Economical Brain

A few days ago, my father and brother were discussing the relevance of London as a financial center, and the many ways to pronounce languages. I was mentioning how my friends complain about French, and used the sound "oh" as an example. In my mind there were 4 ways to spell the "oh" sound in French (eau, au, o, ot). In true one-up-manship, my father said "well there are actually 13 ways to pronounce the sound 'oh' in French."

A little deflated, I turned away from the conversation feeling much less knowledgeable than both of them.

Until I started reading the new issue of the Economist. Which happened to have: 1) an article on the relevance of London as a financial capital, and 2) an article on difficult languages to learn and pronounce (with the anecdote about the French "oh").

Bwwwaha, I'm on to you now! And I must remember to read the Economist before family dinners.

Creative

Washington D.C. got plummeted with snow this weekend. And as per usual, Washingtonian were completely unprepared for the slush, wetness, and ice that came with it. At the end of the second day, snow plows had still not cleared my house, sitting on a relatively large side road. Friends from Toronto and Montreal anxiously called me, to make sure that I had enough food and proper winter gear (I had neither).

However, despite our relative inexperience with snow, let no one say that we are not willing to help ourselves.

As I was walking past a sex shop in U street, I saw a shop keeper in sweats, scraping the icy surface in front of his store...with the empty plastic casing of a dildo.

Now, that's pretty creative.

Awkward conversation with mom

A few months ago, I reported that a quote of mine ended up in a book called We Feel Fine. Having just received the book in the mail, I spend a good twenty minutes flipping through it to find my quote, and proudly show it to my mom.

Impassively, my mom takes a look at it and says "your picture is right next to the quote: 'I feel weird having phone sex' ".

I feel weird having my mom read that out-loud.