10*20*30*40 Years Ago This Month

May, 2000

After seven months of voluntary unemployment, I began my new job as a Systems Analyst on the interface team at Baptist Healthcare System. My intention was to spend a year or two getting back on my feet, then heading to California to make a lot of money and retire early. Little did I know that a lady with green eyes would come into my life and give me a son with green eyes, and in order to stay with her firstborn, we would more or less be bound to the Louisville area for the next decade or two.

There was drama in the weeks leading up to my new job. I had actually tried to go back to Clarian Health in Indianapolis starting the previous summer, after my return to Louisville seemed an apparent failure. Only the week before I was to begin my new job did I get a call from Clarian management to go back for an interview, which I did. When they called afterward to discuss terms of my return, I told them thanks but no thanks, I already had a new job starting next Monday. When they asked why I went through the charade of interviewing with them and making them think I wanted to go back, I asked why they waited seven months to give me a call?

It was hard to see at the time, but in the end, turning down a higher paying return to familiar territory in favor of the unknown and a future I could mold for myself obviously turned out to be the right thing to do. It took a few years to regain the salary level I left behind, and at age 44 I'm still the baby of my team at this very conservative organization I work for, but you can't beat how conveniently close it is to home and my son's school, and I am grateful things turned out this way.

May, 1990

Had a great long weekend in St. Louis, visiting Wilfred and Sam. Wil and I saw a great concert at Fox Theater, It Came From New York - Music from CBGB, featuring The Ramones, Tom Tom Club, and Deborah Harry. A couple of days later, Sam and I saw Billy Joel at Busch Stadium, scene of my first Billy Joel concert eight years earlier. I remember Billy mockingly playing a few bars of Madonna's "Vogue".

May, 1980



May, 1970