Christmas Eve's Eve...

Over the past few weeks, Drew's been negotiating for me with regard to a 1990 Honda Civic that a friend of his was selling. The seller is specifically looking to acquire a Nissan pickup truck, such as the one I bought last year, and today, we did the deal. Within an hour or so of exchanging title certificates and a check, I had the Honda insured and registered. Then it was off to the tire place downtown to get a set of snow tires for the front wheels.

So now I have another set of wheels, and I hope it lasts as well as did the Nissan, which got me around for a little over a year with no money invested for repairs, for a net investment of just over $600.

* * *The client with the corner on Kazakhstan jobs called the other day to remind me that my passport had a scant 6 months of validity left, and that letters of invitation for upcoming launch campaigns were in the works, and how utterly devastated everyone would be if it turned out that a bunch of paperwork had to be redone on account of my having to renew my passport, as it were, in midstream.

So, today, I sent off an application, my old passport, some other odds and ends, the requisite amount of money, along with a pair of photographs that I surely hope I do not actually resemble, to an outfit in New Hampshire that promises to turn them into a new passport and get both the old and new booklets back to me in 5-7 business days. There is a part of me that doesn't like giving up those six months for nothing, but there is another, more avaricious part of me that doesn't like not working, either.

* * *In straightening out the closet, I ran across a copy of the E. J. Trechmann translation of Montaigne's essays, which I had intended to read this year but didn't. I do recall searching online for the original French text, entirely as a lark, as I would expect the original text to stand in the same relation to modern French as the language of Shakespeare does to modern English.

Instead, I came to the conclusion - perhaps erroneous - that there is very little French text available on the 'net from what I imagine to be the public domain (along the lines of the text served up by Project Gutenberg). (If anyone can set me straight if I'm mistaken, or explain the reason for this situation if I'm not, I'd be grateful.)

* * *One of my definite goals in the coming year is to come to grips with Spanish, and preferably, the Spanish of the Americas. There are a number of reasons for this, among which are the desire to travel in Mexico and Central America and the fairly sizeable number of people one comes into contact with here in the U.S. whose native language is Spanish.

I've started recently by listening to tapes and CDs, and trying to speak Spanish with customers, but it's hard. Then again, it's always hard at first. Maybe I can find someone in town who would be willing to tutor me.

* * *A client called with a request to do 5000 source words for Friday. I replied that I could do the job for Monday, while my thoughts were far less charitable. While it is not inconceivable to get the job done tomorrow so as to leave Thursday free for relaxation and family, a more likely scenario would involve working both tomorrow and on Christmas.

Humbug to that!

I'll start the job on Friday and laze it through the weekend.

* * *Today was all but the last hurrah for the holiday sending season. For the past couple of weeks, I doubt we sent more than one or two packages via Parcel Post; it's all been either UPS or FedEx or Priority Mail. Yesterday, we almost drowned under a sea of FedEx 2nd Day packages that are destined to arrive tomorrow in time for the Big Day™. Today, we sent maybe one or two overnight packages, the way we normally do, and a handful of Parcel Post boxes.

Life in the store is about to go back to normal, and while I can hear "Amens" coming from various places in the congregation, it also means going back to scratching for a living, until and unless we figure out a way to bring in more revenue. But that's a muse for later.

Time to relax.

Cheers...