And what do you do?

I'm a bookkeeper. I don't think that it adds anything to my discussions here at EvC, but how does one assess the effect of his personal experience on his own discussions?

It didn't affect our business. In fact, I hope it affected anything. There was very little turnout.

I have a friend that's a bouzouki player. He plays it at our gatherings sometime. We (our village) have two Celtic bands, and he at least occasionally plays with them. It seems stupid that I'm not sure whether he's plays with them regularly, but I'm not.Hmmm. Just checked their web site at KulaBand.com is for sale | HugeDomains. He's not in their picture, but he is listed in their EPK (whatever that is; I'll have to ask David, their webmaster and guitarist) as part of their instrumentation.

First, that story is awesome. It's great to watch people discover they share memories, looking at each other and saying, "No! No way!" and getting all excited. I've only been to Pittsburgh once and never lived in that part of the country, so I've never heard that. While there's no reason to care whether I've ever heard that, I did want to tell you the one thing I did hear about a guy from Pittsburgh.The way I heard it, the guy was in hell whistling, singing, and having a good time while be broke up rocks in the flames. When the devil heard about it, he asked the demons in charge in that area what was going on. They had no idea, so the devil asked the guy himself."Well," The Pittsburghian replied, "This is great. It reminds me of the ol' days working in the steel mills."So the devil ordered up massive amounts of rain, stopped the flames, and had the Pittsburghian pushing a wheelbarrow through knee deep mud. The whistling and singing just got louder.The devil came back. "Why in this place are you so happy?" he asked.The Pittsburghian replied, "Are you kidding? This is great! Just like spring back in Pittsburgh, working in the yard, everything soaked to the bone. I love it!"The devil walked away irritated, and he told his demons to completely freeze that area out. Solid ice, below freezing temperatures. He wanted the guy suffering.When he came back, however, the Pittsburghian was no longer singing and whistling, but whooping, hollering, and jumping up and down.The devil lost it. "WHAT IS IT NOW?! WHY ARE YOU SO HAPPY!""Are you kidding?" the guy replied. "Hell froze over! The Steelers must have won the super bowl!"I'm not from Pittsburgh, and I can't remember why I heard that joke about it.