Yes it is. Well, maybe you could tell us about your first day working at the Forest Products Lab. Was there anything particularly interesting?

Oh, there's nothing that really stands out about the first day, I guess. Though, I had worked here a whole year before, you know. Well, I was in Wood Chemistry Division at the time but my job [In May of 1957,] was going to be in the Pulp and Paper Division, so that was all together different; I didn't even know where it was you know 'cause I was out in Building 12, and Pulp and Paper was all in this neighborhood right here, that we're in right now. The paper machine was just outside the door here. It was mainly a tour and a get-acquainted thing as I remember. Nothing special, my first boss was Ken Brown, and he left around 1960; I started in May of fifty-seven and then he left about 1960. And then after that my next boss was Necmi Sanyer. So, and the first few years here, when Ken Brown was here, I was working mostly on cold soda pulping. Just learning how to run the equipment, and doing some contract work with industry, and see what you can do with cold soda-pulps and see what products you can use them in and that kind of stuff, what woods are good for that. And when Necmi came, Necmi Sanyer, he was more into more chemistry, he was a PhD chemist, whereas Ken Brown was a chemical engineer. He [Ken] was more interested in the engineering aspects of it. Necmi was more interested in chemistry, so we got involved with a project called polysulfide pulping, so I worked on that for about four years. And that was a good publication, polysulfide pulping. I'm getting hoarse here doing all this talking. I'm a smoker so, you probably are too.

I try to stay away from that.

You sound like my daughter, she says, "give me a hit." So, everybody is a little bit.