Category: General

Posted on
by

Via WebWord:

Do You Speak American? is an upcoming documentary about the many dialects that make up American English.

Some interesting observations include:

  • Major cities’ dialects are actually diverging, not converging as people predicted with the spread of TV and travel.
  • Another “great vowel shift” is underway in the Great Lakes region.
  • Most Americans consider the midwest accent closest to “normal” English.
  • Southern is the largest dialect group in the country.

And for local flavor, the writeup mentions that they interviewed teenagers in Irvine, obtaining slang terms like “uber” and “tight.”

Posted on
by

We got home tonight, after a good round of beer therapy and poking fun at the evil that is casual dinnerware, and found that we now live in Aliso Springs. They didn’t change the city name, mind you, just the name of our apartment “village.” We’d been wondering how they were going to handle having painted over the metal number plates affixed to our doors. Now we know: artsy little ceramic number plates affixed to the stucco, using slightly eastern script for the “Aliso Springs” and that much-too-popular raggedy calligraphy one for the numbers.

Gag me. These people need to get a clue. This place was never high-class and it’s never going to be. And, considering how frelling expensive it is to live in the kind of place they want to turn this into, it shouldn’t be, not in this area.

I think I need more beer therapy.

Posted on
by

I’m aware that I’ve been grumbling for a while that my drama-queen examiner (who has reappeared, by the way, and pretty much kept from disappearing again) would get more done if she’d delegate stuff to me. However, I don’t think that the week we’re cleaning up in the wake of a major system upgrade when all the examiners are trying to close files for month end and I’m handling the work of a guy on his honeymoon is really the best time to start…..

Posted on
by

It seems like every time they try to get on track with painting the apartments, it rains. They actually started shrouding everything in plastic yesterday and primer-coated the balconies, and some of the stucco got painted. I’m interested to find out how much they got done before the clouds let loose today. And how long it’s going to take them to regroup. (At least the plastic on the bushes and satellite dishes will have served some strange purpose…)

Posted on
by

I just about had a heart attack this morning when I noticed that not only had they put in the cubicle divider I’d been wanting since getting this desk, but my iPod was sitting on my desk waiting to greet me.

Yep, I needed the 3-day weekend.

Posted on
by

One of my co-workers has disappeared. She called in yesterday and said she was waiting for the electrician, and then didn’t show up. Today she called in and said she’d be in at noon, then didn’t show. She’s done this sort of thing before, but never two days in a row after being 3 hours later than usual the Friday of the week before. (Didn’t put a battery backup in her alarm clock.) Now there are reports that her cell phone was stolen and is no longer in service, and that she was in tears when she called this morning. And she won’t tell anyone anything, which is diametrically opposed to her usual TMI-inducing self. Depending on who you talk to, this is either scary or a complete sham.

So here I am, her underling, trying to make sense of the overdue messes she’s left while our supervisor is on vacation, and watching the number of voicemails on her phone creep up. Soon it’ll be full and the calls will start coming to me. What with the flu doing its KO on personnel, I’m already busy by way of being the only healthy person not on vacation. (Whee.) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if this keeps up, I’ll be hard put not to ask for a raise.

ROTK review soon. I promise.

Posted on
by

So work decided to do Halloween on the 30th rather than the 31st because some people don’t work Fridays. This was a good thing, considering that we have not only a potluck but also a costume contest and a pumpkin-carving contest all on the same day and I have a finite amount of time after work. Last year, I was scrambling to make whatever it was I made and carve the Eye of Sauron into a pumpkin (costume was taken care of–Ren Faire outfit) on the night of the 30th, which was very not fun. This year, I baked the cookies on Monday and took Tuesday off for the usual Farscape night. Wednesday, after getting back from the pointless class I’m taking for work, we frosted the cookies while watching Angel and I carved my replica of the “Gourdzilla” face from Monday’s Grand Avenue strip and went out and tossed a mini-pumpkin on the ground to put in its mouth. Easy, simple, and I got sleep.

Here’s what I wore to work.
2003 Halloween
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until the other people in my unit started talking about making a graveyard in the space between my desk and the cubes across the aisle and then doing makeup like dead people. I, being the genius I am, said something like, “Oh, and hey, I can be the undertaker.” So that’s what we did. The graveyard didn’t get made, but everybody dressed dead and someone played “Thriller” really loud. And I won the costume contest.

Gourdzilla also won a prize.

We are now in possession of four no-restrictions, no-expiration passes to Regal theaters, and $20 in gift certificates. So now everybody can go see Return of the King regardless of cashflow. Cool.

The best part of having two days of Halloween is that I had a chance to carve a second pumpkin.
Aeryn pumpkin in lightAeryn pumpkin dark
I’d been dying to try this since seeing that other Farscape images had been converted into jack-o-lanterns, and I’d been telling Kelson’s mom I’d give it to her. So it was good to have an extra night to get this done and remember exactly how much I love carving pumpkins. And tomorrow night, it’ll be good to get some frelling sleep…..