300 not out

“I think you’d be a great addition to the team”, the Toy Shop Owner said.

Yay! I’m starting a week tomorrow, doing probably a couple of days a week, 10.00am to 3.00pm, in September, and building up as necessary through October, November, and the busiest period of the year in December. I love the fact that this has all fallen into place so easily. One phone call. That’s all it took. Sometimes you get a lucky break, and this has been one of mine. All I need now is a social security number. And there I was, thinking that getting the green card marked the end of the bureaucracy…

The children are so excited. I’ve just picked up 9-yo from school, and he’s already told his whole class, two teachers and the principal. Not bad going in one afternoon.

This is my 300th blog post. I still haven’t decided on a new name (I thought I might launch the new name at the 300th post, but it’s snuck up on me.) I’m thinking I might just call the blog “Iota”. Is that a bit pretentious? I really wish we lived in Iowa, because then I could be “Iota in Iowa”. Then we should move to an island off the coast of Scotland, and I could be “Iota: from Iowa to Iona”.

I like my profile picture, of the notice nailed to the tree trunk, and I was wondering about tying the name in with that. How about “Iota stakes her claim”? Kind of assertive. Or perhaps a reference to the American writing style: “Iota: discursive in cursive”. I’ve wondered about:

Iota, actually
Iota, Stateside
Iota’s Quota, which would abbreviate rather pleasingly to IQ.
Iota, Wife in the West
Iota on the Great Plains… She’s Great, but she isn’t Plain. Trouble with that, is that one slip of the keyboard, and you’re into “She’s Great, but she isn’t Palin”, and then I’d attract all kinds of unwanted political traffic.

Of course there’s still “Among the Bison with my Dyson”. I can’t rule that one out yet. It has so much potential for a fantastic visual image on the header.

What about tornadoes? They’re the other well-known feature of life in the Midwest. How about “Torn ado about nothing”? No? Thought not.

Sorry to be wittering on so much about names, but they are important things. Colgate, for example, is (I’m told) ‘hang yourself’ in Spanish. Persil is ‘parsley’ in French (and I believe it is marketed in France under that name). And who, who on earth, thought that Pepto-Bismol was a good name for a medicine for indigestion? It just sounds like 'Pept-Abysmal'. Mind you, I do wonder if the Pepto-Bismol marketing department operates on some kind of reverse psychology, because no-one in their right mind would consider buying medicine for indigestion that lurid pink colour. No-one except Barbie, and clearly she never gets indigestion because she never eats anything except Slim-fast.

Barbie… toys… toyshop… job… All witterings come full circle if you let them run their course.

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