Give me a sign, STC newsletter work, a convenient walk, skipping an inconvenient truth…

On the road again…

My friend, Brenda, whom I had dinner with on Wednesday as she passed through Raleigh, sent me this photo of a street sign she took on her recent drive from the San Antonio area of Texas back to her home in Richmond, Virginia.

Brenda, if you’re reading this, I can’t remember in which state you said you snapped this. Please post a comment/thought reminding me? Thanks!


I spent the afternoon at Helios devising yesterday’s blog entry, and doing work for the STC newsletter.

I created a spreadsheet enumerating the required sections of the newspaper, and two columns beside each item: the first column indicating what item/story/feature I have that meets that requirement, and the second column indicating where in the newsletter that item will fall, if it’s pertinent.

This will not only help me in accuracy and completeness, it will make filling out the competition checklist that much easier.


Robert arrived at a little after 5:00, and after starting a load of laundry, we headed over to the Reedy Creek Greenway, started on Hillsborough Street, walked to the Art Museum, via the pedestrian bridge over I-440, and back, for about a 5.6-mile walk.

Robert picked, and ate, some blackberries along the way. We were both drenched by the time it was all said and done. If the humidity can be more than 100%, then it was.


After a refreshing, cool shower, we had dinner consisting of baked fish fillets, steamed white rice, and cranberry sauce. Delish.


We worked on three, completing two, crossword puzzles. We had to abandon the NYT‘s Friday Puzzle. Too hard.


We were going to go see An Inconvenient Truth, but opted instead, to conveniently, lie in bed and listen to podcasts.

There were two very interesting ones to me:

One was about the, now infamous I believe, “Mosquito Teen Repellent Ring Tone,” which was invented to keep teens from loitering in British shops, but has now, in classic “the-technology-is-now-being-used-in-ways-it-wasn’t-intended-to-be-used” fashion, been adapted by teens themselves into a ring tone that older people can’t hear.

Now they can play cruel jokes on the adults, with one of the biggest uses being text messaging in classes, where the student can hear their phone ring to tell them they have a message, but the teacher (as long as he or she is “older”) can’t hear it. Kids!

Here’s a link to an mp3 of the ring tone if you want to see if you can hear it. I can’t.

The other podcast I enjoyed was called, Lessons from a Psychologist, and Granddad.

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