It's the little interactions...

I have a little chalkboard at my desk with these fun facts about me:

My favourite colour is purple.
I'm a ninth-generation Kentuckian.
I have worked at Shriners for twenty-five years.
I used to be a librarian.
My middle name means butterfly.

This is a good conversation starter and I get a lot of enquiries about the length of time my family (the Cobb side) have been here (1790, given land for fighting in the Revolution), or asking what my middle name is.

The other day I was asked if I were British. Because of the 'u' in favourite, of course.

I'm not, or Canadian, or Australian. But I've used International Standard English since I was in my late teens or early twenties. I read a lot of British writing, for one, but when it comes down to it, I prefer the older spellings and consider them more correct. When Noah Webster and Melvil Dewey (originally Melville Dewey) decided to simplify American English spelling, I think they did the language a disservice. Yes, I'm not a Dewey fan, even though I'm a librarian. And there are more reasons to not like him, so you may want to look them up.

Anyway, the mom confessed to me that she still uses correct English in texts, and I said I did too, even though younger people seem to think this is rude, I couldn't bring myself not to use full words and correct punctuation. We agreed that good grammar was more important. And that's when she said the thing I loved so much.

'Correct grammar is the thing that separates us from the animals--that and opposable thumbs.'

It's so nice to meet a kindred soul in your daily wanderings.

Tuesday afternoon

was my last day at pulmonary rehabilitation. I did pretty well, and I finally got to the top of the inspiratory resistance inhaler in terms of difficulty. It was four sessions early, but they felt pretty good about my progress. They took a selfie with me and gave me sheets with goals on them and a nice t-shirt as well.

Afterwards, I went downtown to the revenue office and applied and paid for my business licence. So now I am duly licensed and in compliance with local ordinances while doing this contract work. My boss is going to see if they can reimburse me for the unexpected expense.

A was downtown, too, getting ready to take the bus home, so I gave him a ride. I took something over to another friend's house for him, and I took that friend to the library, where they were having movie night (Metropolis). I stayed at the library working on the game notes, as I'd brought my laptop with me. I got home about 9 pm and then relaxed until about midnight, trying to keep awake longer than I have been, with success, although I'd woken up tired yesterday, and I lingered in bed a little too much this morning, as I got to work with only five minutes to spare after taking the shuttle in. On the other hand, I couldn't believe my eyes when I got the very first space as you come into the parking lot. It was a little weird that it was free. But, still, it made it easier to find the car when I left for an appointment. I walked this afternoon, afraid I'd missed the shuttle and in a hurry. Three shuttles passed me on the way, so I needn't have worried about that issue. I knew that fewer shuttles run during off-peak times, so I walked. But it was good exercise. Later I took a friend to get something, then we ate at Captain D's (I had my usual grilled wild salmon salad, but added fried green tomatoes this time to my order). After that, I went out to Costco to get some 100-watt-equivalent LED light bulbs for him. I also picked up some Edward Marc Chocolatier Coconut Almonds with Dark Chocolate, which I love, and he pointed out that perhaps because I didn't get 'goodies' much growing up, I tend to get something for myself whenever he gets something. It's a valid point. Then we went to Kroger to pick up a partial prescription for A, who had his ADHD medicine stolen out of his locker at work the other day and who had filed a police report, which was needed before they could replace it. He really needs it and was feeling awful. So after that, we went and dropped it off to him. Then I took my friend home and came home myself. Now I'm listening to Pandora and trying to get caught up on my blogging. I'm using a tool developed by Grammarly that examines your typing/writing not only for spelling errors (and I was able to set it to British English since I use that in my personal writing) but also grammatical ones as well. It's free at https://app.grammarly.com/. It works really well at alerting me to errors which I normally only catch after hitting 'publish' and proofreading on the page. Yay!

Okay, I think that's enough for now. I'm going to go eat the puffy pierogis I just baked. Maybe I'll write a little later.

A few random things from today

1. I discovered my betta had died today. I'm not sure if I'll replace him; it's only a three-gallon tank, and while it has a filter and bubbles and all, it's not ideal for a fish, and one can't go in the same tank (a 29 gallon long) with the goldfish because he'd probably fight with them, as bettas are terribly territorial.
2. I went to move my flamingo plant today in order to open the window and there were hundreds of ants (with pupae) underneath. Gross. I put the saucer on the windowsill next to the ant bait so they can either go outside or take the bait that's nearby. It was swarming too much to take it out through the apartment and the hall to the outside, so I just used the window screen.
3. I have a terrible sinus headache that has lasted for hours. It looks like it'll storm, and it's definitely supposed to rain tomorrow, I think. I'm going to lie down in a little while and see if that helps, after taking some ibuprofen.
4. I've visited a friend and helped him with a few things. He wasn't feeling great either and decided to lie down, so I came on home. I'll go back about 7 pm to help feed the animals and see if he's doing better.
5. I saw a great interview by a young woman with autism with Channing Tatum earlier. She uses a pad to communicate. It was her first interview, and she did a great job. She's got quite a sense of humour. Her name is Carly Fleischmann. YKWIA showed it to me, and we both liked it.
6. I usually pick a grey horse for the Kentucky Derby, if there is one running. This year, there are actually four on the roster, at least three with the same sire. I'm going to go with Creator, I think. Yesterday the odds were 10-1. I'm going to make sure I get up in time to watch the Derby. What can I say, it's a big thing here in Kentucky. Even if you're not partying or at the tracks, you're probably going to tune in for the actual race if you can.
7. I learned that I am incapable of using a 2-bladed razor, apparently, without doing bodily harm to myself, so I went to the store and got a five-bladed razor and some more shave cream to prevent 'cuts and nicks' in the future. I had a time stopping the bleeding, and finally slapped a giant Band-Aid on it. Maybe I should have looked for a styptic pencil as well.
8. When I went to open the window, I also discovered my aloe had lost its root structure, and while it is still alive, has nothing to anchor or nurture it, so it is essentially the unwalking dead. I rather like aloe, so that's sad. On the other hand, I took some bits that had fallen off my Christmas cactus and put them in dirt, oh, a couple of weeks ago, maybe, and one is budding. Yes, budding. So not only has it rooted, it's getting ready to bloom.
9. Having a headache is detrimental to my grasp of grammar--I had to make three corrections to this post, and two weren't typos. :( Hey, it happens sometimes when I'm tired or in pain, what can I say. At least I proofread both before and after I post.

I guess that's it for now. I'm going to go rest and see if I can take care of my headache. I'll probably write later.

Whew!

It’s been a weird day. I mostly did some things around the house, ate, and played a bubble shooter game on my phone without much success of getting through level 23 (it’s based off of Disney Pixar’s movie Inside Out). A had called me earlier today and explained that the snow ploughs had not made it to his street but that he was about to go out and do some shoveling. I asked him to give me an update later. About 2 pm he called and said the plough had been through, everything looked good, and he’d shoveled the walks and driveway for me. They were almost out of coffee, and we’re getting temperatures around 0 degrees tonight and tomorrow morning, so I figured conditions would just worsen, so I went out and spent a half-hour digging out my car with a broom and a dustpan. Yes, really. I do need to invest in a snow shovel, after never needing any for years. But last year we had over 10 inches in each of two storms two weeks apart, and this time, while the official measure was over 9 inches, A and I each have about 10 or 11, as our parts of town got more snow. Add the drifting from the wind and it could go up to three feet in places.

After digging out where I could (and I’m counting that as exercise for my Habitica application), and only falling down once into a drift onto my butt, I managed to get out of my parking place, and then there was a moving truck taking up most of the space near the curve to the exit from the parking lot, so I had to go through the snowier area. I got stuck on my street, which never gets ploughed as far as I can tell, but shifting into reverse and then into first and second gear (which I’ve never done using an automatic) and got out and down the road. The next street and the one after that wasn’t bad, just narrower. Once I got to Man O’War, things were just wet, except for slush where people pulled out of other streets here and there. None of the right turn lanes had been ploughed, though, so we were having to turn from the right straight lane instead. I went down Man O’War and then another road that I knew was a snow route just to be okay, not the normal back way I go. Then I got to their street, which was pretty decent, and into the driveway. A and I went and got a few groceries for each of us, stopped by Jin Jin and got Chinese food, and then I headed home, as I wanted to get back by dark and the sun was already low on the horizon. I got home shortly before 6 pm, managed to make it back into the very same parking place I’d been in, after negotiating my street again.

I came in and one of my floor lamps (the newest, which I got three years ago), was leaning awfully badly, so I tried fiddling with it, and it totally came apart and broke, much to my frustration. I decided to walk away from the lamp and eat my kung pao tofu and spring rolls and calm down a bit. When I went back it was obvious that it was broken and not merely unscrewed, and that it was designed somewhat poorly. I salvaged the heavy glass shades off of the torchiere piece and the two reading lamps, and I’ll get rid of the rest when I take things to the dumpster, then look for another one that is similar. It means the living room is a bit dark, having only the original floor lamp over by the computer, and nothing will come on when I flip the switch next to the door, but I’ll eventually get another, maybe when I get my tax refund and have a little money to spend. Who am I kidding, that will all go to bills, I’m sure. :)

So now that I have released the lamp to the Great Beyond and I’ve eaten, I feel better. There are plenty of things to do tonight, but my back and neck are hurting somewhat from wrestling with the lamp (the base was very heavy, and the whole thing was nestled in a spot in the corner behind the couch, which reclined while I was trying to line up the base with the pole and screw it back together. I probably needed two people to even get as far as I could, but in the end, the screw would not pop up to where the pole could be screwed in, and plastic parts, beyond the metal pieces that were giving me fits, just crumbled, especially up in the light. Fortunately I didn’t break any of the shades (I did break one once before when the lamp fell over, and had to replace the two small shades with something similar). In retrospect, the lamp has never truly been completely vertical at 90 degrees to the floor since then, so it probably was on its way out for some time and I managed to keep it going for awhile by leaning it against the wall and putting it between other objects. Oh, well.

To be honest, I think I’m going to lie down for just a little while and then maybe watch something on DVD. Or read. I don’t know yet. I did do a little reading last night, but the book was terrible in terms of grammar so I returned it. It purported to be a history of Rome, but it was very cursory at best, treating the entire period from the founding of Rome to Augustus Caesar in few pages, and I had doubts of it getting any better. Plus, it focussed on battles rather than much of (in my opinion) the more interesting history of Rome, the social and political aspects. Anyway, considering I’ve taken graduate classes where I had to learn the history of the Republic and the Empire pretty thoroughly, this seemed inadequate, more like a listing of kings and emperors. I already had to memorise the entire list of Roman Emperors, I don’t need another listing. What I wanted was a nice overview to jog my memories on certain aspects of Roman history, and was disappointed. The download included another book on the history of Aegypt and one on the history of Greece, but I decided to not even try those.

Okay, the bedroom and perhaps getting comfy with a book (or a Kindle) is calling me. Oh, and probably I’ll just fall asleep for awhile anyway. :)

Yes!

I'm not sure where this originated. I traced it as far back as Julia Quinn on Facebook. Still, it's great! I love the Oxford comma. (I'm also a two-spaces-after-a-period girl, though, too.)

Some of these have got to be joking...

Right? Please?

These 24 Spelling Fails Are Embarrassingly Terrible. #16 Is So Wrong.

All people are entitled to their opinion, and in America, we have free speech...

...but please folks, at least use good grammar on your signs, because you might wind up on the front page of the paper, and then get picked up elsewhere in media-land. People don't need any reinforcements that Kentuckians are uneducated hicks, thank you very much. Sigh. They weren't even actual homonyms.

From the 7/14/2015 edition of The Lexington Herald-Leader, page A1

Full article here:

Court case on marriage licenses in Rowan County may not be decided until August

Stupidity makes me sad, as Sheldon would say

Language School Blogger Fired for Writing About Homophones

A social media specialist for a Utah language school that teaches English to non-native speakers says he was fired for writing a blog post about homophones—words that sound the same, but carry different meanings—because his boss was afraid readers would think it was about "gay sex."

Tim Torkildson told the Salt Lake Tribune that shortly after his lesson went up, Nomen Global Language Center owner Clarke Woodger fired him, complaining "now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality."

"I had to look up the word" Woodger said, according to the account Torkildson published on his personal blog, "because I didn't know what the hell you were talking about. We don't teach this kind of advanced stuff to our students, and it's extremely inappropriate. Can you have your desk cleaned out by eleven this morning? I'll have your check ready."

Okay, obviously there's probably more to the story than just this, but it seems to me the school's owner shouldn't be in the education business. And no, their school is now going to be associated with stupidity, not homosexuality, in my opinion. Here's the Salt Lake Tribune article:

Paul Rolly: Blogger fired from language school over ‘homophonia’

Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch, their and there.

This concept is taught early on to foreign students learning English because it can be confusing to someone whose native language does not have that feature.

But when the social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center wrote a blog explaining homophones, he was let go for creating the perception that the school promoted a gay agenda.

Here is Torkildson's personal blog, iwritetheblogggs. Thanks to Carl Hylin, who commented on a Facebook post about it, thereby allowing me to see it and be horrified.

This is definitely the best of 'Weird Al' Yankovic so far!

Plus it is educational, and has some great word pairings. I particularly like a 'cunning linguist'.

How horrific

Ga. animal lovers killed by pack of wild dogs

Coroner: Dogs killed woman, then husband -- Pack of wild canines fatally maul couple near their rural Georgia home

I first heard the story a couple of days ago, before they released the cause of death, because the wife was a humanities bibliographer at the University of Georgia library, so it made it onto LISNews. Her husband was a retired professor of German and philosophy. According to the MSNBC article the two had divorced and the husband had moved to Kansas, where among other things he ran a prison library. So there are library connexions on both sides. After he retired, he returned to Georgia and wooed his ex-wife back.

Authorities believe that Sherry Schweder went out for a walk on Friday. One of their own dogs had disappeared about a month ago and she may have been looking for it. There's evidence that her husband, Lothar, went looking for her in their car. Both were found dead, mauled by a feral dog pack that was still on the scene when paramedics were called Saturday morning by those discovering the bodies. Authorities have rounded up 16 dogs they think may have been involved.

Wild dogs are a dangerous part of rural life, but an attack like this is so rare. I feel so sorry for this couple, and their sons. By all accounts Sherry Schweder in particular was a great animal lover; the couple had several pets (okay, more than several--20 cats and seven dogs) of their own, and she had apparently expressed concern over the strays in the area. It's especially sad that the very animals she was concerned about were involved in her death. But it is also a reminder that animals, even domesticated ones, are not without dangers, especially when turned loose out in the wild. This is just another reason for spaying/neutering and caring for dogs rather than allowing them to become feral. As it is, the eleven dogs and five puppies rounded up as being feral are being euthanised by court order. They're still looking for two dogs out there. They're also trying to find homes for the couple's animals.

My thoughts are with the Schweder family and the couple's colleagues in the aftermath of this tragic happening.

PS: To the Associated Press--Lightning and lightening are two different words. Please learn to use/edit them correctly. The error has been perpetuated on many sites, including both of the above.

Weird Al is the grammar police. Really.

I'm so following him on Twitter now.

Reason #326 for subscribing to your own blog in a feed

Almost every time I write a post, I spell check it, then preview it, scanning it for errors. But invariably there is the occasional mistake, and I've found the best way to catch such mistakes it to read the post in my Google Reader. That catches about 98% of them. Another 1% are caught by my friend YKWIA. But since I usually have Google Reader open at home, I get the early warning fairly quickly so that I can change the text before too many people see it. So if you see a glaring (or not-so-glaring) error in your reader, chances are it either has been or will be fixed shortly (I can't blog at work, so I have to wait) on the actual blog. But if the mistake's still there, feel free to comment. I hate making grammatical or spelling mistakes because I'm such a card-carrying grammar police member. Misplaced apostrophes and typos bother me quite a bit. I'd rather admit the mistake and fix it as soon as possible than to have it staring out into the aether of the Internet for years and years.

A fun parody

of Timbaland's 'The Way I Are' from the grammar police. :)

'Bad Grammar - The Way I Are Parody' featuring HotforWords and Sheena Melwani by JamesAtWar


Another one YKWIA showed me. Thanks!