A Door By Any Other Name

There was a very heavy windstorm right before we left for our road trip. It broke the glass on one side of our porch door. Once we got back, Jason and I discussed what to do about it and decided that we would replace all three screen doors using the people we got to do (most of) our windows in 2018. Since Jason had been the main person to deal with that, he reached out to get a quote for the doors. 

We have an enclosed porched at Casa Verde, so there is a screen door into that space (which has the broken window from the wind) then once you are in the porch there is a screen door in front of the main wood front door. Then in the back there is a screen door before the wood back door. Basically all of these are broken in some way, usually the spring and cylinder closer part. Also we are slowly switching from white doors and windows to black ones as we update things so this is a chance to do that for the doors.

Anyway, Jason got the quote and wanted me to look over the fine details with him, "starting with the fact that they said they were for storm doors," which had him very confused and concerned. I explained that 'storm door' is actually the more accurate and contractor-used term for a 'screen door.' He wanted to know what the wooden front door types where called, my guess was 'exterior door' but I wasn't as positive on that term. It is going to take some time for them to be ready and installed but I will post the before and after shots when they get put in.

Long Ago Insult Comes Back

Hanging out on the couch in Palm Springs: Mom has her laptop out and is working on her blog, I'm on my phone, Avery is beside me on his iPad. He looks over and notices that Mom is scrolling through a lot of photos. 
Avery: Nana, why did you taken so many pictures?
Me: Actually Avery, the past tense is "took." So you should say, "Why did you took so many pictures?" Wait, nope, that isn't right. Okay, I don't know what it should have been but there was something messed up with your tense there.
Avery: You have four eyes.
He proceeds to count my eyes and the lenses on my glasses. It didn't seem like an insult at the time, just a well timed observation, that I totally deserved. 

Not Resting On My Middle Name

I had such a good January when it comes to posting on Always Standing. It is important not to lose steam, not to "rest on my laurels."

Idiom Definition: To stop putting in effort, trying to innovate, or working to advance one's career or status and instead rely on one's past achievements or accolades to remain relevant or successful

Idiom Background: In Ancient Greece, victorious athletes were presented with laurel wreaths to wear. They were, and still are, signs of great accomplishment, unless you start resting on them. Read more at History Revealed.

Laurel wreaths were made from the leaves of the laurel bush (or tree, or shrub, it is basically a mid-size plant.) My middle name, Laura, after my aunt, takes its meaning from the same bush.

Name History: Laura is a Latin name. In Latin the meaning of the name Laura is: Laurel tree or sweet bay tree (symbols of honour and victory).

Our Latin Mottos, Only One In Latin

Talking with my GeoConnect girls a little while ago and they were talking about the motto's are undergraduate universities had.

The conversation started because ERin was encouraging Anne to Surgit!, latin for 'Push On,' which she knew because it was Brock's motto. Anne then mentioned that the University of Calgary motto was in Gaelic. I made a mental note to check out what Carleton's was, anticipating that it would probably disappoint me.

I wasn't wrong, the Carleton University motto is Ours the Task Eternal, in English. I don't even know what that means! Also sadly they didn't bother with using a different language. The main thing I like about Carleton is the great colours, I don't like Calgary's red, gold and black. Basically University of Calgary has the best mascot/nickname and Brock is all around cool. Besides good colours, Carleton is, as usual, a bit of a disappointment.

ERin
Undergrad at Brock University (in St. Catherine's)
Colours: Red, grey, and black
Motto: Surgit!which means Push On! in Latin
Mascot: (The Badgers) Boomer the Badger

Anne
Undergrad at University of Calgary
Colours: Red, gold, and black
Motto: Mo Shùile Togam Suas meaning "I will lift up my eyes" in Gaelic
Mascot: (The Dinos) Rex

Me
Undergrad at Carleton University (in St. Catherine's)
Colours: Black and Red
Motto: Ours the Task Eternal
Mascot: (The Ravens) Rodney the Raven

My trip to Calgary for this year was originally planned for July so I could go to Stampede but it was postponed and now I am going from August 23 - 27. I can't wait to see them!

Little Gallbladder

I am at Steph's today in Ottawa, a quick turn-around trip that has me here for less than 36 hours. However, Steph and I got a chance to catch up last night, and today play a quick new card game that she had recently ordered online. The card game was designed by the same person who does The Awkward Yeti comic. He did these which Steph showed me after my gallbladder surgery last year:

By Nick Seluk

It Takes Time To Change

It is a big day politically! I hope that there is another historic election and that I wake up tomorrow morning to find out that the USA has elected their first female leader. Fingers crossed!

Also of note, in March of 2013 I identified that I had miss spelt one of my tags for Always Standing. Well it took me over three years but as of today there is no longer a 'Politcs' tag and everything has been moved to be included in the correctly spelled 'Politics.'

Now before you go telling me that I spelt the word spelled incorrectly I would like to you remind you that I have already discussed that use of the 't' for past tense is correct for some words.

The Queen Speaks

------- Funny! From an email, sent by Mom

A Message from the Queen!

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA, and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except North Dakota, which she does not fancy). Our new Prime Minister, Theresa May, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

 To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,' 'favour,' 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.' Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u'' and the elimination of '-ize.'

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialect in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!

My Big Extended Family

I have never considered my family particularly large, but when mapping it out I discovered it is a good size. I made a family tree, with photos, for our wedding program. I have used names in italics to indicate what I use to refer to my relatives, which is sometimes not their real names. Birth years for my cousins, nephew and niece are included, as well as, the years various couples got married. The banner at the top is just a collection of old photos of my relatives with the a rough estimate of the year they were taken. Check it out:

My Family Tree

Made by ME using Canva
Click image to view it larger.

And before you try to correct me, yes that is the way to spell my grandmother's name. Most people are Bernice but she has an extra 'e' and is Berneice.

Also, I have a hard time with my grandfather's name, since it is actually 'Alex.' However he died before my parents were even engaged so I only know him through family stories, and he was called 'Alec' and that 'ek' sound is so distinctive to my connection to his memory that it feels wrong to use the 'x'.

It was amazing to have everyone (living) from the above family free present at our wedding this weekend. As we get older and more relatives live further away this is becoming a very rare occurrence.

I AM An Intrrobang?!

A co-worker shared a survey with the Marketing Team called What's Your Punctuation Mark? It was a quick quiz and I got "interrobang.' In fact each member of our four-person team got a different type of punctuation and the tiny write ups were cute. Mine was especially accurate, "Inquisitive. Confident. Often surprised." I had never heard of an interrobang before, it looks like an exclamation mark overlapping with a question mark, but can be represented with ?! as well. I like the idea that I am a punctuation mark used to show "asking a question in an excited manner."

Helpful Tuesday Links

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online has a list of common abbreviations. I found it when I wanted to know what the short form was for subscription (there are two options Subscr. or Subscript.)

However, it only includes words that are used in the OED so it doesn't have the abbreviations that recently tripped up K. She thought her friend was saying she had an 'appointment' near her, but really she was getting an 'apartment' nearby - big difference.

There is actually a bigger, better source that I should have used: Abbreviations.com

Totally A Cunct

The 'word of the day' on Dictionary.com is

cunctator
noun [kuhngt-tey-ter]
1. a procrastinator; delayer

Procrastination is a really negative habit of mine that I am always fighting against. I delay everything then rush at the last minute.

Could You Read This?

------- From Facebook

I think this is another example of a "you are special" trick where pretty much everyone is special. The image above was accompanied by text saying; "90% of you can't read this." Though, it could be a comment on the fact that less than 6% of the world's population speaks English, or maybe a discussion about general literacy? I read it pretty quickly (but my style of reading is a bit different since I tend to skim anyway.) Did you have trouble deciphering the short passage above? Let me know in the comments.

Be Smile

I enjoy running across badly translated English. I saw the following on a website for a hotel in China:

Join us NOW!

Be surprised.

Be satisfied.

Be smile!

At work we are in the process of doing the opposite. We are getting ready to launch the Chinese version of our website, hopefully we get the translation edited properly. Ideally we will not make mistakes in Mandarin that end up reading like the section quoted above. However, I like the idea of "Be smile!" it is a good goal or life motto.

My Mind Today

Bored
Lethargic
Apathetic
Nothing
K....nope

Third Person, No Capitals

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down - A post about my Dad each Sunday, named after a song that he loved.

In one Sunday Mornin' Coming Down post I shared the last comment my dad made on Always Standing before he died. This past week I ran across a bunch of comments from him as I made my Throwback Thursday post for April 2007. Dad used to start his comments on my blog with "dad says" or "dad asks" or some other strange third person intro before leaving the comment.

I like the comment he left on (No) Thoughts On Suicide - VI, a post I wrote on April 2, 2007 as I was slowly healing from my most serious depressive episode. About a week later this comment was made:

dad said .it is great to hear you are feeling more on an even keel . love you . may the wind be on your back always . keep trying

A Solid Score

I did a GMAT prep test this weekend. I would like to get an MBA at some point but am not in any rush because of the time, work, and cost involved. However, both Maria and Natasha are planning on writing the GMAT this summer to apply for their Business Masters. I figured it would be nice to have some company when studying and the scores last for 5 years. The fake test helps give a sense of my starting point - I went in pretty much blind. I knew what type of questions to expect but hadn't studied at all.

My score was 620, which is pretty decent. This is in the 69th percentile. With just that score I would have no issue getting into most of the Canadian schools. However, it isn't quite high enough for the elite programs and it isn't good enough for scholarship options, which I will need because an MBA is expensive. Here is what the test is like and how my score broke down:

Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) - 30 Minutes - 1 Topic
Scored out of 6, not scored on the practice test.
This is an essay.

Integrated Reasoning (IR) - 30 Minutes - 12 Questions
Scored: 4/8
Percentile: 37
Types of questions: Multi-Source Reasoning, Graphics Interpretation, Two-Part Analysis, Table Analysis

Quantitative - 75 Minutes - 37 Questions
Scored: 36/60
Percentile: 40
Types of questions: Data Sufficiency, Problem Solving

Verbal - 75 Minutes - 41 Questions
Scored: 40/60
Percentile: 90
Types of questions: Reading Comprehension, Critical Reasoning, Sentence Correction

I know that I can do much better on the Quantitative (or Math) section. I knew how to figure out pretty much all of the problems but without studying, I didn't have the tools needed (like the formula for the area of a circle, or different shortcuts you can make with exponent equations). I am glad that I will be able to improve this because the main score is out of 800 and is calculated only from the last two sections. The IR is really really hard. I don't know if they send that score separately and if they do how much it matters to admissions.

A Seemingly Small Change

I have been reading The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection by Michael Harris. As a Canadian writer, Harris' thoughts and research feel very local and relevant. The book is focused on the following point: "Soon enough, nobody will remember life before the Internet. What does this unavoidable fact mean?"

As the title suggests, Harris argues that the main thing that the Internet has taken from us is the notion and experience of solitude. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with, but at the same time I fear solitude and sense danger at being left alone with my thoughts for too long a stretch of time.

Harris says, "As we embrace a technology's gifts, we usually fail to consider what they ask from us in return - the subtle, hardly noticeable payments we make in exchange for their marvelous service. We don't notice, for example, that the gaps in our scheduled have disappeared because we're too busy delighting in the amusements that fill them. We forget the games that childhood boredom forged because boredom itself has been outlawed. Why would we bother to register the end of solitude, or ignorance, or lack? Why would we care that an absence has disappeared?" But for me these thoughts are incorrectly worded, because I DID notice, and I DO care. I don't know if I want to change it but I have been making a point to register this change for a long time. I feel the change deep in my being and I worry about what it means for the future and for my future children.

I also feel and acknowledge the unprecedented speed at which change is occurring. It has always been easy to equate the rise of digital text/information to the switch from scribes to a printing press, or from oral history to a written one. This type of technology shift is not new, but the pace is shocking. I will allow Harris to provide a succinct explanation, "The rate of penetration - the amount of time it takes for a new technology to be adopted by fifty million people. Radio took thirty-eight years to reach that mark; the telephone took twenty years; and television took thirteen. More recently the World Wide Web took four years, Facebook took 3.6, Twitter took three, and the iPad took 2. Google Plus, which nobody even finds useful, took only eighty-eight days." The book is filled with these types of lists, facts you know and are not even surprised by but they can still somehow be shocking to read.

I remember an English teacher in high school saying that computers were not revolutionary - that they didn't actually do anything new, just found a new way to store thoughts and information. I remember thinking at the time how incorrect he was, that this new type of storage solution and ease of information transfer was going to touch every part of our lives in ways that we could not yet understand in 1999. Almost 15 years later, in my Master's program, we often argued about whether the Digital Revolution was an era in its own right, or merely an extension of the Industrial Revolution. I still don't know the answer.

For me, the most powerful passage in the entire book is a brief musing about modern teenagers in the current era of smart phones, iPods, the Internet, and basically access to more digital technology and information than any generation to come before. Even though the words state that the author feels great regret at the prospect, in the grand scheme of the book it is just a couple of tiny sentences that seem thrown in merely for their cute factor - but reading them struck me to my core:

"There is a single, seemingly small change that I'll be most sorry about. It will sound meaningless, but: One doesn't see teenagers staring into space anymore."

5 Words

The last few places that I have worked, I have kept a post-it note taped to the bottom of my screen with words that I regularly misspell. (Since my spelling is so weak.)

At the LVBIA
The post-it note was pretty small during my time at the Liberty Village BIA. I was mainly using email and word processing, so both had very good spell check functions that corrected words I was spelling wrong. However, I did need to put two words up on the post-it: Councillor and Strachan. Both would always appear with the little red line denoting incorrect spelling, however the 'councillor' I was usually writing about was a Toronto City Councillor. Strachan is the name of a street in the area. It is not pronounced Strachan (despite Steph frequently telling taxi drivers to take her there.) It pronounced is 'strawn' but spelt crazy.

At FORREC
I am posting today because my list taped to the bottom of one of my computer screens (yes, I have two monitors here, it is awesome) reached 5 words today. I was sad when I needed to upgrade to the normal size square post-it. away from the tiny rectangle one that I used when there were only 2 words I needed to reference. For the most part, I need these words written out because I am in spreadsheets that don't have the little red line style of spelling correction so I never know for sure if I have things spelt right until I run a full spell check; which I do before presenting the data, but not while I am working with it. In the case of 'colleague,' my spelling was always so far off that it wouldn't give me a correct option anyway. So, here is my 5 word list:

aisle

category

colleague

variance

schedule

TB - February 2007

Throwback Thursday - Scroll to the bottom of the month and read up. Or click on the earliest post in the month (to view the post and the comments) then keep clicking Newer Post until you finish the month.

FEBRUARY 2007

I had been worried that the coming Throwback months were going to be upsetting. In fact I avoided doing this feature last week because I didn't want to read about that time in my life. It looks like the February was a calm before the storm. I really loved the classes I was taking, it was one of my better semesters, in terms of enjoyment of the material.

Noted Post: Birth Order - I remember pieces of the night I am describing in this post. I definitely remember Anna talking about videos of her and her sister as kids. A councilor Jason and I have been seeing mentioned birth order a couple of weeks ago, as it relates to relationships. It is an interesting concept to consider, but it really is only one factor in the context of a million others. (The fact that I am an oldest and Jason is a youngest is supposedly good.)

This Is Amazing!

--------------- found online

Place the word 'only' anywhere in the sentence:

She told him that she loved him.