Oh, now I remember what I was going to write about. I put "week's" in the asterisks but it's traditionally "dialogue" that gets the star treatment. So I made a mistake.

So, paid my taxes yesterday. I've never been late even once on tax paying. So that's something. I'm sure Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs appreciates it. They did give me a big refund a few years ago from back when I was paying the "emergency tax rate" or whatever for my first three years or so of live in the UK. I didn't even ask for this refund, they just sent it.

Hey, new Tinder match. I saw the picture before I swiped "yes" and knew that something was odd. She has a really beat up Chicago Cubs cap on. Then in another picture, she has a Chicago Cubs jersey on and she's pointing to the logo and doing a thumbs up. Cubs are one of the city's two baseball teams, by the way.

How many other cities have two teams? Chicago has the Cubs and White Sox. New York has the Mets and the Yankees. Are there other examples? Los Angeles Dodgers and the Angels but the Angels are actually based in Anaheim so this doesn't really count.

What about other sports? American football, say. I know there's the New York Giants and the New York Jets. That seems to be it.

Basketball? Los Angeles has the Lakers and the Clippers. New York has the Knicks and the Nets. I barely even heard of some of these teams to be honest.

Anyway, enough of this macho/homoerotic sports talk.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. This girl with the Cubs paraphernalia. I don't know why she has it. She doesn't appear to be from Chicago. Or even American. What's her profile say?

Well, actually I suppose she could be. Name is Nelda. What kind of name is that? Chicago has many people of Eastern European descent. No. An ancient Irish name. Well...still, could be Chicago. They also have a large population of people of Irish descent.

Works in finance suggests possible American. A lot of the Americans here work in finance. That's how they're able to move here. Their company transfers them. But would they transfer them to Glasgow? London, sure but...not sure how big Glasgow's financial district is.

Went to an English university. An American can do that, of course. And a Scottish person would probably study in Scotland because it's free here. None of that vile student loan stuff.

So I don't know. Americans in the UK are always annoying as shit.

In any event, she obviously "liked" me because I put that I went to university in Chicago. Which I didn't. But I also don't even have my real name on my profile. So these are small details.

But yeah, going back to annoying Americans, I'm reminded of a Youtube video that I saw recently wherein an American said that he visited Italy and was surprised that none of the men wore shorts. It was considered that only women wear shorts. He further concluded that this was the mindset in much of Europe.

I think that this is right. Do men wear shorts in the UK? Not that I can think of. Maybe they do. Not to the degree that it's socially acceptable in the US, certainly. But the UK's position on men wearing short pants probably isn't as socially unacceptable as what I'd imagine exists in Italy.

But yeah, even in the US I considered men wearing shorts to be gay. Most everybody did it (except me) but I still thought it was gay. Even as a kid, we were able to wear shorts as our school uniform during the hot months but I never did. I think literally everyone else did but not me. I suffered wearing a wool vest over long sleeved shirt and trousers rather than look like a homosexual in short pants.

It's ridiculous that you had to wear the full uniform if you didn't want to wear the "summer" uniform. I usually didn't wear the wool vest in the summer and I possibly had short sleeves but technically, this wasn't allowed. I don't remember teachers ever making an issue with it, though. They were sensible.

But yeah, back to shorts in Europe. It's gay. And you can immediately spot American tourists because they're the ones wearing shorts. Looking gay as they do.

Let me Google this up.

Oh, that's true. You don't really see women in shorts either. Do you? I don't know. Certainly not to the level that one sees in the US.

I guess it doesn't really get that hot in the UK. Of course, women do wear low-cut tops and whatnot. So it must get somewhat hot.