The Cure for Boredom is Curiosity.

Yesterday I spent several hours at Ghiardelli Square and the Hyde/Powell turnaround waiting for some woman to cough. Sounds ridiculous, yes?

I joined about 75 other people waiting for Ricola's Thanks a Million cougher. The draw? The chance to win money. I heard about it on the radio and have been listening for the radio clues as well as signing up for the email clues. Yesterday was my chance with the mystery cougher slated to be in San Francisco.

I spent a couple of hours at the Hyde/Powell turnaround offering Ricola cough drops to anybody who coughed. I received plenty of weird looks and very few people will accept cough drops from a stranger. I flushed out another coughing stalker by coughing. Really, I didn't mean to cough on purpose. Good thing I had plenty of cough drops on hand. Then after disecting clues some more, I walked up to Ghiardelli because the more that seemed to make sense.

It made even more sense when I realized that there were Ricola representatives passing out promotional items and there were about 75 people standing around in silence looking desperately for anyone to cough. I got offered cough drops from about 25 people just walking through. Yep, at that point I was trying to flush out the tourist from the coughing stalkers.

I wish that I had a video camera or had remembered to take the camera because the scene was hilarious. No one was relaxed and nonchalant about this. Everyone had a eagle-eyed look on their face, waiting and poised to pounce. A little creepy in retrospect.

No, I didn't win. The cougher coughed right in front of a Hard Rock employee. From what I understood, she hadn't planned to cough yet but got a little choked on the candy bar she was eating. Ah, but it's all good. I'll be listening for clues and checking my email so I'll know when and where to go look for the next cougher.

The third day of rain in June. It's not suppose to be raining! And the weather forecasters don't know when this will stop.
I like rain, but I've had my fill of rain until November.

Rain here isn't like it is in N.C.
It rains here from November to March/April -and maybe, not very likely, but just maybe it will rain a few times during the rest of the year.
And when it rains, it's cold, gray, and rains on end until you think you can't stand it anymore. Then you get a brief reprieve and the cycle starts all over. Enough to make you tired of rain, but not enough to make you want to leave.

Rain in N.C. (insert longing sigh and smile here) I love thunderstorms in the summer and the winter and the spring and the fall and at the beach and at the mountains and you probably get the picture by now. I miss the lightning and the thunder here. Sometimes you can get a brief glimpse of lightning over the Pacific, but the occcasion is rare. (It also causes mad horrific traffic backups on the bridges.)

So it's rainy here and it sucks.