Where there's smoke, there's Huck.

My father usually parks his car in his garage. The best way to know that he's home is by the smoke coming from the chimney. Nine or 10 months of the year, there's a fire in the stove when he's home.

When we visited him on Sunday, he mentioned that he had borrowed our pole saw from the camp. There were some limbs along his property's edge that were getting in the way of the wood delivery truck. We can all be very grateful that he chose to borrow the pole saw rather than getting up on a ladder with his chain saw.

We are working with a lot of people for whom English is not their native language. Sometimes there are idioms that are particular to American culture, as well as to the language. Earlier this week, I made a joking response to an email sent by a QA engineer from Turkey. She was worried that her original note wasn't clear. I reassured her that her message was very clear, but that my sense of humor is the thing that isn't clear. I apologized and hope that she's ok.

But, Americanisms march on. When I bough my lunch the other day, the cashier forgot to ring up one item. "My bad," she said in her rather thick Arabic accent.

On the way to New York, the exit numbers go like this:

33 - 31 - 29 - 28 - 27 - 29 - 28 - 27 - 26

I think that the Connecticut-New York state line is between exits 27 and 29.

On the way down, I stopped at Staples to pick up a couple of things. A very nice man helped me find what I needed. Then, he said, "If you need more help, I can ask one of the other guys."

Two jobs of note showed up in my automated searches for a technical documentation job. (I'm still not looking, but it's fun to see what shows up.) In both cases, they were looking for a detail-oriented writer. To paraphrase Chuck Berry, it must have been some otherbody. It isn't me.

• Diesel Mobile Mechanic.Pays attention to detail. Approaches work in a meticulous and thorough manner.


• US-OR-Portland-Detailed Technical Writer Position. (This was removed from the job site by the time I was able to get to it.)
  

The Red Sox were get a lot of coverage here, although it was rather glum after last night's pounding of the Pinstripes. The TV in the hotel room doesn't carry the Yankees channel, but the bar does. I let my co-workers report on the game this morning.

I didn't make this up, nor did I write any of it. (This page is ok, but some of the other links and pages may not, nay, are not safe for work.)

Happy Anniversary, Adam and Jennie.