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Park Our House!
A column by Fran Crawford
Published in The Territorial Dispatch
January 2, 2000
Happy New Year!
Guess what?! I'm back! Remember me? The columnist formerly know as Franecdotes? While Publisher Charlie was experimenting with his new (and unusual) Dispatch formats I was busy with a lifestyle change.
Downsizing from a business and a 26 year residence to a home in a 32' fifth wheel has been a genuine experience. Thus began our excellent adventure, and it's finally a reality: Home is where we park our house!
Now Charlie is ready to make the Territorial Dispatch an overnight success (after 16 years?), and, as always, I'm ready to do my thing, but under a different name.
Franecdotes now appears in a bimonthly magazine, RV Companion, out of Loveland, Colorado. If you like to travel, or own an RV you would probably enjoy reading it. I'll leave a few complimentary copies with Charlie. Stop by the office and pick one up.
Life's 'anecdotes according to Fran' will now come to you as Home Is Where We Park Our House ... and that could be just about anywhere in the western part of the country.
Well, if you are reading this, we made it through the end of '99 into the start of '00. I'll repeat: Happy New Year to you and yours!
I'd like to say Happy New Millennium but I'm one of those that thinks it won't begin until 2001 ...the first official year of the next 1000 years.
Oh sure, if we want to talk Y2K problems (or the lack of them) it's 2000 that is under discussion, but if we plan to count the years in the next millennium we need to start with 2001.
The year 2001 will begin the third millennium as well as the 21st century. After all, the first millennium ran from 1 through 1000; the second one from 1001 through 2000. We count by tens from 1 to 10, not from 0 to 9. So the first year of the third century begins with a 1 ... 2001 to be exact.
Maybe the confusion starts when people think about age. Birth to one is the first year, the beginning. You aren't one until you have lived one year. Before that you simply weren't!
By now we all know that Y2K problems are computer oriented and have to do with the fact that, to save space on early models only two numbers were used for the four digit year part of the date. After 99 the year would roll over to 00 and computers the world over would be confused and no one could predict for sure what they might do.
Programmers worked feverishly to make sure computers in banks, power companies, public utilities, fire departments and the government would all behave themselves as the year 1999 turned into 2000 at midnight the last day of December.
All this is certainly perplexing. Perhaps we should all just take this year off. Forget the year 2000 ... 2-zero... 2-zip ... 2-nada ... 2 nothing. Spend the year in limbo ...waiting for the next century to start and this one to end. This could have some advantages like no New Year's resolutions for one. And no more stories to panic everyone about Y2K because at this point whatever will be will be.
Everyone could spend time reorganizing -- regrouping for the coming century. We could forego paying taxes, skip dental appointments and haircuts. Trains and buses wouldn't have to run on schedule, because no one would care when they got to wherever it is they might be going.
This is actually the last chance we will have to make this the greatest year of the 20th century... one that will make the entire century stand out from all the others! So get out there and do something fun! Do something you always wanted to do for YOU!
Have a really super GREAT 2ZeroZipNada Year. One that you won't forget for another whole century!
-- Fran Crawford © 1999