Today a colleague and I were tasked with going out and finding a sympathy card big enough to take 50 or so messages of condolence for Cancer Dude’s family.

Two-and-a-half hours, and two shopping malls later … and the “best” oversized cards we could find said:

• “Bye, bye, bye … good luck!” (Yeah, good luck with that death thing.)

• “Get well soon.” (Ummm…. too late.)

• “Happy birthday.” (This would perhaps have been more suitable last week when he turned 29. Not that it was that happy, anyway…)

• “Sorry you’re leaving!” (Well. In a moment of frustration, we actually did consider crossing off the “you’re” and the “leaving”. And then we thought about simply replacing the “leaving” with “dead”. Yes. We know. We are going to hell.)

In the end we gave up and made a card ourselves.

And it all turned out nice. It’s the personal touch.

And on the flipside, my colleague and I have identified a gaping hole in the condolence cards market.

We are thinking about setting up a company called Business Cards, which will custom-make large cards for organisations that need more room than the traditional card offers.

Although I’m not sure that the Sorry You’re Dead ones will be big sellers.
But you never know.

And an update on yesterday’s Other News.

Yes, the billions of water damaged books.

Well… I put some of them in the oven in a desperate attempt to dry them out.

Let’s just say that didn’t work so well.

I also tried putting some in the microwave.

If they weren’t fucked before, they certainly are now.

Oh well.

It’s only words.

Fortunately, one book that I could not stand to lose was not among them.
I had taken it to work yesterday to show someone.

It’s a book called How to write signs, tickets, and posters.
It was published in 1914. It originally belonged to my mother’s father’s father. Then it was passed down to my grandfather, then my mother, and then me.

It bears all our names and four generations worth of lame-ass attempts at monograms.

I plan to someday pass it on to someone from the fifth generation.

That is provided it survives any other biblical acts of vengeance that God has planned for me.

That's it.

My services as an English tutor are over.

My student just sat her final senior English exam.
She thinks she did OK.

Either way, I'm just pleased with the prospect of never having to discuss Jane “social/class barrier” Austen, or debate whether or not Hamlet qualifies as a tragic figure in the classical sense, Ever Again. "From this relief, much thanks."

And it also means my Wednesday nights are free again!

I wonder what’s on TV…

I was just having an email discussion with a friend who is living in Spain.
He said he is teaching English.

But it was the way he kept writing the word “grammer” that made me think, REALLY?