Monday, July 12, 2004

I had to take a cab into work today. I was running late. The cab driver I had this morning was a SURPRISE, an AMERICAN!!!! I didn’t know that we still drove cabs! How refreshing! Anyway, he wore a big mesh cowboy hat. He was quiet throughout the entire trip. No cell phones went off no rapid talk to someone on the other line in a foreign language. No trying to pick me up. Just silence.

Let’s see I never went to the opening reception for Artscape at the Pinkard Gallery. I kept having these horible painful panic attacks. However, I did visit my painting the next day on Saturday.

I went there after work. Yep, we had overtime on Saturday. I was late for work on Saturday once in my life actually left work at the time I said I was going to which was 12pm.

Also on Saturday I called up Paul Murphy after tracing his name. Who’s Paul Murphy you ask and why was I calling him?

Here’s what happened... On Friday after work I took the #8 bus to the Hunt Valley light rail stop. I did this so that I could deposit the check that Marc gave me into my bank account. One of my bank’s branches happens to be near that particular light rail stop. After I left the bank I got on the light rail train. When I got on the train I saw this big stack of magazines and a small note book. I thought maybe someone had left it there in a rush to get off the train and would soon be back to pick them up. I like to read so leafed through the books and magazines. I noticed that they all were about coin collecting. Then I thought maybe they were left there on purpose. From time to time people purposely leave magazines on the train. You can tell this because they black out or cut out the address labels. The name and address were still on the magazines.

The train pulled off. No one came on the train to claim the items. I decided that I would return them to the person who’s name were on the labels. I came to this decision after I leafed through the small notebook. It looked as though the person was doing genealogy research on his family. My occasional hobby happens to be genealogy research. I have a soft spot for it. It’s an occasional hobby because it’s something I delve in from time to time. The name on the magazines was Paul Murphy. It was a common enough name that I felt that the odds were against me finding the right Paul Murpy. Well, odds against odds my first phone call was to the correct Paul Murphy! He was suprised when I told him that I found his books on the light rail train in Baltimore. You see he is from Pennsylvania. He told me that his was car broken into while on a visit to Baltimore. I thought he just left his books on the light rail train by accident. I had no idea there was so much drama involved.

After I called he called me back twice. He called a second time at 9 at night. He told me that the police were going to fingerprint his car on Sunday. I thought this was odd it being a Sunday and everything. He wanted to meet so that I could just give him the books instead of mailing them. I opted to mail them. For all I know he could be some psycho or think that I was the one who stole the stuff out of his car and was going to beat me up. Maybe, I shouldn’t have called...

Also on Friday I got something in the mail from Time/Life. I have to return it because I already own it. It appears that they changed the name of the product but it’s the same old thing. Same song line ups and everything. The only thing that’s changed was the name and the cover art. I ended up ordering something else on the internet from Time Life to replace it. I believe I ordered there Modern Rock collection instead of there Sounds of the Seventies Collection, of which I already own. It has a lot of songs on it that I like. There’s Hanging on a Moment, which I’ve always liked never wanted the cd because the group had only one hit on it, also there’s songs by Creed, Eve 6, Nickelback, and on it. There were two songs on it that I already own and was surprised to see on the collection, Moby and Fat Boy Slim. It was surprising because they’re from a whole different musical genre than the majority of the cd lineup. There music is more electronic dance than rock oriented.