I was recently having dinner with some friends when the topic of elevator operators came up (who knows how these conversations over dinner evolve) and I told everyone that, in fact, my father had once been an elevator operator, much to their amusement. It was one of those faint memories...something he'd mentioned to me ages ago that I found hilarious and then stored away in the back of my mind. And as soon as I recalled the story, I wanted more information, so I wrote to my father to ask him to provide some, which, naturally, he did.

(As always, I'm leaving the spelling and grammar intact, so as not to lessen the charm of these correspondences.)

From:Cara McDonough To: Fred Rotondaro Date: Wed, May 28, 2008

Didn't you once hold a job as an elevator operator? Can you tell me about that?

From: Fred Rotondaro To: Cara McDonough Date: Wed, May 28, 2008

Ablut 50yearsago at the shawnee inn in the poco mount-ns. Owned by fred waring, a famous orchestra leader. Did it right out of high school. It was fun. We got a room and naturally our. Meals0 0 Lots of young kids around but I was too na?Øve to realize how charmung I was. The eleva(or was hand operated. Pull. The lever down and you went down. Up and you went up. But only three floors. I don't remember the people I ferried around except for one round faced guyb who I thought played the partner of jack webbin the tv series dragnat. Turned out he was a priest. Wrong again

Pop

Although we promised ourselves we'd spent massive amounts of time "doing stuff around the house" this weekend (which we did, and seriously, if I uncover one more box labeled "wine glasses - fragile!" I'm donating all my material goods to charity and running off to a convent or something, because honestly, what is it worth? Having so many things?) I decided to take at least part of Monday off, it being a holiday and all, and head out to a coffee shop where I could sit back and do some non-pregnancy, non-work-related reading. I took The New York Times Magazine with me and read Emily Gould's piece on blogging, which I highly recommend to, well, anyone, because it's interesting, but especially you bloggers out there. Even though my blogging life is a far cry from hers - she was once an editor at Gawker and her life far more on display than mine will ever be - I found that some of her words really rang true.

"The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible."