Strike Day 98 (23 A.D.) - the Day the Strike Died

Well, here we are, at the end of the strike road.

That is a good thing.

I have a few more things to say but it's about 1:30am and I need to take care of some last-minute preparations for my son's final Pinewood Derby race tomorrow -- nothing to do with his car, which he built nearly all by himself, but to do with calibrating all the digital scales that will be used for the official weigh-in at the big event. His birthday is this coming week and we spent today celebrating -- but then I disappeared to attend the big meeting at The Shrine. He had a couple of his best friends plus his two sisters plus my wife to go out to dinner with, so it is a very good bet he did not miss me at all.

Anyhow, I will return to blog some final thoughts -- but the truth is the proverbial Fat Lady sang tonight, and to be honest... she wasn't as off-key as I was expecting her to be. My guesstimate was that there were at least three-thousand members in attendance -- and towards the end of the meeting, Patric Verrone announced the official count was actually 3,500, which is the record for this strike and which accounts for close to fifty-percent of the entire membership of the West Coast branch of the Guild.

The bottom line our union got its foot in the door of the internet -- and now we, the membership, will get to vote on bringing the strike to an end, the same way we got to vote on authorizing it to begin with.

More on that tomorrow -- right now I have to work on the scales.

Plus I have to bury the third of four fish our kids got a few weeks ago. I'm hoping the sole survivor will maintain and extend his longevity. So far he seems healthy -- actively swimming and staying deep in the tank, rather than loitering close to the surface, which is never a good sign unless food is there.

It's funny -- I remember writing something here about how I had to miss a cub scout leaders meeting in order to attend the big Guild get-together in Santa Monica and how I had planned to explain to my fellow scout leaders that they needed to find a new home for all the Raingutter Regatta stuff that has been sitting under a tarp at the edge of my driveway for close to a year, in expectation of my son and I leaving the Pack.

Now, a couple of months later, I'm blogging about the pinewood derby.

The strike is ending but the race -- and life in general -- goes on...