Never done learning

I've discovered several blogs lately that have now joined my regular web-surfing routine. One of them is written by a scathingly witty and talented guy who goes by the handle Velociman. You will find his blog at http://www.velociworld.com.

Aside from the general entertaining content of his blog, his vocabulary and writing style are stunningly impressive. He inspires me to learn more big words. I've always been fairly competent where grammar, spelling, and vocabulary are concerned, having been spawned from a family full of proficient writers. I'm definitely interested in More Picturesque Speech, as Readers' Digest suggests. For the past few years, I've been more concerned with acquiring the basics of Spanish than plumbing the depths of my native tongue.

The following are some words from Velociman's blog that I had to look up:

sobriquet n. An affectionate or humorous nickname; an assumed name.

somnolent adj. Drowsy; sleepy. Inducing or tending to induce sleep; soporific.

ersatz adj. Being an imitation or a substitute, usually an inferior one; artificial.

ignominious adj. Marked by shame or disgrace; deserving disgrace or shame; despicable; degrading; debasing.

sclerotic adj. Relating to or having sclerosis; hardened.

venal adj. Open to bribery; mercenary. Capable of betraying honor, duty, or scruples for a price; corruptible. Marked by corrupt dealings, especially bribery.

vestigial adj. Occurring or persisting as a rudimentary or degenerate structure.

manse n. A cleric's house and land, especially the residence of a Presbyterian minister. A large stately residence.

bon mot n. A clever saying; a witticism.

Aside from the words I didn't know already, there are quite a few on V-man's blog that I pledge to use more often:

impunity
copious
harbinger
innocuous
miscreant
callow
prodigious
disconsolate

Maybe making use of a wider variety of big words will cut down on my all too frequent use of the four-letter variety. That's a habit I'd like to curb before downloading any tricycle motors of my own.

Monday Rant

Well, it's Monday again, and I just might have to smack a bitch.

My DH and I work for the same company in two different functions. Right outside his office sits a loudmouthed, nosy, annoying chick. Today, she took it upon herself to YELL at my husband over speakerphone, practically demanding his presence in her department to fix a scanner problem she was having at someone else's desk. He had told her he could barely hear her the first time she asked, because she was on speaker and there was background noise. So she freaking yelled at him, "COME TO (DEPARTMENT)!!!"

He's laughing about it, but I'm fuming. I'm a mama bear when it comes to anyone messing with my man or my dogs. I'm liable to scratch this bitch's eyeballs out.

This is not the first time she's been shitty to him, or to me.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Yay! It's Friday!

Finally, it's Friday again. Sweet.

After almost a week of feeling like pooty, I believe I am officially over my sinus infection.

If ever you get sick, go to the doctor! Do not bring your nastiness to the office and cough all over the keyboards and phones! And ESPECIALLY don't bring your sick kids to work with you if they have anything communicable! DH got the flu-turned-pneumonia two Christmases ago, thanks go a sick kid outside his office and DH's asthmatic lungs. I could just shoot the mother.

DH and I watched the Jackass movie again last night. We hadn't watched it in quite a while, and laughed our butts off. I had forgotten some of the moronic shit those guys do. Wee Man rocks!

LIST TIME!

A few short lists of totally sweet things.

My Hollywood boyfriends:
~ The Rock (Walking Tall, Be Cool, The Scorpion King) - The eyebrow thing may be cheesy, but it's still cute. He has the same characteristics that attracted me to my husband: nice guns, bald head, great legs and butt, and a killer smile.
~ Johnny Knoxville (Jackass, Dukes of Hazzard) - Once in a while, I just like a hot but goofy short-haired rocker type.
~ Ryan Reynolds (Blade Trinity, Van Wilder) - He was not particularly hot in Van Wilder, but in the movie stills from Blade with his wee beard and nice muscles...Ay, Chihuahua!

Albums I'm currently wearing out:
~ Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
~ anything by John Mayer
~ Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, Rockin' The Suburbs
~ Josh Groban - Closer
~ Garden State soundtrack
~ Shakira - Fijación Oral

Songs I'm currently wearing out:
~ Rihanna - Pon De Replay
~ Alice In Chains - Shame In You
~ Black Eyed Peas - The Apl Song
~ Damien Rice - Volcano

Books I'm reading now/have read recently:
~ Dan Brown - Deception Point (**** so far)
~ Robert Ludlum - The Parsifal Mosaic (*** so far)
~ Dean Koontz - Demon Seed (**)
~ Dean Koontz - The Face (*****)

No big plans for the weekend...just a little fall garden maintenance (replacing summer annuals with some loverly fall colored mums, perhaps), and the Nebraska game on TV tomorrow. Go Big Red!

This design your own hell thing is so much fun...

Unsupervised teenagers, Baby daddies, Baby mamas
Circle I Limbo

Loud ass nosy bitches
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Smokers
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Cindy Sheehan
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Nancy Pelosi
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

People who get the office sick
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Ted Kennedy
Circle VII Burning Sands

Ghetto thugs
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Pregnant smokers
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

My Very Own Hell

Scientologists, General asshats, Hipsters
Circle I Limbo

Riceboys, Goths, DMV Employees
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Parents who bring squalling brats to R-rated movies
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Militant Vegans
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Bill Clinton
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

Saddam Hussein, Qusay Hussein, Uday Hussein
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Creationists, PETA Members, Democrats
Circle VII Burning Sands

Osama bin Laden
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

NAMBLA Members
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

WTF???

Ok. Those of you who work for large companies will probably get me on this one. If not, just go with me here.

The company I work for had around 12-15 employees when I first started two years ago. Thanks to good business and other factors, that number has now doubled, and we will be moving into our very own new lovely building in October.

However comma, this burgeoning enterprise still behaves like a small business in numerous ways. One of the most annoying ways is employee birthdays.

With 15 or so people (ok, women) working here, it seemed like a manageable task to collect five bucks or so from each person in the office per birthday. That money would be used to purchase a cake, birthday card, and a modest gift card. Friends of the birthday girl would also decorate her desk with balloons, streamers, whatever. Things can get pretty creative, and all in all, it makes one feel durn special to have your own theme birthday desk. Since I'm a dog lover, I had paw prints all over my walls and floor and some rawhide chewies for my beloved furkids in addition to balloons and confetti.

Our boss, bless him, even buys lunch for the whole crew (once per week if there are multiple b-days in that month).

BUT...now that the company has literally doubled in size, this birthday mess has become one huge pain in the ass.

There's a girl upstairs who's been here for about a month. Due to the fractured nature of our current renting situation, my office is nowhere near hers and I've only seen her in passing. I don't know her last name, and I'm not sure she even knows that I work here. (I have my own office, separate from other departments.)

This doesn't seem to matter, as I've been told in not so many words that I should contribute to her birthday even though we haven't ever been introduced.

Normally, requests for contributions to the birthday are made by email- if you can or want to contribute, you do so. You are not asked outright and put in the position of having to say "no."

About a week ago, contributions were being taken for one of our part-timers, a piece of crap 18 year old bratty high school boy who at one time was fired and re-hired and at least two times was caught having looked at porn on company computers. I caught him once, right out in plain view, watching a video of what was clearly sex. He's disrespectful, rude, and lazy, and the only reason he still has a job here is because his mom is a manager.

Basically, I don't like this little shithead. (Did I make that clear?)

The girl collecting for his birthday last week popped her head into my office and said, "Today's the last day to contribute for so-and-so's birthday. Did you want to throw in?"

I unceremoniously said, "Nope."

She seemed taken aback and repeated, "Nope?"

(Uhh, did I fucking stutter?) "Nope," I said once again.

"Ooohhhkayyyy...," she said, rolling her eyes as she closed my office door.

Something's gotta give with this birthday business.

Yucky Weekend

Well, I spent Saturday and Sunday being sick. It sucked. I'm still sick today, but came to work anyway. I felt it coming on late Friday night- the itchy tickle in my soft palate that signals sinus trouble is in the mail. My ears started feeling full and I took a decongestant before bed. Saturday morning, I woke up with a horrible sore, swollen, scratchy throat from all the drainage. I basically wound up being a vegetable all day long, alternating between sleeping in bed and napping on the couch.

DH was kind enough to pick up dinner that would not irritate my throat further. I had some lovely, soft, and tasty chicken and dumplins from Cracker Barrel. I woke up just long enough to realize that the Nebraska game WAS in fact on TV in our area. They stomped the Wake Forest Deacons 31-3. Go Huskers! After my drug-induced sleep all day, DH wound up waking me from the couch around 11:30 and telling me to go to bed. I slept all night, occasionally waking briefly and then falling back asleep.

The crappiest part about being sick all day was having to cancel our blood donation appointment for Sat. morning. I was already several weeks behind, but it'll have to wait again.

Sunday was not much different, except that I actually woke up and stayed awake after about 2:30 in the afternoon. Mind you, this doesn't mean I left the house or even got dressed, but I did take a shower and put on fresh lounge wear. I was a bit productive, however- I did some laundry and dishes, and continued reading my current book, The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum. I also made dinner- meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

DH and I watched two back to back episodes of Rome last night on HBO. It promises to be a very good series.

Grammar and Spelling, Part Two

~ The word judgment only has one e.

~ Quotation marks are for quotes- not to "emphasize" something or "attract attention" to "words."

~ Plurals don't have apostrophes, i.e. boy/boys, dog/dogs, house/houses.

Edit on 9/9: OK, so I put quotes around the word mama in my profile. I guess I have a tendency to do that around special terms or non-words. Is it grammatically correct? Let me know.

A little bit of nostalgia

When I was in high school, my friends and I put together a "Pet Peeves" list. It was a constant source of discussion at the lunchroom table, and the list became an entity unto itself.

Here's my own grammar/spelling version for September 7, 2005.

~ Your/you're, there/their, less/fewer, its/it's - they're not that difficult to tell the difference between!

~ "Irregardless" is not a word. "Regardless" is.

~ Saying "we was," "they done," "you is," and "ax a question" are good ways to show people you're a moron.

Get it straight, dammit! Not surprisingly, most of the people I know that make these errors are the same ones that complain about Mexican immigrants not speaking enough English. Way to set a good example when you can't even speak/write your own language, you big dumb animal!

Dumbest freaking news headline to date

How's this for an asinine headline?

"Hurricane Katrina to Increase Joblessness"

Uh, ya don't say? What was your first clue? Was it the thousands of people who no longer have a physical place of employment, or the fact that most of Nawlins is now under sewage-laced water with corpses bobbing about?

How about "Scientists Think 8 Foot Floodwaters May Damage Property" or maybe even "120 Mph Winds Thought to Damage Trees"???

The fact is that while the Big Sleazy might have been devastated, its residents will now likely take up employment in the cities where they have landed, whether temporarily or permanently. The clean-up job down there is going to be monumental and lengthy. Who do you suppose will be doing that work, robots?

Labor Day weekend

Back to work after a nice long weekend. yay.

It was very hard to drag my ass out of bed today. If I didn't have to feed demanding dogs every morning, there's no way I'd ever get up before 10. It's not that I don't get enough sleep- it's just that I'm lazy and I love sleeping.

So I guess I owe you readers (if there are any) a little info about me. I'm 29, female, married, a recent college graduate (Summa Cum Laude...go me), and employed full time in a job that has nothing to do with my college degree. My degree is in paralegal studies. I'm holding out here for now, because the job is easy, this company will allow me to work from home and keep my insurance and 401-K when DH and I have a baby, which we're planning to do in the next year or so.

Politically, I'm conservative with heavy emphasis on civil liberties. I'm registered Republican so I can vote in primaries in my state, but I'm increasingly interested in the Libertarian party. I'd rather bleed from my eyeballs than vote for a Democrat. (Gee...is that concise enough?) I basically believe that people's lives should be free from unnecessary interference by the government. My main departures from the Republican party include my belief that gays should be allowed to marry, that the "war on drugs" is a huge waste of resources, and that churches should keep their big noses out of government.

Religious, I'm not. I was raised Catholic but became agnostic around age 19. If I were compelled to pick a religion right now, it would probably be Buddhism. It seems to me the only one that makes sense, and the only one that's not power drunk. I'd never attend any other Christian church except a Catholic one; the ritual and familiarity are what I'm used to. Plus, evangelical churches are just plain creepy. Another thing I'd prefer bleeding eyes to is being Muslim. Violence, misogyny, ass-backwardsness, black tents as my sole fashion option...hey, that's the religion for me!!!

I have a lot of pet peeves. Many of them have to do with poor speech and careless writing. Others include smoking (no truer believer than a convert- I'm an ex-smoker), shitty parenting, unwed parents, druggies, animal abuse/neglect (a PETA fan I'm not, however- crazies, the lot of them), welfare leeches, man haters, those drunks that stand on the side of the highway with "Homeless Vet- Need Help- God Bless" signs, and store-bought ready to eat food.

Believe it or not, there are things I like: cooking, baking, reading, crafts, painting, dogs, driving, computers, Neal Boortz, Dr. Laura, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, crocheting, news junkie-ism, gardening, organizing, law, and most of all, my husband.

Intro

Welcome to my new blog, Skwerly Life. I've been contemplating this for a while, and viewing some other blogspot blogs has made me finally get off my ass and do it.

The cast of characters for now includes DH, my dear husband. Other folks will be introduced as needed. DH and I have been married for 2 years, together for 6. We have 3 dogs, no human kids yet.

I honestly don't have anything witty to say right now, so I'll spare you.