MY STRANGE ACCENT

I dated a guy a couple weeks ago, and I think he thought I was being a dishonest person, 'cause I never heard from him again.

We chatted up at Starbucks, first for a couple hours. Then went to a Moroccan restaurant and talked over tagine and a couple pots of mint tea. He kept asking me, where in England I was from, 'cause he said, he kept hearing my accent waver, (with my ever so famous British inflections and colloquialisms.) I said, although I spent many a vacation, in the U.K. I was born and raised here. I said, my accent is a Lincoln Park neighborhood, Chicago accent. He asked me 4 times total, in one way or another. I said, "look, I am not lying to you! I'm just messing around for fun. I am from Chicago and no where else." I never heard from him again after our second date.

O.K. analysis done. Upon investigation......My current co-workers, have told me that I do "do" this. An old co-worker told me I do it jokingly, but also do it absent-mindedly, and have done so for years. I intentionally do this when I joke around, and it's usually in a Cockney or Scottish accent. After talking with an old friend from grammer school, she remembers me doing this when I was around 9. Scary. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. I guess I watch so much BBC America, and have been watching British programming for so many years now, that in hearing British English so often, it has actually altered and incorporated itself into my Chicago accent. (Having dated Brits has had a hand in this too. LOL) I can't believe that, I couldn't explain this back then. Because, at the time, I was trying so hard to figure out what was so different looking about me that made him so sure I was a closet Brit. Maybe he thought I had a schizophrenic situation going on, I don't know. Maybe, he didn't like it cause I kept rolling my eyes after he asked. Oh well.....What's done is done. Now I just think he's a dork, who doesn't know what he missed out on. And I should have told him to piss off (in a Cockney accent.) The next poor old sod, I have a date with, will hear all this blather, because if I like him, I'll have to explain the whole story behind my strange accent. (Which I still don't think I have) Or he'll think I'm some sort of a sleeper cell hiding out in Chicago, and report me to the FBI or the CIA. This I don't need, in this day and age.

WASN'T THE FIRST ONE ENOUGH?

As a kid and teen, I loved horror films.
I use to live and breath awaiting the next one due out.
I was Miss blood and guts. The gorier the better.
Out came The Exorcist.........
AND THEN IT WAS ALL OVER.
That film scared the crap out of me, and horror films
were no more. I didn't see a horror film ever and then
was only able to see the edited version on t.v. and in
broad daylight. Like, on a Halloween afternoon, I think
I saw Wolfen and Interview With A Vampyre. That's
about all I can handle.
I'm not alone in this. I think, it left a bad taste in most
peoples mouths. It's like having a scar in the brain.
I've been traumatized and the scars are still there to
remind me, how I - (Miss never gets scared to go anywhere)
can easily have the crap scared out of me.
Hell, (no pun intended) even the trailer of the movie scares
the crap out of me.
So that leaves me with the rhetorical question......
Wasn't the first one enough?

PILLARS OF THE EARTH

OCTOBER 15th 2004

I read this book and it's
awesome. It's really long
but a great story. It has
inspired me to go to
Lincoln, England to see this
awesome ancient city and
cathedral.
It takes place in 12th century England. It shows the life and times of all classes of people. Kings, queens, knights, squires, ladies, priests, villagers, pilgrams and even people of the forest. It shows the trials and tribulations of daily life but extends to the life story of a few characters who cross paths with each other in the environs of Lincolnshire. Along the road towards the building of the Lincoln Cathedral. It shows the strength of the Church of England and also shows the dirty politics within the church at that time as well. A very vivid and graphic read. It's one of Follett's top best.
Out of 5 stars, I give this one a 5.

ARE YOU CRAZY OR ARE YOU JUST ON YOUR MOBILE?

While living in Chicago, I finally got use to hearing people walking and talking on their mobile phones. It's not unusual to see people talking with their ear gear and phone in hand. At first it was weird cause most people didn't use ear ear, then over night everyone has ear gear of some sort.
While waiting for a bus to come home, there's a woman, talking about mutual funds and stocks and yadda this about finance and yadda that. Then in a nanosecond, the conversation changed to bitch this and bitch that, even her voice changed too. She got louder and more ghetto with the lingo. I took a step back to take a peek at her and she's talking away only to herself. No ear gear, no mobile. When the bus came she stayed there. Spooky.

CITY WORKERS ARE THE SAME ALL OVER

IT'S STARTED

They say that the first thing to go is your brain. Well, I haven't even turned 46 yet and the mind has already gone.
A co-worker was telling me that she was getting a couple kittens but really wanted them all.
I told her that I would never be able to visit her again, if she did that, cause I'm allergic.
She then asked me if I was always allergic. I said no. I had two cats as a kid. I loved my last one so much that I was eternally saddened, that we had to give that cat up, when we moved to a "No Cat's" apartment.
Then she asked me the magic question, "what happened to the first one?".
And do you know what? I did not remember. What the hell happened to my mind?
Did she die of old age? Did we have her euthanized? What happened to Orphan Annie?
I wondered about it for the next 4 hours and it bothered me so much, that I had to use my cell phone to call my aunt long distance. After hi how are you, yadda yadda yadda, I asked her, "what happened to Orphan Annie? I can't remember for the life of me, what on earth became of her." My aunt, with a half laugh, (and it better be a half laugh) said, "she ran away. She just left home one day and never returned. I remember, she was 9 years old." Blimey, I thought, is that one of those events, one hears about, that's so traumatizing, that you could black it out completely? I've heard about these cases.
Could this be it? I thought, maybe I'm vitamin deficient, cause I'm losing it! I need some Ginko Biloba. Stopped at Walgreens, paid for a bottle of the new age elixer and left. Took a bus the rest of the way home trying to recall the past. Trying to recollect my very first memories, so that they stay fresh, (paranoid that I be) I sure wouldn't want to forget my beloved great grand parents.
I go home and open my bag pack, and low and behold, I left the Ginko Biloba ON THE COUNTER!
SHOOT ME NOW AND SEND ME TO THE GLUE FACTORY!!!!

PUNK'D BY A SENIOR CITIZEN

I think I have brain damage from my "Extreme Sport" days, cause I sure didn't see this one coming....................................................... Today at work, one of the doctors sends an elderly Asian-American patient over to me, so that I could schedule him for cataract surgery. I give him the paper work for the physical and pre-op instructions. So, as I'm putting clinical notes into his chart I ask him, "I need the name of your primary care physician." Patient says, "Who?" I turn towards him, and ask again, "your doctor's name, sir"? "Who?" he says again. This time, I figure, he's a little hard of hearing. So I stand up slightly and lean towards him, and ask a little louder this time, looking him in the eye and enunciating, "who is your primary care physician, who will give you your
physical?" And the gentleman hands me his doctor's business card,it said Dr Wu-Internal Medicine. I've been Abbott and Costello'd. I've been Punked by a Senior Citizen. I had to walk away to laugh at my sorry ass.
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor4.shtml

Earthquake

This week I experienced a little bit of an
earthquake.

It was spooky.
I laid in bed and felt the earth under me, rumble.
As I laid perfectly still, Illinois shook only a little
bit, it was significant, and it was mild, and I knew
exactly what it was. It was Illinois' third recently.
Later I found out the preliminary reading was
3.5 on the Richter Scale. The epicenter was
over hundred miles away, yet I felt it, and no
one I know felt it.
It just makes me wonder how easy I could become
homeless. It can just take a few seconds really.
I'm American and I have skills to find a job, but
I still can become homeless in under a minute.
We've been having weird weather too. Not only
where I live, but in places that never ever had
tornados are getting them. I think there's a lot to
be said regarding that move Day After Tomorrow.
It makes one re-think. It's kinda humbling.