If I hear James Blunt yelping "You're Beautiful" one more time this week, I may not be responsible for my actions.
A quick Google search reveals that I am not alone.
28 February 2006
27 February 2006
Hypnosis
You are getting sleepy...sleepy...you will sleep, and when you wake up, you will bring me catnip...
Getting Better
With the bird photography.
Now if could just fire off a few shots of the brilliant red male cardinal who's been visiting the windowsill lately...
Now if could just fire off a few shots of the brilliant red male cardinal who's been visiting the windowsill lately...
25 February 2006
Goat Tea
I hold a part-time job on the side proofreading for a brand quality assurance company. Each quarter, the brand auditors (mystery shoppers) go out to every location of a nationally-known coffee shop and then file their little spy reports online. The forms are standardized, the information the nationally-known coffee shop is looking for is very specific, and a style guide is issued to each shopper. The company needs people to edit the raw reports because some of the shoppers evidently have no more read the style guide than they have read Boйнa и миp in the original Russian.
The register smiles and makes eye contact. Barristers mix drinks. Things start to heat up when employees service patrons. The pasty cases are clean and full of delicious-looking pasties, which could mean one thing in Sault Sainte Marie and something totally different on, say, Sunset Boulevard. In the employee description section, one gentleman was said to have a “goat tea.”
Is that made by Twinings?
Really, most of the mystery shoppers provide good reports and have a better grasp on usage than the above examples. I don't mean any harm by this post (please don't dooce me!). It's great that I get to work at home in my pajamas, cat on feet, mug of darjeeling, or Irish breakfast, or genmai-cha in hand.
One of these days I’ll have to try that goat tea. Now 'scuse me as I kiss this guy.
The register smiles and makes eye contact. Barristers mix drinks. Things start to heat up when employees service patrons. The pasty cases are clean and full of delicious-looking pasties, which could mean one thing in Sault Sainte Marie and something totally different on, say, Sunset Boulevard. In the employee description section, one gentleman was said to have a “goat tea.”
Is that made by Twinings?
Really, most of the mystery shoppers provide good reports and have a better grasp on usage than the above examples. I don't mean any harm by this post (please don't dooce me!). It's great that I get to work at home in my pajamas, cat on feet, mug of darjeeling, or Irish breakfast, or genmai-cha in hand.
One of these days I’ll have to try that goat tea. Now 'scuse me as I kiss this guy.
19 February 2006
Heh-heh. She Said, "Laid."
Good afternoon, my fine Hawklets. Find the error in today's headlines on Excite:
Kudos to those who know the jackpot winner is really "lying low" and not "laying low."
Here's the low down. "Lay" means "to place or put." It's a transitive verb and needs an object. "Lay" is something you do to something else. You lay a book on a table. "Lie" means to "to recline." It is an intransitive verb and does not act upon anything else. You just lie down, no object required. You lie low. Or, to use the present participle, you are lying low.
Confusion seeps in with phrases like "Now I lay me down to sleep." Hey - shouldn't that be "lie?" No, because In this case, "me" is the object being acted upon. Further confusion arises in past tense, because the past tense of "lay" is "laid," and the past tense of "lie" is, just to muck things up, "lay."
Past participle is where it gets really hairy, and I admit even the Kimmijo gets this one wrong. The past participle of "lay" is "laid," as in "They have laid 500 feet of pipe a day." The past participle of "lie" is the endangered, rarely spotted "lain," as in, "I could have lain in bed all day."
Don't feel badly about this one. This particular grammar obfuscation has been going on since the 1300's. I take it as evidence against intelligent design. It also made my seventh grade English teacher cry, because we all giggled and whispered every time she said, "laid."
ps. "Layed" does not exist, except as a misspelling.
pps. Next on "Law & Order: Grammar Police": Affect/effect!
Kudos to those who know the jackpot winner is really "lying low" and not "laying low."
Here's the low down. "Lay" means "to place or put." It's a transitive verb and needs an object. "Lay" is something you do to something else. You lay a book on a table. "Lie" means to "to recline." It is an intransitive verb and does not act upon anything else. You just lie down, no object required. You lie low. Or, to use the present participle, you are lying low.
Confusion seeps in with phrases like "Now I lay me down to sleep." Hey - shouldn't that be "lie?" No, because In this case, "me" is the object being acted upon. Further confusion arises in past tense, because the past tense of "lay" is "laid," and the past tense of "lie" is, just to muck things up, "lay."
Past participle is where it gets really hairy, and I admit even the Kimmijo gets this one wrong. The past participle of "lay" is "laid," as in "They have laid 500 feet of pipe a day." The past participle of "lie" is the endangered, rarely spotted "lain," as in, "I could have lain in bed all day."
Don't feel badly about this one. This particular grammar obfuscation has been going on since the 1300's. I take it as evidence against intelligent design. It also made my seventh grade English teacher cry, because we all giggled and whispered every time she said, "laid."
ps. "Layed" does not exist, except as a misspelling.
pps. Next on "Law & Order: Grammar Police": Affect/effect!
18 February 2006
Quote of the Day
"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened."
-- Willa Cather
-- Willa Cather
16 February 2006
Redemption
The Valentine redeemed himself. The chocolates out of the heart-shaped box are very nice. I could do without the stuffed bear and the lip-shaped strawberry lollipops, but I'm not going to rag on him too much. He claims they were not the first things he spotted on sale at CVS on Tuesday at midnight.
He really made good with the offer of cooking dinner at my place Friday night, complete with his family recipe for pasta sauce. Says he has to stir it for two hours. Maybe I should make him wear the French maid outfit (kidding!).
He really made good with the offer of cooking dinner at my place Friday night, complete with his family recipe for pasta sauce. Says he has to stir it for two hours. Maybe I should make him wear the French maid outfit (kidding!).
14 February 2006
Hear That Ringing? It's the Clue Phone
And my Valentine's Day "date" (whom I am actually meeting up with tomorrow) might want to answer it. Actual line of dialogue from this evening's telephone conversation:
"I'm not obligated to buy anything, am I? Because flowers are, like, ridiculously expensive."
Note to self: Reconsider feasibility study of "date" becoming "boyfriend."
"I'm not obligated to buy anything, am I? Because flowers are, like, ridiculously expensive."
Note to self: Reconsider feasibility study of "date" becoming "boyfriend."
08 February 2006
I wonder how much a Fibonacci sequence goes for?
One of the joys of being the only creative in the office is having to justify, explain, unriddle every blessed thing I do. Numerous times I have explained why the picture, pull quote, or box will look better if it is sized and placed so it doesn’t break the underlying grid system. I do my best to protect the oases of white space from encroaching text, inching in from the columns and wanted there by those possessed of a horror vacui that rivals that of a Byzantine mosaic maker.
Today I gathered some ammunition, getting ready for a skirmish over why I placed a “What’s Inside” table of contents box in the non-random place that I did, and not in the random place that was suggested. It wasn’t really based on the golden mean since the page proportions were not 1:1.618, but I felt reassured that should I ever need this irrational number of the ancient philosophers, I could pick it up cheaply by sniping an auction on eBay.
Today I gathered some ammunition, getting ready for a skirmish over why I placed a “What’s Inside” table of contents box in the non-random place that I did, and not in the random place that was suggested. It wasn’t really based on the golden mean since the page proportions were not 1:1.618, but I felt reassured that should I ever need this irrational number of the ancient philosophers, I could pick it up cheaply by sniping an auction on eBay.
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