinds of materials are the Chinese looking at? Rice cakes? Woven bamboo? Plastic? Recycled paper? I would be very concerned. I would be very concerned, indeed.

At this point, your are probably asking, “Jimbo, why are you rambling on about this? What is your point?”

I am just trying to get a message to the Chinese. I just wish those Chinese would straighten up and fly right, and quit stealing manhole covers. Or, if they are going to take the manhole cover, they need to take the manhole, too. But since they probably won’t stop, I think we need to tell them about the welding thing, so they can save themselves the embarrassment of using the rice cake manhole covers and have them all wash away in the rain.

Because even though the Chinese are half a world away from Jimbo’s, we can still give them some neighborly advice.

tales of hotels, casinos and hooters

It’s been a good week at work, but a bad week for blogging. I just noticed I haven’t put anything on-line since last Sunday, so I thought I better say something even if it wasn’t all that important.

I received an advertisement this week from my favorite hotel/casino in Las Vegas and things there are going to change soon. I hope not too much. The place is the Hotel San Remo, which some might consider not to be very elegant, and I guess it isn't, but it is a small hotel within a short walk of many of the really nice casinos. Here is a list of them:

The MGM Grand
The Tropicana
New York, New York
Excalibur
Monte Carlo

It is also a short walk and a monorail ride to the Luxor and Mandalay Bay. When the monorails from the MGM Grand to Bally’s and the one from Monte Carlo to the Bellagio are running the Hotel San Remo is the closest place I know to heaven (excluding the area inside my girlfriend’s arms). The Hotel San Remo is a small and quiet place to stay and a fine place to gamble (especially when there is an open chair at the two dollar blackjack tables), but it is within easy proximity of all the wildlife one could need. By the way, you can still catch the $29 per night room rate, if you book in advance. But like I said, there are changes in the air.

The San Remo, according to what I received yesterday, is soon to become Hooters. As you may have heard, Jimbo is a man who appreciates hooters. If Will Rogers had taken less interest in liking men, he probably would have echoed Jimbo’s mantra that he never met hooters he didn’t like. The San Remo has a sushi bar that attracts a number of Asians, so it must be good, but Jimbo is not a fan of sushi. Whenever there are a group of us going to Vegas together, however, our common meeting place is outside the sushi bar. The name of the sushi bar is changing to the “Bait Shoppe.” If that isn’t an appropriate name, I couldn’t think of any better.

It is hard to find anything in this deal I don’t like, but you know Jimbo, so you can figure he found something. I tried to access the Hooters website listed in the literature and it is a work in progress. I hate to be referred to a website that is nothing except a couple of ads and a note that it is “under construction.” But other than that, it’s all good.

And I am, too. I hope you are doing well, and I will try to do better about keeping up my blog in the future, keeping it real and keeping it close to home.

Because you don’t need to be Magellan or Steve Fossett to circumnavigate Jimbo’s world.

over, under, sideways, down

Yesterday, Jimbo and his girlfriend went to the movies and saw Sideways. I definitely give it a rating of “worth seeing.”

You’re probably asking yourself right now, “Why does Jimbo seem to wait until a movie has been out for an eternity before he sees it and gives his opinion, so we know whether it is worth seeing? I would like to see Casablanca, but I want Jimbo’s opinion before I invest a couple of hours of my time into it, and I guess it has not been out long enough for Jimbo to see and review it.”

I guess my answer is that is a good question. I’ll try to do better. But, back to the subject of Sideways. It is about two old college buddies, one a failed writer, Miles, played by Paul Giamatti, and the other an actor, Jack, played by Thomas Haden Church, on sort-of a one week bachelor party.

I’m sure you are asking, “Is this hitting close to home, Jimbo?”

I say:

“Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy…”

Oh, that wasn’t the one you meant, was it. You certainly know how to twist the knife. But I digress.

The two travel to the California wine country and spend the week visiting vineyards and sampling the wine. Jack is to be married the following Saturday and it is his last opportunity for “freedom.” Miles is a wine lover and expert who can’t seem to get over his divorce of two years before and can’t come to grips with the fact that no one will publish a book he has written. There is a strange twist in this movie in that we immediately realize that Miles is a rat bastard who steals money from his mother, he’s a drunk, a liar and is having problems dealing with life, but he becomes likeable and we care about what happens to him. This is primarily because his friend Jack, the actor, is even more of a rat bastard-- an irresponsible womanizer and a fraud who seems to lack any redeeming social value. By the end of the movie, we are so repulsed at Jacks lack of morals, that Miles becomes our sympathetic favorite.

Oh, by the way, this movie is funny as hell. The two keep wandering into problems (primarily of their own making) and somehow managing to slip out of them by the narrowest of margins. Jack meets an Asian woman at a winery and the two begin dating each other. She is a friend of a waitress who is a casual acquaintance of Miles and the waitress and Miles begin dating also. Now, Jimbo is a man, and sometimes it is inferred that men can be somewhat insensitive to what is going on, but I picked up really early that Jack’s week of passion with the Asian woman is heading for disaster. Consequently that Miles’ relationship is also on the highway to hell because when it becomes apparent that Jack is engaged, Miles will be doomed by guilt by association. Jack’s relationship is a fling, but Miles believes his is real. Unfortunately, Miles didn’t remember what he learned in his first semester of Dealing With Women 101, so he steps into trouble with both feet.

The bottom line is that the two primary characters in this movie are adults, acting like kids, and their juvenile behavior is a recipe for disaster. I understand the movie is due out on DVD soon, so if you haven’t seen it, you may want to rent it and see what you think. I think you’ll like it.

Because in Jimbo’s world when we like something we want to make sure everybody knows.

the bill for my rights comes due

Some days I wonder whether my rights have been violated. Today is one of those days.

Archie Bunker, on the television show All in the Family, used to say that he didn’t have civil rights because he wasn’t a member of a minority group. That got a lot of laughs, but in my case, I’m not talking about my civil rights, but rather my shareholder rights. A company for which I used to work and still hold some positions in their stock sent me a letter outlining their “Shareholder Rights Plan,” which, if I read it correctly gives me the “right” not to make any money if someone tries to buy out the company. It appears they have put into place a “poison pill” that will dilute the number of shares in the case of a takeover and make the company unattractive to any suitors. I’m glad the board of directors is looking out for me. Of course, then, right after I received the letter, the company announced earnings that disappointed the street and the stock lost a couple dollars a share in price. It appears the board of directors is trying to give me even more “help” in my effort to turn a profit on this stock. Should I send them a note of thanks?

Life.

Liberty.

The pursuit of happiness.

The board of directors is interfering with the third one. If I didn’t have the “rights” they gave me, then the stock price might go up and the profit I would realize would allow me to pursue some additional happiness. They say money can’t buy happiness, but “they” were probably not sufficiently liquid, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have said it. There is something vaguely relaxing about having a pile of cash between oneself and poverty, and this particular board of directors is trying to keep me from adding another insulating layer. The bad thing is that they are, in principal, working for me, but they are not acting in my best interests. In fact, their rights plan appears to be designed to keep them in their present positions and insulate them from any barbarians at the gates.

It says a lot about a society when the business leaders who are looking out for your interests actually seem to be more focused on themselves and the government that is supposed to be looking out for your interests has an agenda of it's own. It is as if the lessons learned from Enron have quickly been lost in the collective memories of boards of directors who plunder their shareowners assets and a government which has plundered our budget surplus of just five years ago.

You are probably saying to yourselves right now, “Jesus, Jimbo, you can sure go on and on about losing a couple of bucks.”

Yes, you’re correct. But the one right no one can take away from me is the one about free speech, and you know me, I’ll just keep right on yakking.

Because Jimbo’s world is a good place to get it off your chest.

zero is not an option

Jimbo got mad about something again this morning, and when Jimbo gets mad he tells the world.

I have been a happy DirecTV customer for many years and I called them this morning (as I have numerous times in the past to make changes to my service). The purpose of my call this morning was to cancel my service. I dialed their customer service number and received no satisfaction, because none of the options worked for me. All of the available options were to add to my service rather to subtract from it. Most disgusting to me was the fact that I was unable to access a real person. The closest I came was to get an electronic operator telling me zero was not an option. I eventually gave up and logged in and set up online access to my account. The option I was looking for, however, was not apparent on their website. Fortunately, on their website I was able to find a different phone number to call and I eventually accessed a live person. Unfortunately, by that time Jimbo was somewhat peeved.

I explained to the first person I talked to that I wanted to cancel my service. After I explained my dilemma, she asked me for all of my account information and then, she asked me the address to which I wanted to transfer my service so she could set up an appointment. I reiterated to her that there would be no transfer. I explained this was going to be a cancellation rather than a transfer. She said she couldn’t do that and would transfer me to someone else. I was slightly more peeved at that point and asked her whether I would be talking to a real person or a voice mail when she transferred me. She assured me it would be a real person, and it was. At his request, I reiterated to him my account information and explained my dissatisfaction with the DirecTV customer service telephone system. He explained to me that most of their customers got all of the answers they needed and were able to use the telephone system to achieve what they wanted. I explained to him I wasn’t most customers and made certain he understood the lack of pleasure derived from my on-phone and online customer service experience.

I am no longer a DirecTV customer. I think they provide a great service and I think their quality of their programming is wonderful (although I used to have a lot of trouble accessing the weather channel during stormy weather when I really thought it would be good to watch to see if I was in danger). In my rural location the storms would take DirecTV off the air frequently. As long as the weather was good, so was I. But, as far as their customer service is concerned DirecTV is a piece of crap. They deserve to go bankrupt and I hope they do. And, now I hear the monthly rate is going up next month.

Hang your head in shame DirecTV. Hang your head in shame.

I was mellowed out and calm when I came home from work this afternoon and noticed the blinking light on the phone was trying to get a message to me. This time the caller was Sprint PCS, but unfortunately not a real person, just an automated telemarketer. Apparently, someone in Jimbo’s new extended family had paid a visit to a Sprint PCS store lately and the robot on the phone was thanking us for doing it and offering us an opportunity to participate in a survey and put ourselves into a drawing to win a cash prize. Then, the robot got all pissy and advised us that we had run out of time to participate in the survey. My first reaction was that there could be nothing any more inane than Sprint’s voice mail talking to our answering machine and getting ticked off because we didn’t respond in a timely fashion. Then it dawned on me that the Sprint robot was facing the same dilemma that I was in not being able to reach a real person. The major difference, however, was that we don’t have any economic or financial interest in providing a service to the people who call us while we are at work. We won’t go out of business because we don’t have a real person to answer the phone. With any luck at all, Sprint will not share our fate and they will, indeed, go out of business.

I can imagine the guy in the black trench coat climbing off his bus and announcing, “Hey, everybody! I work for a real jacked-up company. You wouldn’t believe some of the crap we pull with our telemarketing system. If anyone ever deserved to go belly up, we sure do. The only thing we could do any worse in the way we handle our business would be if we took our two best customers and had all our employees urinate on them.”

And, then he’d say, “And we have these freakin’ robots who do telemarketing and they ask our customers’ answering machines to participate in a survey and then the robots get upset when the customer’s answering machine doesn’t answer back. I just hope our robots know Asimov’s first rule of robotics, otherwise they might try to harm our customers physically. That would suck, and it would be bad customer relations. But I guess I work for a company that really doesn’t care about customers.”

I think our large corporations could use a lesson in telephone etiquette. I don’t think they realize that the customers who put the food on their table need to be treated as human beings and that good customer service and survival are synonymous terms in business. There is nothing wrong with voice mail, and automated receptionists, but the customer should always have the option of speaking to a human being if his question or complaint doesn’t fit into the cookie cutter world of automated answering systems. Sure, an automated system will work for the majority of callers, but when someone needs an answer that requires something more complicated than pressing one, two or three, that customer deserves service, rather than disservice. The company that can’t provide that service deserves to join the ranks of the forgotten companies whose failures to provide what their customers wanted resulted in their demise.

And, as consumers, we have a duty to make sure their demise comes sooner rather than later. We have an obligation to stop using those companies and to let the effects of economic Darwinism topple them from the ranks of financial powerhouse to an answer in a trivia contest. Oh, ye mighty corporations, hear my cry from the wilderness, ignore customer service at your own peril. If you won’t do it right, someone else will come along to do it better. It’s the first law of economic survival. If your supply doesn’t meet the demand, then someone else’s supply will.

But right now, there is a supply of orange sherbet in the freezer that is destined to meet my demand for the same.

In Jimbo’s world we never defy the law of supply and demand.

on the road

If Jack Kerouac had been a businessman instead of a beatnik, he would have been a road warrior. Instead of being the voice of a generation of Americans, he would have been travelling most of the time, trying to convince his market that his product was better than “theirs,” and I’d wager he would have been good at it. Instead of being a dharma bum, he would have been a dharma sales manager, trying to shave the last available cent off the bottom line to make a sale. Maybe he would have been one of the guys who spend their workweeks out in the field, installing the products after the sales guys shake hand with the customers at the end of the deal. Maybe he’d be one of the service guys that spend their weeks in unfamiliar places trying to make work what the engineers couldn’t on the shop floor of the manufacturing plant.

In any regard, I don’t think Jack would have been a nine to five guy, going home every night to the wife and kids. I’m sure he would keep expense reports in neat stacks, rather that taping them all together to make one long document that would unfurl for a hundred feet.

I spent most of my day today being brought up to speed by three very nice women who didn’t speak highly of the restaurant where I ate last night. I’m working on my story for tomorrow, because I went there again tonight and many of the same road warriors from last night were there again. I guess the difference is between fine cuisine and decent food, cheap. Most companies frown on their road warriors spending the company treasury on elegant food, and most guys on the road don’t want to spend a lot of time having a fine dining experience, being viewed askance by the couples and families in the better restaurants, and then going back to the office and explaining to the accounting department why it was necessary to spend so much on dinner. And then being grilled at home by the wife who reminds them that they never go to the nicer places together anymore and that they must love the job more than the spouse.

I am thinking the only thing worse than facing either of the above scenarios would be to have your spouse be the accountant who passes judgement on your expense reports. But in retrospect, at one time Jimbo’s girlfriend (an accountant by vocation) was responsible to checking his expense reports, but that was before they were dating. That particular situation never caused any problem, but she was dating someone else at the time.

So, rather than putting themselves in a situation where they are “praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive” as Meat Loaf suggests in the song Paradise by the Dashboard Light, most road warriors will defer to the reasonably-priced, but good enough quality place in which to dine. The scorn of co-workers is easier to take than that of the little woman or the person in the green eyeshade. Co-workers get phone calls and e-mails to pull them away from your ridicule. Spouses and accountants can remember long after you’d care to forget.

I’m writing again tonight from the road on Jimbo’s girlfriend’s laptop. Microsoft word doesn’t like Jimbo’s style and keeps suggesting he change his long sentences. If you are reading this, it has a difficulty of reading level of 65, whatever than means. I think that means you need to be smart to read it. I’m betting you are. We’re not writing for the lowest common denominator, here. But, until next time, stay warm and safe in your homes. This is Jimbo reporting from the road.

Because Jimbo’s world requires some degree of portability.