Random train of thought
The train now standing at platform three is the nine forty three to London, fast service, stopping at Woking, Clapham Junction, and London Waterloo. If your travel plans today did not include London, this would be a good time to get off.
There have been storms in St Louis, but nothing horrendous, no tornados, and no deaths. Just some awesome lightening storms for three days running. The storm system has claimed lives across several states so far; the BBC News report says there were fourteen deaths in Missouri, eleven in Tennessee, and seven in Kansas. We have a basement to hide in should a tornado hit the city, but our house has already survived 93 years of Missouri weather. The National Weather Service has a clickable map of current weather warnings. I think a tornado, or thunderstorm, or rain of toads watch means they're expecting one to form, and a warning means they've seen the first toad.
I changed my mind about the colour of my Mini; I want a red one with a black roof, mainly because I've seen several with white roofs and none with black. It looks pretty cool on the Mini website.
Got listed on Blogwise yesterday, a new directory of blogs that lets you search by region. It's run by a chap in Gosport called Sven Latham. I suggested adding a nationality field to the database, not all of us stay where we're born. The list of updated UK weblogs comes in handy but it's listed by time last updated, not alphabetically or regionally. Wonder if there's a webring for Britons abroad? Maybe I should start one, call it The Wandering Brit.
The Wandering Jew is, according to The Columbia Encyclopedia:
in literary and popular legend, a Jew who mocked or mistreated Jesus while he was on his way to the cross and who was condemned therefore to a life of wandering on earth until Judgment Day. The story of this wanderer was first recorded in the chronicles of Roger of Wendover and Matthew of Paris (13th cent.), but not until the early 17th cent. was he identified as a Jew. The story is common in Western Europe, but it presents marked national variations. Among the innumerable treatments of the subject is Shelley's Queen Mab.
I thought he was something to do with the Flying Dutchman, I was wrong. According to the Blue Water Navies:
The legend of The Flying Dutchman is said to have started in 1641 when a Dutch ship sank off the coast of the Cape of Good Hope:
As the ship approached the tip of Africa, the captain thought that he should make a suggestion to the Dutch East India Company (his employers) to start a settlement at the Cape on the tip of Africa, thereby providing a welcome respite to ships at sea.
He was so deep in thought that he failed to notice the dark clouds looming and only when he heard the lookout scream out in terror, did he realise that they had sailed straight into a fierce storm. The captain and his crew battled for hours to get out of the storm and at one stage it looked like they would make it. Then they heard a sickening crunch - the ship had hit treacherous rocks and began to sink. As the ship plunged downwards, Captain van der Decken knew that death was approaching. He was not ready to die and screamed out a curse: "I WILL round this Cape even if I have to keep sailing until doomsday!"
So, even today whenever a storm brews off the Cape of Good Hope, if you look into the eye of the storm, you will be able to see the ship and it's captain - The Flying Dutchman.
Staring at someone can wake them up, even if the one staring is a cat. I woke up one minute before the alarm went off, looking right at Tangle, he was no more than six inches from my face. I've found a new feature of my feline alarm unit.
A lot of the spam I get is misspelt with bad grammar. Could someone build a grammar and spelling checker into spam filtering software?
I'm outside less than half an hour and the first bug of the season bites me. When do I get to bite back? The new lawn mower has eaten most of the back garden, all of it above 2 inches high.