From: Alex Chaffee [stinky@interport.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 1998 10:28 AM
Subject: Travel Consultant

(Written Tuesday, April 21, 1998)

For the last six months or so, I've been a swimmer. I make it a point
to do laps several times a week, and when I travel I always try to
stay in a hotel with a pool. Normally at 6:30 am I have the place to
myself; once or twice I've had to share the pool with a fellow
businessman. This morning I came down for my morning laps and was
pleasantly surprised to find another swimmer there before me --
"pleasantly" because this was a girl fish. She smiled up at me and
said, "Hi, I'll be out of your way in a minute," and I started to
stretch; when she was towelling off I approached.

Here's a lesson: never try to flirt at 7 in the morning. I asked her
what she did; she said, "I'm a travel consultant." So you
travel. "Well if I lived in Cleveland I wouldn't be at a hotel, would
I?" She lives in L.A. So what does a travel consultant do? "I work
with computers."

At this point I realized she must have originally said, "travelling
consultant," but the damage was done, my balance was lost, I was
taking the Nestea plunge.

What do you do with computers? "Financial software." What kind of
software? "Oracle." It's never good when the answers get shorter and
shorter. I told her I work with Java.

"Uh-huh."

It was only after she left that I thought of the perfect pickup line:

"So, you want to get together later and talk about Java-Database
Connectivity?"

 - Alex