Halcyon Days to Come

I hear tales of bountiful years, years when well-paying jobs and well-paying clients were thick on the ground, lunches extended, company parties lavish and decadent, exotic locales like Rio de Janeiro visited with blithe regularity and holiday bonuses flung around like so much confetti.

Everyone drove shiny new Saabs and Datsuns (or Lincolns and Hudsons in the era before, I suppose) and snapped polaroids of one other grinning on houseboats, their bright eyes reflecting poise and faultlessness, and confidence in the film's progressive aging into the wistful hue of vintage Virginia Slims advertisements.

Me, I'd like a couple decades of glimmering prosperity too, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards. Ah, well.

Maybe in 2008.