Kate, you are a hoot....

Just call her the master of information gathering, the grandmother of Google, the innovator of non-computer based data collection, the surveyor of all things obtainable, my inventive mother. There is a new restaurant in our town which is not listed in the phone book yet. To call 411 involves a charge on the phone bill, and my mother has never been one to incur extra charges on her bill. I can remember as a kid her going through the phone bill with a fine toothed comb and a pen, determining which children made what calls and how much they owed. She has a new way to call 411, and it involves calling the establishments surrounding the intended target of her curiosity. Just the other day, she called the busiest submarine sandwich shop in town at high noon. When they asked for her order, she said, in her best Boston accent, "Can ya tell me what tha name of tha new restront is across tha street? I want to go theeh fah dinnah and I don't know what time they open." At which point, the extremely stressed and harried employee screeched, "What? You've got to be kidding!" and promptly hung up. My sister and I laughed so hard we couldn't breathe, because even though we are never surprised by my mother's hijinks, we sometimes just cannot believe what she can get done in the course of a day with her trusty phone.