Random Rantings

I've been meaning to write about this for a long time. My work # is one digit away from a telemarketer's number. The difference seems to be a zero vs. an eight. You would be SHOCKED at the number of people in this country who: 1) call random #s back that show up on their caller id; and 2) can't tell the difference between an 8 and a 0. When I get to work after a weekend or even just overnight, I can tell that my telemarketer was at work because I'll have 8 or more missed calls with any number of voicemail messages ranging from "Don't ever f***ing call me again." (to which I respond, "I didn't, you idiot.") and "I'm just returning your call." Who the bloody hell calls telemarketers back????

2nd rant of the day has to do with people who do not appreciate window seats. I'm not talking about on the plane, because I'm an aisle person myself. I'm talking about at work. I work in a massive building (I've been told it holds 6500 people) and up until they moved my group to Building C (for Crappy) I always had a window seat (to me, a window seat is any desk from which you can see the window w/o having to stand up. I was always a row or two away from the window, but again, to me, that's a window seat. Since the move in September back to Building A (for Fabulous – although it's really not, just is in comparison to Building C) I'm stuck a good six rows from the window, but besides that there's a supervisor cube just on the other side of my row toward the window and supervisor cubes are higher than regular peon employee cubes. And to top it off, the jackass supervisor has a huge poster board of something jutting up an additional 3 feet (almost to the ceiling). Anyway, in all the years (six) that I had a window seat, I never once closed the blinds and my computer screen always faces the window so there's a glare. To me, when you're stuck inside working for 8+ hours a day, you put up with a little glare and you keep the blinds open, so you can have a clue what the weather is outside. And you don't feel so claustrophobic. Now I literally never have any idea what it's doing outside, unless I check the Freep before leaving. I get in early enough that I will go to the windows and open the blinds before anybody else is in. I had a battle of wills with the group near the windows, until they finally figured it out and there's now a compromise. They leave the blinds open, except on one window. I think the window seat people are spoiled and need to be moved away from the windows and their desks given to people who appreciate a glimpse of the outside – like me!

Here in Michigan I've heard a number of people say that if it's going to be cold they want snow and also that they want to see the sun. I disagree on both scores. First off, snow does NOT make cold weather any more palatable. In fact, to me, it makes it that much worse, because snow sucks – just for the record. And the sun issue? Here's the deal: when it's sunny in Michigan in January or February, you can guarantee that it's bloody cold. Case in point: last week the sun was blindingly bright and it was, as I like to put it, freezing butt cold – negative windchills, etc. Yesterday and today, the temps have been in the 30s and 40s, respectively, and guess what, it's cloudy!! I'd much rather have it be 40 and cloudy than sunny and -20, which is what it's going to be tomorrow. Yup, good ol' Michigan, the temperature is going to have a variance of 60F degrees in less than 24 hours. I'm going to be an unhappy camper walking to work tomorrow. Have I told you that I hate winter? I'm not sure I have.

I leave next Tuesday after work for Vegas. I'm bummed because it's not going to be "Kathleen lying by the pool while HRH takes on the house" weather. ;-( I have no clue what I'm going to do Wednesday & Thursday while HRH plays blackjack. I was hoping to lie by the pool and read a book. Ah well. [Okay, I know that I'm a self-confessed grammarian, but I have to admit that I have always had trouble with lay vs lie. I thought it was people lie on beds, but you lay the book (or some other inanimate object) on the table, but I'm just not sure. Can anybody help me on this point?]

My LB and his girlfriend (whom I quite like – first time ever) are coming down from NorCal and on Friday we're all going to Zion National Park. Saturday we're going to the Valley of Fire and then Sunday, the LB, his GF and I will be going hiking at Red Rock (HRH doesn't hike – she likes looking at nature, but doesn't like to be "in" it). I'm very excited. It'll be nice to see the LB and spend more time with his GF who just seems to be quite lovely.

I finally took a picture of the very cool purse I got for my b-day way back in August that I never posted. I also took a pic of my first knitted lace scarf. I swear I'm going to buy an external hard drive and get my music off the computer and download pictures. Sometime this century you'll be inundated with all the pics I've taken since last April. (Road America, Baltimore, Maine, Vegas, scarves, purses, etc.)

Grammar Lessons

I've been bandying about the idea of writing a grammar post and have decided to go with it, even at the risk of boring my few readers who are much too fabulous to ever make any of these mistakes. I just have to get it off my chest!

I'm doing this because the use of bad/incorrect grammar drives me up a tree. One of the admins at work sent out an e-mail last year that read "…taken for granite…" Needless to say, I almost lost my mind on that one. Whatever happened to admins being exceptional in their grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, so they can fix the boss' mistakes because they're much too busy? I can tell you for a fact that it's gone right out the hermetically closed windows at my work.

I'm going to start with the easy ones (and probably my biggest pet peeve):

Your = possession, i.e., your house, your car, your butt, your mother, etc.
You're = You are, as in "you're welcome."

Yup, it's not "your welcome." It's "you are welcome," hence, "you're welcome."

We used to get people at the ESPN racing chat back in 1995/96 who would come in and "Your stupid. Racing sucks." Yeah, they were obviously brain trusts. And we'd get them a lot. It reached the point that when they'd show up, everybody else would sit back and wait for my grammar lesson, it invariably got them to leave very quickly which flaming back at them never did.

A corollary to the first one:

Its vs. it's - Oy vey, people, this is NOT hard!

Its = possession, i.e., its methodology, its arms (be they robotic or monster), its proximity, etc.
It's = it is

There are no exceptions to this rule. Trust me on this one!!!

Another of my pet peeves (yes, I have many in this subject area) is the recent proliferation of the apostrophe to form a plural. IT IS NOT NECESSARY!!! In fact, it's downright WRONG!! I have no clue why this is happening, but it honestly has to stop before I have a heart attack. ;-) It's freaking everywhere. There's a bakery in Greektown that has one of those dry erase boards on which they write what fabulous items they're selling that day (it doesn't change much, actually) and one day they had listed "éclair's, napoleons, cake's, meringue's, etc. I went up to that board and before going in, rubbed out all extraneous apostrophes with my finger. I have no clue why "napoleons" was done correctly, but it was. I don't care if the word ends in a vowel, the apostrophe is used to show possession or in a contraction (i.e., can not = can't), not multiples of an item. It can also be used as a single quote, but you damn well better be using two, one at the beginning and one at the end of the quote.

Next on my list (and again I have no clue how this started) is using the word "good" when you mean fine or well. The correct response to the question "How are you?" is NOT "good." You are well or fine, perhaps, even unwell, but not GOOD!!! Unless, of course, you just donated $100 to your favorite charity, but in that case you are a good person. Good is an adjective (see previous usage of good with person). Well/fine are adverbs and you need an adverb to describe how you *ARE*. Adverbs describe verbs (which is a-whole-nother paragraph), adjectives describe nouns.

Another example of where "well" should be used instead of "good" is in basic sports talk – "We played well tonight." I heard Kris Draper of the Red Wings say that a few years ago and I almost wept with joy at the correct grammar. "We played good" just puts my teeth on edge.

This brings us to the next lesson in adverbial usage. I'm going to use another sports example, since they're so common. "We played defensive." ARGH!! NO!!! "We played defensively." Or if you must use defensive… "We played a defensive game." Again, defensively describes how "we" PLAYED. I don't know what the poor –ly did to people, but it has damn near disappeared from usage and it makes me sad.

Another example: I walked home quickly yesterday because the wind chill was going right through me. – Quickly describing how I WALKED, not me.

Which brings me to my last grammatical point, at least for today, the use of he vs. him, she vs. her, etc., particularly after a preposition.

The other day my niece said, "So-and-so gave it to Tom & I." The YS and I immediately gave her a grammar lesson.

You wouldn't say "So-and-so gave it to I" you would say "to me." Therefore, just because whoever so-and-so is gave it (whatever it is) to Tom and you, it does not change the grammar rule of using the objective (me) vs. subjective (I). "Grandma gave it to Tom and me." Or expanded: "Tom and I were at Grandma's today and she gave a plate of cookies to him and me." (or "to us.")

This is a very common mistake with the preposition "between." I think people think it sounds more classy or something, because this one really makes people argue.

Incorrect - "The problem is between Tom & I and we'll solve it ourselves."
Correct - "The problem is between Tom and me, and we'll solve it ourselves."

Or even more commonly, "Between you and I,…" should always be "Between you and me,…"

And don't try to argue with me that it sounds better, etc., the wrong way because it doesn't. You just think it does, because it's so prevalent that it sounds right. When you get used to the correct way, you, too, will cringe the next time an athlete says, "Me and Tom played good tonight." I trust I don't have to discuss the "me" as subject usage nor its placement. ;-)