Her driving on her own is a good thing, for one she's being independent and secondly I know she's slaying another small dragon, paying off the final installment on the repairs we had made to a vacuum cleaner. We've been paying the repair guy in dribbles for months so it was nice to get that debt wiped off the books, and actually get something back in return.
One of the drawbacks of not having a landline phone though is that if you misplace your mobile phone you're essentially out of communication with the world until someone calls you. So I'm waiting.
In the interim I decided to find some other distractions and managed to locate some interesting odds...and ends.
I read about a new book called "Hatless Jack: The President, The Fedora And The History Of An American Style." It talks about something I never knew - that hat makers accused then President Kennedy of destroying their industry. Apparently Kennedy didn't like hats so he rarely wore them, and some hat makers thought if Kennedy only wore a hat more often, more American men would have followed his lead.
The author finally gets around to concluding Kennedy was wrongly blamed for this fade in fashion; instead he says the automobile did in fancy hats for men years before Kennedy. Your car revealed more about your social status than your hat and hats were often an inconvenience in cars.
Another story I found surprising was that more people requested the definition of the word "blog" on the Merriam-Webster website than any other word this year. I wondered what the most popular word people looked up "off line" would have been, but I suppose that would be impossible to discern. Certainly that would be something different...if not surprising.
Lastly I did find it amusing to read about the latest promotion offered by Virgin Mobile in Australia. It allows customers to block themselves from calling certain numbers before they go out and get drunk. The company claims 95 percent of people in Australia have made calls while drunk and some 30 percent of those calls were to their ex-spouses/lovers...36 percent were made to their bosses. I couldn't find the story on their website (which is annoying by the way) and the one newspaper that carried the details wanted me to pay to read their on line news. It's a cute story but I've got more sense than that.
Of course the oddest story of the day comes out of Korea where parents are saving their children's umbilical cords...and having them gold plated.
That's a mental image I could live without.
Aha! I can hear my phone ringing! Saved by the bell!
FYI- You can click on any picture to enlarge.
