1. I hope our Country finishes the job this time, (no stones unturned),
comes home, then leaves the rest to the countries in that region to put things
back together, so our Government can begin fixing things in our "Home Land".
10/26/01 - Paul Meyers
2. Impossible?!!? Nothing is impossible until everyone on earth
has tried "it" and failed...
"I don't know it won't work until I've tried it and failed, although my
Dad thinks I should learn from his mistakes"
10/26/01 - Paul Meyers
3. My all-time favorite song is "Key
Largo" by "Bertie Higgins", but "Don
Henley" is my all-time favorite singer.
Too bad "Don Henley" didn't sing "Key Largo"
07/26/89 - Paul Meyers
4. A company spending millions of advertising dollars to convince
me of something, should spend as much or more making sure the thing they are
convincing me of is real and true.
08/22/97 - Paul Meyers
5. An, "Internet Pioneer", is the person who got his
domain name before December 31, 1997.
They should be able to:
use a companies name on their web page without that company being able to "cease
and desist" the "Internet Pioneer"
to death, (as long as the company is the beneficiary). For example, the "Internet
Pioneer" www.comeonrentthiscar.com should be able to use "enterprise
rent a car" in his meta tags and body of his web pages as long as the end
result is that "enterprise rent a car" gets the car rental business
from that website.
08/17/1999 - Paul Meyers
6. Life is trial and error, mostly error
10/28/01 - Fred Julian Taylor
7. I asked a relative once, "What's left for you to do"
she simply replied, "Everything I haven't done yet."
10/28/01 - My Aunt Ruby
8. It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice!
9. I was born with nothing and have most of it left!
I don't know who was first to write these thoughts, # 8 and 9, but I'm giving
the credit to
11/30/01- "Bill Comolli"
10. Yahoo asks the question "Do you like Yahoo!'s new
search results", I replied, "Yes" But infact they are Googles search
results, not Yahoo's. There used to be 5 major search engines. Yahoo, MSN, Google,
Aol, AltaVista. Now since Yahoo, Google, Aol share the same searches, may I
say there is only 3 major search results, Google, MSN, AltaVista. Hey Look,
Yahoo's name is not in the list of the top search engines anymore. Why? you
ask, well, Yahoo decided to use googles search results and put their once famous
search directory on some obscure pages some place in cyberspace. I hope they
get back to originality.
10/18/02 - Paul Meyers
11. "Twas the season of holidays at the end of the year,
Spreading great spirits and holiday cheer.
Families planning their holiday trip with care,
Going online, searching for a good fare.
They will need a hotel for a family of four,
Perhaps a king bed and their kids next door.
They already know what website to find
They have agents to assist that are more than kind.
It’s Hotel411 with choices galore
Stay in Time Square or Florida’s sandy shore.
As guests call to arrange their stay
they speak with Glynda throughout the day.
Desiree to help in the late afternoon
Then Livia’s on board by the light of the moon.
Behind the scenes Patricia and Jay
Ensure quality choices for the guests to stay.
Perhaps a guest wants to cruise the Caribbean sea;
Hotel411 can suggest a company or three.
As agents we’re driven to assist guests with their plans.
One night on business or a week obtaining their tans.
None of this possible without help you provide,
Your friendly voices on line, the perfect guide.
We appreciate each of you, both far and near.
Seasons greetings to all and a Happy New Year."
12/16/02 From Desiree to all of our vendor.
12.
| I try not to be biased, but I had my
doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my Customers would react to Stevie. He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick tongued speech of Down syndrome. I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don't generally care who buses tables as long as the meat loaf platter is good and the pies are homemade. The four wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded "truck stop germ"; the pairs of white shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks. I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his Stubby little finger, and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot. After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customer's thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old in blue jeans and Nike, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met. Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. The social worker, which stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work. He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Down syndrome often had heart problems at an early age so this wasn't unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months. A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery and doing fine. Frannie, my head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news. Belle Ringer, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the sight of the 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Belle Ringer a withering look. "We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay." "I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?" Frannie quickly told Belle Ringer and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed. "Yeah, I'm glad he is going to be OK", she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they're barely getting by as it is." Belle Ringer nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had time to round up a busboy to replace Steve and really didn't want to replace him, the girls were busing their own tables that day until we decided what to do. After the morning rush, Frannie walked, into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand a funny look on her face. "What's up?" I asked. "I didn't get that table where Belle Ringer and his friends were sitting cleared off after they left, and Pony Pete and Tony Tipper were sitting there when I got back to clean it off" she said. "This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup." She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed "Something For Stevie." "Pony Pete asked me what that was all about," she said, "so I told him about Stevie and his mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this." She handed me another paper napkin that had "Something For Stevie" scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply "truckers." That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work. His placement worker said he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter at all that it was a holiday. He called 10 times in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy. I arranged to have his mother bring him to work, met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back. Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting. "Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate you coming back, breakfast for you and your mother are on me." I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room. I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins. "First thing you have to do, Steve, is clean up this mess," I said. I tried to sound stern. Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table. Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother. "There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. Happy Thanksgiving!" Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as well. But you know what's funny? While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big, big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table. Best worker I ever hired. You now have two choices: 1. Pretend it didn't touch your heart. 2. Show somone else. I believe that God uses us all to encourage each other. |
14. "I was born a kind and gentle child. I grew to a kind and gentle man.
Of the very few defects I grew to develop
over the years, the one that stands out the most is my uncanny ability to over
defend myself and my family.
Against a family member this defense mechanism does not even kick in until the
third poke in the eye or the third
punch in the rib or even the third stab in the back. A stranger never even gets
the first attempt at a poke,
punch, or stab before my fury defends myself or my family. Most of my family
enjoys my company because
they never have the need or want to poke, punch or stab and never get the defensive
side of me. To the few
family members that don't know how not to light the furious defensive fuse,
I say please take a good long
look at yourself. The reason I say this is because it took me a long time to
analyze this defect I have and I am sure of one thing, the fact that I grew
to become a kind and gentle man, anyone can get along with me as long as they
do not
light the fuse with a poke, punch or stab. If you are a family member that can
enjoy me, do so. If your a
family member that wants to enjoy me but only knows to poke, punch or stab,
SEEK HELP."
04/27/03 - Paul Meyers
15. To those I've loved and lost, I say,
I'd rather be lonely than lied to.
06/16/03 - Paul Meyers
16. I'm alittle confused. If half the world is at war are we in "half
world war I" or "half the World War III" or are they not even
called "world war" until Germany gets involved.
06/19/03 - Paul Meyers
17. A MoDoc, Movie / Documentary, called "Fahrenheit 9/11"
I tried to go in with an open mind, but was soon turned closed because the movie
/ document looks at one simple, negative side. The mo /doc or modoc shows a
situation, then paints a negative side to that situation to which there can
clearly be the second side, the reason behind certain actions are left out.
Can you spell "B I A S." Please, someone out there, get a simple movie camera,
gather some news clips, market it free by making some asinine, annoying, statements
and collect your $100,000,000. paycheck. I color this movie D - , but what a
paycheck.
07/31/04 - Paul Meyers see more of my thoughts at - movies.yahoo.com
18. It has been a long time since I write in these pages, but a dear friend
needed some words of healing so I wrote this today.
"Grief is needed to enrich and activate the souls of our dearly departed.
Once you feel that soul has the energy to carry on by itself and begin enriching
the lives of the world, you will then let go and feel all the warmth that release
has to offer."
01/18/07 4:35 am - Paul Meyers