Lots Of Ramblings For An Uneventful Day

Just when I think a day is going to be uneventful and I will have nothing to post for everyone, I have random a story to tell. Hopefully you guys don’t mind.

I was sitting at my desk during lunch, and my cell phone started buzzing. I look down, and imagine my surprise when I see that it is my sister calling me! She was on her way home from work, figured out it was probably my lunch hour, and wanted to call and say hello. I have to say, it really made my day! It was great to hear a familiar voice, and it was really sweet of her to call me and check in on me. And even though I only got to talk to her for a couple of minutes, it was nice to be in touch with folks back home. Apparently she and her husband read the blog, so Janice and Shawn, you have officially made a blog story! And thanks for calling, Jan!

I want to note here that I am not completely out of touch wit things back in the States. I have gotten a couple of phone calls from Sally while I have been here. I set up an international plan on my home phone, and based on the fees I would pay per minute on my cell phone, that $20 each month is well worth it! But I want to give credit where credit is due, and let everyone know that Sally has written down any stories told to her so that she can pass them along to me.

So for dinner tonight, we headed back to my new favorite neighborhood pub. The guy on Saturday night was right – the steak is really good! Although I have no idea how in the world that guy ate two of them. It’s 300g of Porterhouse steak. (I did the calculation for you: It’s about 11 ounces in each steak, with no bone.) I was pretty full, so it was a good thing I had to walk to and from the restaurant. The entertaining part of dinner was the sign sitting on the front of the bar: “For security reasons, no baseball caps are allowed.” Huh? I think the best part of that rule is that this pub is kind of a sports bar, so to not allow baseball caps is an interesting concept compared to the US. I have to wonder what the "security reasons" are, though...

Well, no big events for the day, and even my mX paper was a little disappointing today. So this post will be kind of short. But I wanted to share three quick stories from the paper, as I thought they were relatively entertaining:

The first story I have to set up a little. Throughout the paper, they have these little boxes with snippets of stories from around the globe. I manage to keep up with random US news that way, although these stories are not really big national events. But I got to see the first mention of NC in mX today. What was the snippet about NC, you ask? Apparently some NC company installed two road signs in Columbia, SC that pointed drivers away from the colleges being promoted on the signs. So the story says that a worker from SC is now required to accompany the NC workers to make sure that they get the directions right. Brilliant! I'm glad no one on the train reading this paper asked me where I was from...

The second story is an mX soap opera in the making. This guy Rodney has been sending in comments for the past couple of days, trying to get the attention of some redhead on his train. (No, it is not me.) The other day he told her she made his day. Yesterday he put in a comment to the same girl that said he tried not to squash her when he sat next to her on the train. He is documenting all his moves, so I will be interested to see what he puts in the paper today! Although I feel a little bad for the guy and almost want to send in a comment to help him pick her up! Or not.

Finally, I found an entertaining factoid of the day (mX puts several throughout the paper). Apparently, July was named after Julius Caesar (I think we all could have guessed that one) whose birthday was July 13. Well, in honor of such a great day, and because I think Caesar has been dead long enough that we need to honor someone else, July will hereby be referred to as Jenny (pronounced Jen-y). Sweet.