Blog Number 258

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I am sitting here enjoying my white tea on my last day of exile from the real world (i.e. last day of the milk thistle detox).  I have 14 pills to go and then I am free.  Tomorrow AM the wife and I will enjoy the sweet nectar of life that is coffee and all will be back to normal in my world again.  I cannot wait but I will say that I have not really missed coffee as much as I thought I would (I only snuck down to the cafeteria at work once this week for a de-caf Starbuck's).

Yesterday at work was a little rough in that I was on the phone for 3+ hours from the start of my day up to lunch time almost.  One phone call after another whether it was a scheduled meeting or an ad hoc phone call to clear up matters.  I did not take my headset off and only hung the phone up to dial another number.  My first call on Thursdays is always with Egypt, The Netherlands, and Hungary.  English is the 2nd language for everyone on the call (except for me) so I feel bad sometimes in that I forced each participant to speak in a language that is not their native tongue.  Other than English however, no one on the call speaks a language that anyone else on the call understands so English has to be the choice.  In Egypt they speak Arabic, in Hungary the speak Hungarian (duh!) and the official language of The Netherlands is Dutch.  They tend to understand each other's English pretty well and (oddly enough) I am the one they cannot understand at times.  But this makes sense if you take into account that I am the only one that would use words like "wanna" (want to), "gonna" (going to), etc.  Also, I am the only one with the risk of using American slang or phrases that they would not understand.  I have met with this group every Monday and Thursday morning since last summer so we have a little bit of a rapport and can poke fun at each other.  Anyway, that was my first call and it just got crazier after that.  Fortunately for me the calls ended before lunch and I was free the entire afternoon to get some real work done.

Well, I better finish my white tea before it gets cold.  Can't wait til tomorrow.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon