I was in the city last night, heading for the bus stop, when I was approached by a well-dressed young woman.

She began by saying hi, introducing herself, asking if I was a local (and revealing that she wasn't local).. all the while, she was being very friendly, even charming - but also very obviously embarrassed and flustered and the neccessity to talk to me..

Eventually, she got around to the point - her car had run out of petrol in the middle of the city, she didn't have any cash, nor any cards on her... at this point I decided I couldn't wait any longer for the inevitiable, so I short circuited the conversation by offering all the cash I had on me - a total of just under $3.50.

Finally, someone who puts some effort into their asking for cash and makes it entertaining. Who knows, she might even have been telling the truth.. she certainly seemed vague enough to head out in a strange city with no cash and no cards, and not notice the petrol getting low..

Unrelatedly, lookint at the stats for my site, I notice that someone has come to my site from a link on http://www.empius.com.au/. I can't figure out why...

Also, someone came to my site by googling for "95 theses on the religious right". I did make a post the other day which referenced these, but so did lots of other people - I was surprised to find that anyone would find my site by googling for that. However, there's three hits in the log, and the other parameters in the url indicate that I was somewhere within the top 10 results at 05/Jul/2005:09:22:33 +1000, but I'd slipped to only somewhere in the first 20 by 05/Jul/2005:11:55:18 +1000. Incidentally, the hits appear to be coming from the same source - same IP, same browser version etc. They apparently found my site at 9:22 - and found it interesting enough that two hours later they went as far as the third page of results looking for my site again.

And now, time for me to go away and sneeze..