Someone Offered to Sell Me Drugs on Friday

While I was waiting for the bus on Friday evening, a guy walking by offered to sell me some drugs, using a figure of speech I'd never heard before. Here is the reconstructed dialogue, as best as I can remember it.

The scene: I'm sitting on a bench waiting for the bus. It's cold. A guy comes walking up the sidewalk and we make eye contact.

Him: Are you looking for the trees, man?

Me: Huh?

Him: Are you looking for the trees, man?

[I look over my shoulder to see if I can figure out what he's referring to, thinking that maybe I'll spot some trees in spite of the fact that there's a GIANT BUILDING behind me. I turn back.]

Him: You really didn't hear me?

Me: No.

[He leans in close.]

Him: You looking for the trees? You know--the herb?

Me: Uh, no.

Him: Oh, ok.

That was pretty much it.

What American Accent Do You Have?

This quiz must be pretty accurate, or else my own particular results are just a very accurate fluke. And by the way, we do speak standard English straight out of the dictionary.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North   You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Blast from the Past

On our way back to the U.S. last summer, Allison and I stopped off in Wales for a couple of days, and my brother Ryan met us there. Here is an artsy photo of him that Allison took.

And here's one of Allison. Not sure what she's doing with that hand.

And this is my best 'Ahem, may I help you?' look.

In other news, I got a lot of hair cut off on Saturday. First haircut since before our wedding. I also shaved about half of my face.

But I won't tell you which half.

Athens Terrorism

These are our friends Nick and Joanie at their wedding this past summer. As you can see, they are possibly the most photogenic couple on earth. This is especially evidenced by the fact that in the second picture, in spite of their having gotten MARRIED that day and having stood in front of cameras almost constantly, they still look totally put together, while Allison's eyes are closed and my hair looks not all that dope.


Anyway, that was by way of introduction. They're spending the year in Athens while Nick studies at the American School of Classical Studies there, so when I heard about the rocket attack on the U.S. embassy last week, I emailed Nick to get his first-hand account. Here is part of his email:

So the American School is about a 5-10 minute walk or so from the US embassy...on my walk from my apartment to the school I have to cross the major street that they were talking about and the point that I cross the street is about a 2 minute walk from the embassy

We had a trip to Eleusis this morning and I had to be at the school at 7:30 am and I probably crossed that street at 7 am or so...everything was blocked off and there were cop cars everywhere...I had no clue what had actually happened until later in the day...it took our bus about an extra hour to get out of the city because there was so much traffic

Let's hope nothing else like that happens.

Big Sandwiches

Ok, so it's been a while. What can I say? I'm a delinquent.

Anyway, Allison and I live a few blocks away from what has to be the best deli in Philadelphia, and possibly the world. It's called Koch's. Their sandwiches are ridiculously large, especially when you get two of the guys working there into a competition with each other. Which is what resulted in the picture below.

Mine, which is on the left, started out as a Genoa Salami sandwich. As you can see, it's about as big as my head. He weighed it after he made it. I think each half weighed around 3/4 of a pound. I couldn't fit it into my mouth to take a bite, and I have a big mouth. Allison's started out as some sort of Turkey sandwich.

After eating, we sat on the couch. For a long time.