Wednesday evening update

– This blog broke the threshold of 100 visits per day for the first time this week, with 139 hits on Monday and another 110 on Tuesday. Recently I was looking at the entry where I posted pics of the Romanians, which would have been mid-September, and speculated that the pics of pretty girls might bump the visits per day to 30-35. This thing has really caught on for some reason…

– An organization called Diversity Memphis was featured Monday in the Commercial Appeal. Looks like a good group, providing a viewpoint that is much needed in a city that badly needs to embrace racial and cultural differences. Here’s a link to their site.

– A few weeks ago I posted a blog entry about downtown attorney Stephanie Calvert, and offered a memory trick – Lord Calvert is what the bums drink, and Stephanie Calvert is the person to go to for legal advice. Well, as it turns out there’s more of a connection there than I realized. The real-life Lord Calvert founded the colony of Maryland, and the Calvert family seal is Maryland’s state flag. Perhaps Stephanie should hand out miniature bottles of Lord Calvert with her business cards. Every bum in town would want her as their lawyer.

– Had a really good time at Drinking Liberally at Sleep Out’s last night. It made a few of us wonder if downtown is ready for its own chapter of Drinking Liberally, independent of the one that meets in Midtown. I mean, when I first heard about the organization, I meant to attend at least a couple of times a month. But how often have I actually been to the Midtown meetings? Once. It’s just a matter of logistics – if I drove my car there I’d have to limit myself to one beer so I’m not driving home drunk (and that’s no fun). I could ride my bike out there, but that’s an awful lot of work. If there were a chapter downtown I’d go all the time. A few of us are talking about it, we’ll see what happens…

– The latest news on planned upgrades for Sleep Out’s: New sound system, new big screen plasma TV (yes!), Guinness on tap (they better not get rid of the PBR to make that happen), new barstools (BADLY needed), and NTN Trivia. NTN Trivia is not like trivia night at the Saucer and Mulligan’s where there’s a human announcing the questions… instead, it’s computer-controlled, you get a keypad to play on, and a new game starts every half hour. When I was a corporate trainer traveling out of town, I played it a few times. It’s highly addictive. Sleep Out’s made a good move getting it – people will stay longer and run up bigger bar tabs.

– Speaking of Sleep Out’s… if you’re looking for a place to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, it would be a good choice. They’ll have beer specials and I think I saw a sign saying free hot dogs and popcorn. They will also be drawing for some AWESOME prizes. However, I won’t make it to Sleep Out’s for very long that day, because I’ve been invited to a Super Bowl party at Barton Flats. At some point I may take a break for half an hour to walk over there and enjoy one of Lisa’s bloody marys.

– Ow! I think I knocked out a filling eating fajitas Monday night. My tooth hurt a little Tuesday, and I shouldn’t have eaten anything (which I knew would make it worse) but I had leftover food and it was too good to throw out. Well, I paid for it today – the tooth hurt like hell and by 2:00 I had to tell the boss I needed to take the rest of the day off. When I’m in pain, there’s nothing worse than sitting in a cubicle counting the minutes until quitting time. So I came home and tried various attempts to make the pain go away. Advil (I now have Advil that’s not past the expiration date)… didn’t work. Anbesol… didn’t work. Ice… didn’t work. By late afternoon I was practically screaming in pain, and starving. But I realized ice cream was about the only thing I could eat (I really wanted Gus’s chicken but knew better), so I walked to Walgreens. Half an hour later I had finished a pint of chocolate mint, and the tooth pain was gone. Hopefully a good night’s sleep will put an end to the pain for good, and I’ll avoid an unwanted trip to the dentist.