Daily Archives

14 October 2010

Word from Australia

You may remember my email address of mysteries and the eventual contact with at least one of my “emailnick” variants. Well, I’ve heard again from the land down under, this time intentionally:

Dear Nick Smerker,

Loved your blog, & was crying with laughter. Sorry if you thought my last communication was “harsh”, but I thought it must have been very annoying for you that I did not know my son’s email address, probably because he lives downstairs, so naturally we use “speech” as our communication tool….very old fashioned I know.

Just thought you would like to know what one of your brothers is up to. I do hate ending a sentence with a preposition!! Almost as much as I hate the overuse of exclamation marks!!!!!!!

I am not the Judy Fogarty in Canberra, just a retired Physical Therapist living in Sydney. So the mystery continues……

Hope your real estate deals in Maitland work out.

All the best,

Judy (Furey) Fogarty

How fun! I thought I’d write back, since Judy sounds incredibly sweet:

Judy,

I’m glad you enjoyed my mystery chronicle on the blog!  I hope you didn’t misinterpret my message – I thought I was being to harsh to you! I think that, honestly, Google must be misrouting messages to my account and I am concerned that other versions of “me” aren’t getting important messages.  Lately, I’ve been getting messages intended for a variation of emailnick in the UK (a gmail.co.uk address.) So far, I’ve gotten order confirmations for play.co.uk and some other sites. *sigh*

Haha.  I also hate ending with a preposition, so perhaps there is at least some electronic genetic similarity with my other mother.

I’m glad to hear you are doing well.  I still think your son’s business (Rich) sounds fascinating and is remarkably similar to the work I do here in the States.  No more emails telling me about Maitland properties, but if I’m ever in Australia, I will have to look you guys up.

Keep in touch – it’s kind of fun to have a pen pal!

Best,

Nick

A first entry…

Hello there.

It’s a grey and rainy Thursday here in State College and I find myself in my office for just the second time, though this is my fourth day of work at ETS.  And it’s not even really just my fourth day, to be honest: I have an overwhelming sense of déjà vu here in Rider (II) as I spent the first almost-four years of my career stationed in this very building.  A lot has changed since my first go round (2003-2007) and I’m finding exciting new projects and direction everywhere I turn.  I’m ready to get started and I’ve even got my office set up:

New Office