A study abroad Wordle, the Raleigh police calls, a sad engineer, and a pool in the bar…

~Saturday~  I was up early this morning after sleeping almost 12 hours. Glorious.

I made moves in the five of seven active Scrabbles in which it was my turn, while i had coffee and a whole grain bagel with some honey walnut cream cheese on it.

I spent a couple hours scraping all the text out of my friend Sarah’s blog of her family’s six-week stay in London during which she taught a Study Abroad course. Once it was captured, I ran it through Wordle, which creates a graphic of all the words with the more frequently used ones being bigger than the less frequently used one.

It looked like this and I posted it in three places: 1) On the final entry of their blog, 2) On a “There’s no place like home!” Facebook status update of Sarah’s, and 3) On our Salon’s Ning.

Graphical display of blog text frequency

Sarah posted this affirmation to it: “John, you are wonderful! Thanks for that–I love it!”


I forgot to mention yesterday that at some point in the afternoon, I received a phone call that made my heart jump just a little when I answered because I thought that either my house or my car must have been broken into.

“Hello. Mr. Martin?”

“Yes?” I replied.

“This is Officer Harrison with the Raleigh Police Department.”

“Yes?”

“We met back in February when you were in an accident on Hillsborough Street. Do you remember that, sir?”

“Yes, I do,” I replied.

“Well, the driver’s trial is coming up on August 22nd, and we’d like to ask you to be at the Wake County Courthouse at 9AM that morning. Would you be able to do that?” he asked.

“And in what capacity would I be there, may I ask?”

“We’re just going to ask you to state if you saw the defendant get out of her car, because when I arrived you were already both out of your cars.”

“Oh, okay. Yes, I can do that.”

He warned me that although the scheduled time is 9AM, it’s quite possible that the case might not be heard until as late as 11:00. I asked if there was free wi-fi available there, and he said that he didn’t think there was.

I hung up wondering just what kind of defense that driver’s lawyer is going with. I mean, if they’re trying to say there’s no proof she was behind the wheel, how would it be again that her car smashed into me and there was no one else in either of our cars?

I felt sorry for the girl at the time. Now I have no empathy whatsoever, and will be happy to say that I saw her get out from behind the wheel of her car. And while I’m on the stand, I might even state that she said to me before the officer arrived, “Don’t worry. My daddy will pay for your car,” and point out that she didn’t say, “Don’t worry, whoever was driving daddy’s car will pay for your car.”


I spent way too much of my day writing a letter to my nephew with regards to the absolute nightmare that’s going on around that house I gave to him and his sister back in the late 90s.

It’s not uncommon for me to take items from my U.S. mailbox and without even opening them put them directly into the recycle bin by my front door if I recognize them as junk mail.

I almost did that with an envelope with no return address, which I especially despise in junk mail, but on a whim I opened it. Good thing. It was my renewed credit card, as the old one is expiring in a few weeks.


I saw this Craigslist M4M ad, in which there are too many pathetic things to list. It’s just sad.


I met Joe out at Flex at 10:30, where it was Beach Party night, complete with a small pool inflated up in the smoking area outside in the back. The usual suspect were out: Alex, Bill, Steven, Ben, and Patrick.

That cute little youngster, Sam, who Joe and I met last month was selling Jello shots tonight, and I reprimanded him for choosing to compromise his immune system by walking around barefoot in Flex.

Later in the evening, Joe, Alex, Bill, Steven, and I went over to 313, where we stayed at least until 2:00, I’m pretty sure.

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