I cannot get awake yet this morning. I didn't oversleep at all, but just still feel groggy and tired, even with half a cup of coffee down. I feel like I need to go take a cold washcloth to my face and eyes to wake up. Plus, I left my grocery list I was adding to the past several days downstairs in the kitchen, so maybe going back down to retrieve that will wake me up.
Fun fact: I almost always mistype my "ie" or "ei"'s. No matter what my brain does not want to remember the correct spelling. Even though I am an excellent speller, LOL. But every time I have to correct my ie, ei in typing I am reminded that I failed the spelling bee because of that! Let's go back to 6th grade. Always 100% on my spelling tests. We had a class spelling bee and I won. Then we had a school spelling bee and I won. Then I was told I could go to the district spelling bee and another 6th grade teacher wanted to help me practice for that. I think this was the first I realized about the national spelling bee contest. Ok, let's do it. Yikes. This guy was serious! We'd meet after school and spell and spell. He'd send me home with these books to practice and learn to spell obscure words I'd never heard of. I practiced and practiced. Then the big district spelling bee came and I got to like 2 or 3 people left (I think it was me and another) and I missed.....on "niece" (I still misspelled it just now and had to retype). It was a bummer.
Then the next year was 7th grade in junior high. We had the class spelling bee. I won. We had the school spelling bee. I won. I know I went to district again, but I don't really remember that one or what I lost on. I was disqualified mid pack or so. I was not that disappointed. Then 8th grade came and it was time for the class spelling bee. Oh no! I wasn't doing that again! It was too much work and I was so not interested in doing that again, so I had to make myself purposely miss an easy word to get out of it, haha.
I did not end up making bread yesterday. I decided to take out some of the frozen dinner roll dough I use for pizza and just make rolls to have with dinner. But then just as I was going to put them in the oven dh said he wanted to go get burgers, so of course I didn't argue with that. Burgers, onion rings and vanilla shake. When we got home I did bake the rolls since they were ready, and I'll just save them to reheat with dinner tonight.
It was almost 90 degrees out yesterday. I did get the rest of the outside plants trimmed up from old dead prior year stuff still on some of them. I see the lilac bush now has green sprouts all over. DH will probably have to mow today. DH got weed killer applied all along the fence line. Then he finally did a project he's been wanting to do for at least 6 months. Ever since we had our hvac guy put in that air exchanger system. He was lazy and just put the switch for it down in the crawl space. At first dh didn't think anything of that, until he realized everytime he wants to adjust the setting (it has 3 settings, plus an off mode) he has to go down into the crawl space! He's like this is so stupid! Why would he think I want to do this every time?! So about 6 months ago he ordered the wiring needed and finally decided yesterday to get it done and he wired up the switch on the wall just below our thermostat. I had to help some, while he fed the wire up into the wall from down below.
I feel like I did more yesterday, but I guess not. I can't think of anything else, other than a bit of inside window cleaning where you can see kitty prints all over.
I have tomorrow off so I can go see my mom for her birthday. 82 this year. We also need groceries badly, it's been over 3 weeks since we last got a big order from Walmart. I'm going to make cupcakes tonight to take to her. Today I'm going to call where she lives and ask if it's ok if I bring the whole batch of cupcakes to leave there for others to eat. I'm sure it's ok, but I want to make sure. We also need to stop at the farm feed store and get our annual lawn fertilizer that needs to be applied early May. So, for all this we will need to take the truck. Since we are taking the truck I'm not going to take my mom out to lunch. It's just too hard now for her to get up and down into/out of it, even with help. I'll just take the cupcakes and a gift I have for her and we'll spend an hour or so with her there, after she is done with lunch. With taking the pickup we will put the fertilizer in the back bed and we put our groceries up in the cab, where the back seat folds up and leaves a big area. That way we won't have bags of fertilizer near our food, haha.
I am actually a pretty good speller, and worked briefly as a copy editor one summer in college, but I am a lousy typist, which is funny, because I was an excellent typist in high school. I don't do as well as on a laptop, it would appear! I don't mind seeing obvious typos, but the one thing that infuriates me to no end is pluralizing with apostrophes. (Or, "apostrophe's.") It takes more time to add an apostrophe than just the "s," unless, of course, the word ends in "y." In that case, it's really not that hard to drop the "y" and add "ies." Our high school recently sent out an email with the heading "Tech. Fines' List." I was livid. Come on, this is the SCHOOL. I wrote to the principal telling her it was bad enough I had to suffer all these years with the misplaced singular apostrophe to pluralize, as in "macho taco's" on the lunch menu, among other things, but I wasn't going to stand for the even weirder looking plural apostrophe. It seems it's only been in the past 20 years or so that I've noticed this misuse of the apostrophe. We certainly wouldn't have been allowed to abuse that poor piece of punctuation that way when we were in school, so I don't know what happened.
ReplyDeleteOh, Thursday, Friday and Saturday here were in the 70's. (Proper use of apostrophe for pluralizing there, by the way.) You'll find it funny that I thought of you, because we had several road closures due to accidents. On Thursday afternoon, my contractor had just left after building me some lovely porch railings. He called me shortly after he left saying the State Road was closed, and asked me if I knew of another way to the bridge. It took him 40 minutes to go 14 miles! The next morning, power was out in part of our area due to someone hitting a pole in our area. The first nice weather brings them out of the woodwork in the PNW, doesn't it? I remember you saying words to that effect. It was so bad on our little enclave, that I didn't even head into "town" on Saturday. I waited until Sunday, when the temperatures dropped. It was nice to have some warmer days, though. Plus, I had to paint my railings, so the sun was a treat! Send some more our way!
While I'm a great speller, I am terrible at proper punctuation. See that same jr high, at the beginning of 8th grade English class did some testing. They determined I was too advanced for it, apparently. Of course there were no advanced classes back then (circa 1977/78) so what did they do? They told me they wanted me to help in the attendance office instead for that class period. OMG - I hated that "job". And apparently what they went over in class that year was proper punctuation, so I never really learned it very well! But, I'd say most of my mistakes are like you say, just typing errors.
DeleteI was shy, which was hard enough. But the lady (or maybe there was 2 of them, it's been too long now, I don't remember all the details) that worked in the office was such a crab. My job was to go to each classroom and pick up their attendance reports. Being a shy introvert - OMG - do you know how stressful it was to walk into every classroom while they were in session and have everyone look to see who just came through the door?! LOL. And then one day going into the shop class, which had stairs going down into it, I twisted my ankle bad. I got back out into the hallway and could barely walk on. I managed to limp my way all the way back to the office and told the office lady and she couldn't give a flying you know what. Didn't even send me to the nurses office. By the time I got home at the end of the day and my mom saw my extremely swollen ankle she was so mad at that office lady.
DeleteGoodness! I too, worked for our attendance office, with three other girls in 7th grade, because we were too advanced for any of the reading classes going on at that time. When we were done picking them up and delivering them, we could go back to the classroom when we were done, which by then, was the universal "free reading" time. (Wish they'd bring that back, btw.) I'm not proud about this, but one day we took the attendance sheets, and tossed them down the stairs, so we could go back and read. Part of the reason we hated doing it is because we had to walk into classrooms--nobody wants to be on view like that in 7th grade. The other reason was because we really just wanted to read--which we should have been able to do. Eventually, someone found the sheets, and we were called in to the office, blah, blah, parents notified. My father, to his credit, BLEW UP. and told the school, it wasn't our job to do their administrative work to pass time because they couldn't provide a challenging course of study. It was their job to provide a challenging course of study so we didn't have to do their administrative work to pass time. We were eventually allowed to form a sort of book club during that period. Granted, my parents lectured me about (and those girls who were my friends) about how to properly handle issues like that--speak up, or ask a parent to advocate--but they did understand our frustration as well.
DeleteAnd notice all my typos in that post--again, laptop, with cat on the keyboard. I'd never submit anything like that professionally. xoxo!
Delete"I before e, except after c" - one of the many rules I had drummed into my head!
ReplyDeleteI came here to write that too Bobbie. I'm wondering if it is consistently true but I guess I'll never know!
DeleteYes, I do know this, haha! But unless I actually stop and make myself say it with every ei/ie word, I tend to type it out wrong.
DeleteThere are exceptions to the rule of i before e. You just have to learn how to spell the word. The exceptions were so frustrating to students!
DeleteThe rest is--"i before e except after c or when sounded as a as in neighbor or weigh." And, then there is the exception to the rule category, like weird. I never had any trouble even with exceptions and oddball words.
ReplyDeleteI won the senior spelling bee for our county. Through the years, I am the person who is always asked how to spell words. I have a friend who calls me to spell words. I tell him to try it and use the word-check that shows up. He cannot spell a word well enough for word check to recognize it.
Actually, temperature in the 70s does not use an apostrophe.
I am an English teacher and have BA is English and all the work for the MA. However, I cannot locate my style manuals which have the last say for me.
I had an excellent style book which saw me through college, and now it's lost. (Three moves are as good as a fire.) In any case, I seem to recall the apostrophe would be used after the temperature if you were shortening by not then using "Fahrenheit" or "Celsius." It should also be used if you are contracting a decade, ie: 1970s, but 70's. I am certain I am correct about the latter, but very well may stand corrected on the former, as it is a pluralization, for which apostrophes are rarely needed. I can't seem to find an answer on any online style manual sites. Looks like my day just got booked solid!
Delete'70s
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