South Africa Loves Me

One of my lurkers recently emailed me to ask for an invite to read this blog, and she mentioned that she heard about my blog through the South African version of Cosmopolitan magazine.

What?!

I was not aware of this, so I asked for more details. She told me the issue it appeared in, and so I sent an email to its editor asking for a copy of the article. I was so glad to open my email today and find that the editor sent me a PDF of the article! I guess they have a "Hot Stuff" section in each issue, and for the month of August, my blog was the "Hot Blog". WOOT!!

I have been wondering why my statcounter shows so many hits from South Africa. And now I know. I'm famous there!

I tried to figure out how to post a copy of the article here for you, but it's in PDF, which Blogger does not support. I also looked into putting it on Google Docs, and then linking to it from here. Again, no such luck--the little blurb about my blog disappeared when I converted it into txt format. So you are going to have to take my word for it. But here's what it said:

"We love it because she gives us insight into the naive yet neurotic world of a 20-something American country girl. She’s a complete pink-packaged anomaly, confessing that her
musical taste goes from hip-hop to rock and country music –and her musings range from the arb to the occasionally substantial. But a weird thing happens to you when you’re reading – you start to see patterns in her life that also exist in yours, almost 14, 000 km away."

Hmmm. It sounds like they haven't read too much of my blog. I rarely talk about music on here. And I'm not quite sure why they think of me as a "country" girl. I also do not know what they mean by "pink-packaged anomaly", but I like that they describe me as a naive yet neurotic girl! LOL , that's pretty accurate. Not a glowing review, but a good one, at least.

Maybe I need to get one of those tshirts that say: "I'm kind of a big deal."

Ha Ha!

Talking about South Africa reminds me of a story about my dad, actually. My parents met at work in Washington, DC. But right before they met, WLF had to take a business trip to South Africa, which as you know is home to many diamond mines.

Since they were so cheap, WLF decided to buy some while he was there. Although he was divorced at the time, he hoped he'd get married again one day and could give a diamond to a new wife in an engagement ring. The back-up plan was that he'd just end up giving them to his sister or his oldest daughter (my older half-sister, Banana). So he bought two or three of them.

Due to customs regulations, he was not allowed to bring back the biggest one with him on the plane. It had to be shipped to him. He said that would be fine, and so he left his address with the diamond salesman.

He arrived back in the States and meets the new mail girl, who also happened to be my mother. It's love at first sight, and he begins to pursue her relentlessly (remember, he asked her out to lunch every day for a YEAR before she said yes!). Meanwhile, the diamond is getting shipped to him.

One day, he goes to get his mail out of the mailbox. Inside is a plain white envelope, with a hand-written address. The return address read: Capetown, South Africa. He opened it easily, because it was just licked like any regular envelope would be. Inside was the diamond. No wrapping, no insurance, no letter, nada. Just a plain envelope with a 3 carat diamond inside. It had been mailed halfway across the world without being lost or stolen. It was pretty incredible, actually, if you think about how many hands must have handled that envelope.

About 2 years later, it was put into The Czarina's engagement ring.

Cool story, huh?