Christmas Day

I hope and pray that all of you had a blessed and safe Christmas. Mine was very good. It is always a good day in my house when we can open up the Word of God and read of His Grace, Love and Mercy.

This year was much different than past Christmas’s. Since I have a paper route I had to deliver it before any Christmas festivities could happen. I was fortunate to have the help of my daughter. It was a lot of fun to have her with me. I don’t get much father-daughter alone time with her so this was a cherished time for me. Before I start to tell you about the fun we had, just know this, she is her mother’s daughter. If you have been following this blog at all over the past month or so you will understand this comment. If you are new to this blog then do your heart some good and read some of the early blogs when Suzi was doing the route with me.

The route actually started earlier than normal because it was Christmas. For Christmas the papers are off the press by 8:30 pm, this meant we could deliver them anytime after that. It seemed kind of odd to me that you could deliver the Christmas paper on Christmas Eve, but I’m not one to complain about such petty things. I figured I would go in at about 10:30 pm and fold the papers and be done with my route around midnight. This was a special thing to me, because it meant that I could get 8 consecutive hours of sleep. On our way home from celebrating Christmas with my parents Corrine asked if she could go with me. As I contemplated my 8 consecutive hours of sleep, I thought about how much more time I would have with her. You see she is a junior in High School and will be off to college in a couple of years so I told her she could come. She was quite the trooper too; she came in a folded the papers as well as delivered them with me. Now up to now some of you might be thinking “enough of the sappy dad stuff. Where is the funny stuff? You said she was her mother’s daughter.” Well the funny stuff started once we left the warehouse. When we started she was trying to figure out how to throw the paper. No big deal I thought, just tell her it’s like throwing a Frisbee. Well after a couple of papers in the gutter (Note: when I drive I am almost on top of the gutter, so when you throw it in the gutter this constitutes a throw of about 6” to 1’ in distance) and a period of traveling at 2-4mph (Note: remember I like to drive like a NASCAR driver when I am delivering) I decided that a new course of action was needed. From here I started to show her by example. Things got much better until…..she threw the paper and didn’t let go of the bag. This was hilarious for three reasons. Reason one, the paper came out of the bag and went into a million directions. Newspaper all over the place! If that wasn’t bad enough (reason two) the customer was still up and saw the whole thing. I cleaned up every bit of flung paper out of their driveway under their careful watch and gave them a new one in tact. I do believe reason three though is the coup de grace. She then told me, once I got back into the car, that even though she had the plastic bag in her hand that she let go of the paper. She was truly puzzled and perplexed at the fact that when you hang on to the plastic bag the paper comes out all by itself. She then insisted that she let go of the bag. I tried to explain to her the simple physiological fact that when she let’s go of the bag it leaves. It does not stay in your hand. So for the remainder of the route she tried to justify what had happened. Now let me rewind a little so that I can preface the next funny thing that happened that night. When I go out most mornings it’s probably in the 30’s and the cold weather is such that I need to wear a beanie cap and gloves. You know 30 degrees at 15-20 mph can be pretty cold. Well this night it was probably in the upper 40’s so I saw no reason to wear my beanie or my gloves so I put them on the console between Corrine and I. OK now let’s get back to where I left off. Corrine and I were done for the night and had just pulled into the garage when I realized that I only had one glove in the car. I know I distinctly remember bring two in and even Corinne agreed. Well as she and I went through the car and the night we realized that she must have thrown it out of the car with one of the papers. I couldn’t believe it! She had thrown one of gloves with a newspaper. All I could think of was that I wished I would have known we were giving out presents while on the route, because I would have given that customer both gloves. I mean other the Michael Jackson everyone wears two gloves. What a way to end the night. Now back home at 1:00 am and being pretty much wide awake due to the thought of flying papers and someone picking up their paper and finding my glove with it, I had to slow myself down so that I could get maybe 6-7 consecutive hours of sleep. Well I enjoyed myself just the same and I would not trade it for anything.

Now stay tuned for more adventures with Corrine. This time I will be taking a few of her friends with me. That should be good enough to provide me with at least two blogs worth of material. See ya then!

Oops I Forgot One



I don't know how I could have forgot this one, but here ya go. Remember awhile back I was wondering where I would go to the bathroom if there was an emergency while I was on the route. Well I found this a well lit Andy Gump. No worries now! Y'all have a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Pics from my Route

(click on the pictures to get a larger image)

A while back I wrote about a Christmas treet in the midddle of a cul-de-sac adn how I almost hit it. Well this is the street and the tree taht is just beyond the car is the tree I almost hit.



A better look at the tree I almost hit. Looks kinda cool, but in the middle of the street! Man what will they think of next?



This pic has come Peanuts characters on the roof of one of the homes I deliver to.

All I can say is Ginormous electric bill. How would you like to be this guys neighbor? I can see it now..."Honey is it night time yet?" "Why yes hun' it is." "Then whats that glow?" "Ohhhh, that's just Bob's Christmas lights."



This one was actually quite cool. The fishing pole that the bear has really moved up and down. It was like he was really trying to catch fish in the lights on the lawn.



I had to put one deep theological pic in here. Santa kneeling in front of the manger. I believe you can find this in either the Gospel According to Judas or Thomas. I can't remember which one.




One of my streets even changed it's name to Reindeer Road.


Well that's all the pictures from my route or rather all the pics I choose to post. I hope and pray you all have a Merry Christmas and stay safe.

Christmas Cards

Well last Monday when I went into the warehouse to fold my papers, one of the paperboys said he had to talk to me. Man I was thinking I messed up or something. I was trying to think what I could have done to make another paperboy mad. Well it wasn’t anything like that. He told me that some of the veteran paperboys put Christmas cards in their Saturday papers. He told me that one year when he did this he received $1000 in cash and gift cards. There was one catch though, I had to say Happy Holiday’s instead of Merry Christmas. Now I’m not a closet Christian so this was kind of a dilemma, but after working this out with Suzi and not wanting to cast a bad shadow on my employer I realized that if I were to do this Happy Holiday’s was the way to go.

Well needless to say delusions of a $1000 in Christmas gifts seduced me into putting the cards in last Saturday’s paper. Well on Saturday while inserting the cards into my papers that same paperboy comes back and looks at my Christmas cards and compliments me on how good they look, but at the same time I can see that he is somewhat trying to appease me. So, I asked him “what was the matter, did I have a typo on my cards?” He said “no” and then proceeded to tell me that my computer generated cards on regular bond paper were to fancy. I guess my mistake was that I used color printing and I actually used graphics. He told me that I they should have been in black and white, with no graphics and that I should have made them look as poor as I could. To this paperboy if his customers believed that he needed the money they would be more giving. This concept was foreign to me. In fact I must confess the whole Christmas card thing felt kind of weird to me. I mean I sent out 335 Christmas cards to people I don’t even know and to top it off it was like I was saying “give me a Christmas gift or I’ll start throwing your paper in the gutter and on the roof”. That thought changed on Tuesday when I received a total of $40 from two customers. As of this morning I already had $100 in money and gift cards. Amazing! Man, I think I like this whole Christmas card thing. Hey do you thing I could get away with a Groundhog Day card?

Needing Tommy John Surgery

After the Holidays I am beginning to believe I am going to need Tommy John surgery. The newspapers appear and feel like they are getting much heavier. After Thanksgiving weekend I felt like I had thrown at least the equivalent of a ton in paper weight. My arm took the whole following week to recover. That was until the following Sunday when all the retailers decided to have 10 page inserts in the paper. Now this week almost every paper has had some type of newspaper insert. I kind of get the feeling that as we get closer to Christmas the paper size will go from big and heavy to massive and heavier. And don’t even remind me of the post Christmas sales. By the time this season is over my right arm will be twice the size of my left arm. If I were doing some type of weight training I would try to buy a European car that has the steering wheel on the right side of the car so that I could work my left arm a little more. So if you see me and I am leaning a little more to my right side it’s because the muscles in my right arm are getting disproportionately bigger than my left arm. Just this week though I had a thought, no an invention, for a newspaper boy, person, whatever. In order to combat this disproportionate arm problem I thought about creating some type of mechanical devise to attach to your car that throws the papers for you. So here’s what I came up with. This is cool, I ran it by my friend Shaycam and he thought this was cool too. I am going to take a skeet shooting sling and attach it to my car. Cool huh? I’d have to modify the carriage to hold a newspaper instead of a clay pigeon, but that’s a mere minor adjustment. The one thing I’m having a problem with though is the rate of speed that the sling produces. If I left the device the way it is it would put the paper either in their backyards or through their garages. Hey…..that might not be a bad idea though. Picture this as a selling, I mean delivering, point. You offer people the option of having the paper land directly on their table. You see you tell them that when they wake up in the morning the paper would already in the house. What’s that you say? What about the hole in the house? Minor details that I will have to work through. Inventors never think negatively, but then again I’ve never invented anything. So……….more than likely this will never come to fruition. It was just fun thinking of it though. I mean wouldn’t it be cool to have some type of throwing device like that? Well ok enough dreaming about what could be. It’s time to go to the gym to work out my left arm. You didn’t really expect me to be lopsided did you?

Tis’ the Season

I know I haven’t written in almost a month, but I went through a real tired spell. I don’t know about you, but when I get tired my creativity and drive goes. So let’s catch you up on some things that have happened over the past month. Up to Thanksgiving the route was fairly boring. You know the feeling, its 3:00 am, no one is out and about and you just keep throwing papers to the same houses day after day. But then Thanksgiving weekend came. Now I don’t know what it’s like where you are but here in the SCV it’s a game of “bigger and better” when it comes to Christmas lights and the ornamentation of the front yard. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I started to see Scissor Lifts and other lifts so that the people in the neighborhoods I deliver to could decorate their light standards and in a lot of cases they string lights across the streets. My wife and I do plan in the next few weeks to visit these streets at night when they are all lit so that I can take pictures to shop you what it looks like. So that day was a bit challenging from a driving stand point, but by Sunday most of the lights were up and the heavy equipment gone. I kinda felt like Charlie Brown in his Christmas special when he says “Isn't there anyone out there who can tell me what Christmas is all about?” There is also a saying the Lucy makes in this cartoon that is fitting for these streets. She says “Look, Charlie, let's face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.”

Anyways……the day after Thanksgiving was fun. It was dodge the crazy people morning. It’s funny how people react to the sales that are out there. When Wal-Mart and Best Buy are having big sales people get up at the craziest hours. So at 3:00 am the streets looked like they do at 7:00 am with one exception. That exception is that half the people were half, or more, asleep and the other half though that since it was 3:00 am I must be the only one this crazy. Well WRONG! You almost killed the paperboy about a hundred times. These people were driving around so crazy that it reminded me of ……….well……….of me on every other morning when they’re not up. That was an experience that I would choose not to experience again.

The last thing I’ll tell you about is the Christmas tree I almost ran into. Yes I almost ran into a Christmas tree. No I did not fall asleep at the wheel and suddenly find myself in someone’s yard heading for their living room. The tree was in the middle of the street on a cul-de-sac. The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was doing my normal stuff…..you know…..singing Christmas songs along with the radio (thank goodness it’s just me at 3 am) looking at my route list and checking my papers when I looked up and wham-o there it was, a tree in the middle of the street. Boy I hit the brakes so hard and fortunately stopped short of it. Now I could just see explaining to my boss at the newspaper that I nailed someone’s Christmas tree and no it wasn’t in their house. How embarrassing would that be? Well I will get a picture of this for you to see to. My wife has informed me that this has become quite popular, so I guess I better watch for more trees popping up in the middle of the road all of a sudden.

I do know one thing though, and that is that I am very thankful that the Lord has watched over me in this time. I am thankful that He has sustained me and that if it were up to me I’d still be in bed. But the thing I am most thankful for right now is that my Bruins, by the grace of God (and believe me it was the grace of God), beat the Trojans. Nothing has made this time more joyous than watching all those USC fans wallow in the pain that my lowly Bruins killed their National Title chances.