Tuesday, January 29, 2008

the grammar monster surges forth from within!

as my loving wife will gladly tell you, i am annoyingly fixated on proper grammar and spelling (though not so much on punctuation and capitalization in informal writings, as this blog will no doubt validate)

where i got this fixation i'm not quite sure; in my early years the deed/reward system was most lucrative in the field of arithmetic, where those who won blackboard math races (to see who could finish a math problem the fastest) were lavished with candy bars as the spoils of victory. not those pathetic fun-size candy bars; the REAL kind, full-size.

maybe it's just a small piece of personality derived from my overall desire for accuracy in the world, who knows

point is i can find myself standing at a coworker's desk as we work on an issue and as she types an email to parties related to the matter, i scan her monitor and see that one of her email folders is labeled

"Ethanol Bill of Ladings"

and the grammar monster inside me makes silent note that the folder should be properly labeled

"Ethanol Bills of Lading"

but i control the grammar monster, he does not control me; and so i am not seen to involuntarily grab the keyboard away from the user and make the change but instead leave it labeled as is , of my own free will, and continue to harbor my terrible, technically-correct-but-eye-roll-inducing-to-those-less-emotionally-invested curse.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Graffiti-ed!

the men's bathroom on our office floor (outside of our actual office, near the elevator bank) has been vandalized by graffiti!

one of the stall doors has, i believe, something like "Crips H Town" written on it in that hastily-written Gothic English font

i didn't realize our building was the subject of a turf war; what wanna-be gangbanger takes an elevator up fifty-one floors to claim a bathroom?

guess i should be more careful, stop wearing so much red to work.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Monkeybutt

hi (and happy new year) to any loyal readers who still check in despite my not having blogged in a while


busy at work here but i'll put down a quick anecdote to satiate until i can get around to my backlog of post drafts

back in August of this year we brought in a new member of our pet family, a 1 1/2 year old male pug named Louie (named so on account of his Louisiana origins)

we've watched him transform from a shy and cautious rescue case to a very energetic and happy-go-lucky dog and he has melded well with Nerf and Pugston since his arrival. he's also a world-class lap dog, settling in place quickly on most nights during movies / TV / Xbox with admirable efficiency and economy of motion.

for christmas the dogs received several new toys, one of which is a small stuffed monkey. Louie seems to enjoy playing with that particular toy quite a bit and will often leave him lying in one of the dog beds in our room.

one night on or around the New Year, we had come home and dressed Louie in his belly band (basically a dog diaper, he has not quite mastered the self-restraint that Pugston possesses and has been known to still mark or pee indoors so we had to take preventative measures)

the velcro had not been fastened particularly flush so there was still some portion of the sticky velcro side exposed. Louie sat down in his bed for a while, actually sitting down on the monkey.

the monkey became stuck to the sticky velcro on the band; when Louie got bored of the bed and rose to walk around and see what was going on, the monkey went right along with him, seemingly stuck to his behind. but not for my efforts (after some amount of time spent amusedly watching the duo travel around together) the monkey might still be riding his posterior.

and therefore to me his secondary name will from now on always be Monkeybutt.