Random thoughts throughout the day

#1
This country's creativity with names occasionally creates a problem for me to the point that I am scared to send an email until I check and double check the spelling of names of the recipients. Otherwise, people do get offended having their names misspelled or even worse - the email will go to the wrong person.

Endless number of times I was searching in my mail trying to find an address belonging to a certain person just to have google tell me that nothing was found, because I was looking for the wrong spelling of the name!
Who can possibly keep it straight?
Judy
Judie
Kris
Chris
Erik
Eric
Sarah
Sara
Kathy
Cathy
The list can go on and on and on...
The situation was much better in Russia where everyone has pretty much 5 names to choose from. When almost every other man named either Sergei or Dmitry even with my horrible memory on names the chances are - I will get it right. And the best part they are all spelled the same way!

#2
I finally decided to figure out what it is Belle is chewing on and what  is falling on my head every morning in the woods during our walk. There are trees that dropping some kind of nuts. Belle is the only dog that likes to chew on it. After the scare that someone posted on facebook about danger of sago palms to dogs, I figured that I'd better find out and make sure it is not toxic, although, honestly, if it was toxic she would be already dead by now. Secretly I was hoping that what ever nut it is - it is edible. I guess it's my Russian nature that makes me always scavenge in woods for something edible. Last month I discovered service berries around our office. They are so tasty! It must've been quite a picture - me in business casual attire jumping for branches with berries:-) Oh the looks I got! Silly people, they had no idea what  they were missing.

I have no idea how people managed to survive without internet in the past. Standing right there in the woods I was able to look up the list of local trees and to discover that the nut was "pignut hickory". Not really edible, but also no-toxic to dogs. I also was able to discover that the tree outside of our office is Sycamore tree and not a maple as my boss though. I made sure that I let him know that during our morning meeting. The expression on his face was totally worth it, although he did tell me that I obviously do not have enough work on my plate if I have time to look up the trees.