Last night was a helluva party downtown. There had to be over 100,000 down on the riverfront jamming to Lynyrd Skynyrd and waiting for the clock to strike midnight.

What sucked about being downtown was not being able to actually bring your own bottle of champagne with you and have a champagne toast. Unless you went into one of the really crowded bars or restaurants and drank it inside the bar, you could only cheer or kiss someone close to celebrate.

I kinda missed the champagne toast. We’ve done that every year of my life that I can remember – as far back as only 4 years old. My parents would let us stay up and have a tiny sip of champagne while we watched Dick Clark on the TV. I miss those days.

When I was a kid we got candy bars as a treat and were allowed to chew gum just about any time we wanted to. There was not the stigma of sugar and tooth decay.

My parents’ only stipulation about gum was that you had to chew with your mouth closed and you had to dispose of it properly. My mom always carried gum in her purse have fresh breath, and I always seemed to have a nickle to spend on a pack of gum when I wanted some.

I loved to chew Dentyne gum, but also tried different ones, like Juicyfruit, Fruit Stripes, Doublemint, and Teaberry. I miss those days.

The tools of the trade from just a dozen years ago or so. Old school editing and paste up was tape, scissors, glue, straight edge. We even had a light blue pencil that the copy machine could not read so you could write notes on the original. I loved the white tape that came in a roll and was exactly wide enough to cover a line of type. The good old days!

Is there a song that someone can play on the jukebox that makes you want to get up and dance? I know that my daddy used to play Proud Mary by CCR when he wanted to get the biggest crowd out onto the dance floor. I used to dance to some Michael Jackson songs, like Billie Jean or Beat It. What are today’s songs that make you want to dance?

My dad used to bring home some extra office supplies for when he had to work at home. Usually it was just a couple of legal pads and a handful of cheap pens. Some nights he brought unusual things, like graph paper and a clear drafting triangle.

He gave me a couple of sheets of graph paper to play with and I’ve been a fan ever since. I love to draw house plans and landscaping diagrams on graph paper, then see them come to life. Of course, now there are programs on the internet to do that for you.. But I still have a couple of pads of real graph paper in the closet.