Category: words

Returning to the old ways

Back in college, I took my studying rather seriously.

More seriously than my various roommates, my suitemates and pretty much everyone in the dorms where I lived.

I might have been a dork. Not sure….

Anyhow, when I was a kid, I had been lucky enough to have my own room, so I could study in there, door closed, and be most effective.

College was a whole crazy world of living with strangers. After lamenting my issues to my mom, she suggested I try the library on campus.

This sounded awful. I like being in my own space to study. To have my own comforts around.

But desperate for a solution, I packed up a backpack full of books and things, and walked over to the imposing building.

I was just a lowly freshman, and that library was intimidating!

But, as I looked around for a place that might work for good solid studying, I discovered this fabulous feature called a study carrel.

Oh yes.

I could sit in one of these bad boys with the high walls and block out the rest of the world. I could unload my backpack of all my things, set them around me, and create a personal space where I didn’t have to see or hear anyone.

In fact, over waaaay in the back, by the microfiche readers, where it was kind of dark, there was one lowly study carrel that was *mine*.

No one else liked it and hardly anyone came over that way. If they did, it was only briefly to read something on microfilm or microfiche, so it was blissfully quiet and I was mostly alone.

I got some really, really good studying done there. I spent HOURS in that carrel…while my friends, uh, had, you know…fun.

Good times, yes.

So, here it was, this past Saturday. The date was the 28th and I was still 5,000 words from the end of this year’s National Novel Writing Month challenge of 50,000 words.

The Good Man had to work on Saturday and so I was alone with my imposing battle.

I was really at a standstill on the writing. I hadn’t written a word in three days, and it looked like I was not going to make it to the finish line this year.

So, in a bid to change my scenery and thus get the ol’ Muse working again, I decided to go to the local library. The went to the one near where The Good Man works so we could meet later for a break.

In I go and I stalked around the place, looking for a good spot. It is a pretty ancient library, so not every table space has a power supply.

My antique Mac needs constant power feed.

So I trudged up to the third floor. I liked it because that floor was behind a closed door. That keeps it nice and quiet.

And lo and behold! They had study carrels. WITH POWER!

Ok! I’m in.

I even found one waaaaay toward the back, where no one else would go, plugged in my power supply, dipped my head behind the walls and got to work.

And who knew, all these many years later, the study carrel still works?

I banged out 4,000 words in about three hours, and would have finished to the end, but had to go meet the in-laws for dinner.

Later that night, after a margarita and some soothing Mexican food, I wrote the final 1,000 words and crossed the finish line of my fifth NaNoWriMo event.

I owe it all to that beautiful, wonderful, magical study carrel!

(terrible iPhone photo, but you can see how sunny and nice it is. I may go there again just because!)

Management…hamburger style

Currently, at the building across the way, there are some gentlemen hard at work putting a new roof on the two-story structure.

Roofing has got to be some grueling, backbreaking work, and they’ve been toiling at this for a few days now.

About an hour ago, all work went quiet over there. I thought maybe they were on a break. They weren’t on a break.

It appears they were having a little conference. What they’d call in the corporate world, a “root cause analysis”.

I suspect they discovered what, or rather, whom was at the center of the mistake, because I could then hear the supervisor of this project having a one-on-one mentoring conversation, loudly, with his employee.

Let’s keep this a family friendly post…for all the instances of the eff word, I will substitute a more appropriate word.

Oh let’s have fun with it, let’s use the word “hamburger.”

Here we go, a faithful recounting of this clearly very hands on and empathetic manager as he guides his employee through a big error.

Remember: hamburger = eff word

“You hamburgered up. You hamburgered this whole thing up. I didn’t hamburger up. All the rest of these hamburgering guys didn’t hamburger this thing up. What in the hamburgering hell were you thinking? You weren’t thinking and you hamburgered this hamburgering thing all to hell. What the hamburger, man?! What the hamburger happened?”

: sound of employee mumbling, trying to explain his reason for hamburgering everything up :

“You what? You what? Who the hamburger told you to do that? I sure as hell didn’t hamburgering tell you to do that! Now this whole hamburgering project is running behind and that costs hamburgering money? Do you get that? Do get that you’ve cost every hamburgering one of us some hamburgering time and some hamburgering money?”

: more mumbling :

“Aw man, what the hamburger. Get back to work!”

And with that, all the machines started up again, the smell of tar once again filled the air, and the team of folks got back to roofing.

This, among the many reasons why I feel so fortunate to be able to work a white collar gig. I’m pretty hamburgering sure that if my boss ever talked to me that way, I’d have a pretty good hamburgering lawsuit I’d think about.

If you hear a tiny *pop*

…it is the sound of my mind being blown.

*pop*

Yesterday, I talked about this whole period-space-space thing.

So today, I’m going to take on a few grammar rules. I am breaking Sister Mary Margaret’s ruler right over my Strunk and White. Oh yes I am!

(That sounds kind of….naughty! heh heh)

Ok, confession time: I didn’t go to Catholic school. APS was a-ok.

Apparently middle school is much on my mind this week. Likely reflective of my mental age right now…but I digress.

Today we speak of Mr. Parker. Oh yes, another educator that saw my brother and sister pass through the doors of his classroom before I came along, all impressionable and scared.

Mr. Parker was, to put it mildly, a grammar Nazi.

(Yes, that’s putting it mildly! And no I am *not* prone to hyperbole! Quit taunting me!)

Mr. Parker was all about forcing us to diagram sentences at the chalkboard.

(For the younger readers, yes, we used actual chalk in those days. And we had to walk uphill both ways to get to school.)

Mr. Parker would rattle off a sentence, and then we had to diagram the damn thing.

If you got stuck, he’d make sarcastic comments. Occasionally singing a little ditty meant to embarrass you. And then he’d tell you how you blew it. Because we always blew it when it came to diagramming sentences.

Fun.

So Mr. Parker’s waltzing, melodic teasing is in the back of my mind as I read this article:

Three grammar rules that are okay to break.

Doh! That’s wickedly delicious, like getting caught smoking out behind the portable buildings!

(Not that I did, I was am a painfully rules compliant girl)

Here we go:

1. Feel free to boldly split infinitives.

They quote the famous Gene Rodenberry line, “To boldy go where no man has gone before” as evidence that this is ok.

Hmm. Not sure “Star Trek” is the high water mark for grammatical correctness. Then again, maybe I could get into this.

Problem is, it’s also been drilled into me that adverbs should be kept to a minimum, under which “boldly” would qualify.

So…to capriciously break the rules, seems…well, I just did it, that’s not so bad.

Oh yeah, I’m turning to the dark side!

(Mixing metaphors too! Oh, I’m naughty!)

2. Ending a sentence with a preposition is nothing to worry about.

Ok, I admit it, I already do this. And I hear Mr. Parker in my head when I do, but damnit, I do it anyway.

But I’m not going to stop!

At least until I get in trouble and then I’ll be very compliant and mild.

3. Is it even okay to use sentence fragments? Yes.

Yeah, ok, fine. I do this. A lot. With frequency. And I’m not going to quit!

If loving sentence fragments is wrong, I don’t want to be right!

I often get that green squiggly underline in Word that says “sentence fragment, consider revising.” To which I reply, boldly: “NO!”

Then click ignore. It feels so good to click ignore.

You wanna know what else?

I also dangle my participles. I do and I’m not sorry.

Oh I’m grammatically running amok now!

Whoooooooo!

Uh oh

She’s borrowing from the random idea generator again.

Herewith, my list of my ten favorite quotes, in no particular order.

“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” – Oscar Wilde

I don’t actually read Oscar, or know much about him. This quote was told to me when I was in high school looking for a quote to go with my senior picture.

You know the drill, we all had to have a quote, our defining statement. I liked the sentiment, so I went with it. My alternate was something about describing the taste of an olive, it was a weird quote. So of course they used that one.

But the Oscar quote has stuck with me.

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture” – generally attributed to Martin Mull, but source is unclear.

First heard this quote in the little known and way under appreciated movie “Playing by Heart“.

This was before Angelina Jolie was, well, what she is now. She was only sort of known back then and is adorable in this movie. Her character is wacky and everything I wish I could be (including six feet tall and drop dead gorgeous), and she talks about this quote (attributing it to a musician friend), then subs in that “talking about love” is definitely like dancing about architecture.

I don’t know, it’s a quirky line. I like it.

“This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball. You got it?!?” – the Skip in Bull Durham.

How many times, as a manager, have I wanted to throw a sack of bats at the feet of my employees and holler at them about being lollygaggers?

The answer is: a lot

There are a lot of life lessons to be learned from the game of baseball. This is a fave quote I remember when I tend to overcomplicate things that should be simply elegant. Like the game of baseball.

“…and when we win this game, we’ll buy a keg of booze, and we’ll drink it to the Aggies ’til we wobble in our shoes…”

That is actually the actual words from the NMSU fight song. It always appealed to me greatly that at an institution of higher education, we were encouraged to, you know, drink.

Our forefathers from 1888 saw the future. They saw it clear. They knew exactly what my alma mater would be.

Makes me proud. : sniff, wipes a tear away :

“Hey, minion! Bring me a beer! And don’t lollygag!”

And by minion, of course, I mean The Good Man. (juuuuuust kidding!)

Speaking of those college days….how about:

“It’s only love when you’re loved in return.”

Ok, sure, it’s a quote from a Steve Wariner song.

But it was said with *meaning* by my best friend, back in college, when I discovered that the guy I’d been dating was cheating on me. It was my first taste of heartache. The guy was truly a cad.

Now that cad has been married to another friend of ours for the better part of twenty years. Proves that sometimes it’s not the boy, it’s just the wrong boy for you.

My bestest friend and I had occasion to recall this conversation recently, with a laugh. This was while recounting the story to my husband.

So all’s well that ends well, I believe.

And speaking of The Good Man…

“To my heart you have the key/It you who set me free/And time will surely show/That our love will grow and grow.” Lyrics from “Positively Meant to Be” by Jimmie Vaughan

The words on the page don’t really have the same impact as they do when heard on top of the low and slow blues guitar sound from Mr. Vaughan (brother of Stevie Ray, totally different style).

It’s a song I sing to my sweetie. I know, I know…too goopy for words. But it’s my song for, or rather about, him.

Ok, let’s ungoop this thing…

“No matter where you go in life after this, it will always be better than Tucson.” – From the movie “Hamlet 2”

Ok, apologies in advance to anyone from Tucson or anyone who actually *likes* Tucson.

I have had several occasions to spend time in Tucson. Not the least of which is that the Colorado Rockies have their Spring Training facility there. In the City of Tucson, I’ve been treated bad, eaten awful food, my friend had her car towed (from an unmarked area) and been lost in muther f-word “downtown” Tuscon with confusing highway markers.

And when, while watching Hamlet 2, they said that line, the beverage I was enjoying came rocketing out of my nose like Ol’ Faithful.

Well said, sir. Well said.

And just to prove I can be fair, I’ll also include:

“Even for Albuquerque, this is pretty Albuquerque.”

Also a nose geyser line, spoken seriously and rather snidely by Kirk Douglas in the movie Ace in the Hole.

An utterly forgettable movie with an unforgettable line.

Ya gotta be from ABQ to understand it. But you know, there is a lot about Albuquerque that is just soooooooo Albuquerque.

‘Nuff said.

“May the bird of paradise fly up your nose.”

If Little Jimmy Dickens wasn’t a poet, I don’t know who is. In fact, country music is ripe with quotable quotes. Country living and cowboys tend to have some colorful descriptors, but that’s a whole other post for another day.

Ok, ok, I’ll end on an inspirational note…or something…

Seems fitting, uplifting. Don’t let those bastards getcha down!

“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” – Frida Kahlo

Beautifully painful and erudite, all at once.

I’m sure I’m forgetting quotes I adore, but can’t quite access in the ol’ brain matter today.

It happens.

Maybe I need to go out and flap my yapper and make some quotable quotes of my own…..

Semantics, what a kick!

I am quite the fan of words and language, and so it’s no surprise that while traversing the interwebs yesterday, I was drawn to an article talking about an affinity (or lack thereof) for certain words.

It’s not very interesting to know that love is picked most often as a favorite and hate picked as least favored.

But it’s the words that come in next on the list that were really fascinating to me.

Evidently, there is a good portion of the world that have a real problem with the word moist, devoting Facebook pages and blogs to the hatred of this word.

Hmm.

I’m ok with moist. It doesn’t have a bad connotation for me. I also like to use the made-up derivation moisty when referring to something that has a moist quality. Like, those damp Swiffer cloths. Those are “the moisty-kind Swiffers” (an abomination of the English language, I don’t deny).

Another disfavored word on the list is panties, and I’ll admit, I’m not a fan either. It is probably because the word is most often used by guys, and said with a letch quality to it. Skeeving me out doesn’t make me like a word so much.

However, I LOVE the word chones for the same article of clothing.

Yes, I own my Spanglish. I’m a New Mexican, it’s our state language. (Look no further than the “Toss No Mas” ad campaign!)

Also, people seem not to like the word ointment. I like it. Gotta say it with heavy emphasis on the “oi” part, though, and make a funny face while you do it. Makes the word fun!

But! I *much* prefer unguent (also said with a face). Man, that’s a great word. Salve is not bad either.

Some of the words on the hated list, like vomit, are more about the connotation of the word and not the word itself. Vomit can be fun to say! But no so much fun to do. So I guess I get why people don’t like it. I think the word itself gets a bad rap.

And one person notes her least fave word is vigil, which, must be a weird one-person thing, because I don’t get it.

I tried to think about what is my own least favorite word and nothing came immediately to mind. I can pretty much find something redeemable in most words.

While taking a walk, I realized that the words that make me wince are usually the made up and overused business-speak like mindshare and synergy.

Right now my least favorite word has to be optics. Not the word itself, but how it’s used at my job. It is put in place of “how it looks”. So, for example, if a supplier hands you the keys to a brand new Porche, even if it’s only to go for a fun spin around the parking lot, the optics of the situation are bad.

I was told, after one of my employees messed something up and the complaint went all the way to the VP, “yeah, the optics aren’t good on this situation.”

It’s sort of a way to make something sound scientific and serious…when it’s NOT.

Favorite words? Onomatopoeias (words that sound like what they mean). Squelch!! Boom! Bap!

Delicious bon mots for the day!

Oh, and simpatico. LOVE that word!

Yeah. Good stuff.