Tourism Season

Who would have thought Eastern Washington would be such a hot tourist destination. Sure, we have wonderful sunny summer weather, an amazing river and a truly incredible park system. There are also great wineries and some fabulous restaurants. (Check out Olympic Blue in Kennewick for some of the Northwest's Finest.) So, maybe it is not unreasonable to have a lot of tourists showing up to visit. It's just that lately it seems to be a little over the top.
Here at The Octopus' Garden we are used to having a stream of tourists come through our doors. It is the sort of thing you expect after being Eastern Washington's Number One Tourist Destination for the last 57 years straight, but this year has been something else.
Australia? The Netherlands? Walla Walla? These are the crazy exotic locales people have come from in just the last couple of weeks.
Things have become so bad that we were told by a local friend that she has not come in lately, because things have been so busy. As you might expect, this concerned us.
We thought about it and talked it through and came to a conclusion. Her problem was not so much that we were busy as much as it was the fact she felt a little out of place among the throngs of tourists. As part of our ongoing effort to provide amazing customer service without putting a whole lot of effort into it - we came up with a solution.
We are going to start offering free after hours classes to locals. These classes will teach them how to blend in with our growing stream of overseas tourists.
Lessons will cover: Fake Accents We Have Learned From Watching Cartoons, Airport and Travel Stories to Memorize and Retell, Strange Native Dishes Which May or May Not Exist But Are Really Fun Describe, and Details on Signing Up for Your Free But Incredibly Valuable Tri Cities Tourism Passport.
Classes are free, but filling up fast.

Extra Credit

My brother is a great guy. He took the time to show me how I could easily set up a blog - this blog. He also teaches computer science at the local community college.
When he teaches he is fond of using real life examples to illustrate his points.
It has occurred to me that in the near future he may steer his students into checking out this blog as an example of something so easy to do even I could do it.
So, here is what I am thinking. If you have been directed to read this blog as part of a computer science class, you should print out the following statement and turn it in to your teacher:

Any teacher assigning this blog as an example to a class agrees to award copious extra credit to any student turning in a hard copy of this statement.

I'm no lawyer, but I am pretty sure that this is going to work. Good luck with the rest of the class.