Persnickety

A general note to the blogosphere:

Lightning

and

Lightening

are not the same word.

That is all.

Disappointed

If you know me at all, you know I'm not a sports fan. Quite the reverse. I have not just apathy concerning sports, but even active animosity for them. I can't really tell you why. It could be that, because I've never been able to participate in sports, I've developed a dislike of them in order to protect myself from feeling any sadness over being left out. That would be like me.

Whatever the cause, I'm no sports fan -- except for the Olympics. I love them. Every other year, I'm glued to the TV for two weeks, rooting for my favorite athletes as they struggle for gold. Some personalities really grab you (perhaps because the media inundates us with their life stories come Olympics time), and you can't help but care for them.

Ah, Marion Jones. How I loved her. How I wanted her to win those medals. How I believed her claims to be steroid free. I guess I can't be surprised by her admission of guilt. Rather, it causes me to wonder anew how many of our celebrated athletes are using performance-enhancing drugs.
More than we might guess, I think.

But that might just be my anti-sports attitude talking.

Updated to add: What Dreams brings up a good point. Marion Jones has shown great courage over the last few days, for which we must be proud of her. Her bravery might help to end the culture of steroid use among athletes. We can hope so.

Educating Mommy

My girls are a couple of Chatty Cathys. They talk up a storm all day long. They have a lot to say, and they're getting better and better at expressing themselves.

Because they're coming along so nicely with their vocabulary and sentence-building skills, I've decided it's time to start eradicating some of those baby-talk mispronunciations that they've outgrown and yet still cling to. "Wellow" is cute, but the rest of the world recognizes it as "yellow." Most of you are probably unaware that "beebras" are striped equines, and you can take a ride in a Radio Flyer "lagon." Caterpillars, those hungry creatures, mature into "fuh-flies."

Yes, yes, this is all very cute, but the girls are perfectly capable of saying the real words. They have the phonemes. It's time to start putting them to use. So I've been spending a lot of time lately saying things like "BUH-ter-fly" and "WUH-WUH-WAgon," with mixed results. I hear a lot of "wuh-wuh-LAgon!" and "zuh-zuh-BEEbra!" in return.

Evie seems to really enjoy this process, so much so that she decided it's time to start working on some of Mommy's mispronunciations. We sat down this afternoon to eat some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (or "danniches" in Eviespeak, "narriches" in Sophiespeak). Evie turned to me, with earnest expression and urgent tone, showed me her sandwich, and said, "Duh-duh-dannich! Dannich! Now you, Mommy! You, Mommy!" And she was not satisfied until I repeated back to her, "Duh-duh-dannich!" Not to be left out, Sophie chimed in with her own version: "Duh-duh-narrich!"

These poor, sad kids, saddled with a mother who doesn't know how to say "sandwich."

At least they're learning something.

From my alma mater: A Week of Hot Sex. I am proud.

Sure, but the maintenance expenses for my Leer jet really cut into my disposable income.

Check out these astonishing numbers over at Donklephant concerning the Global Rich List.

A taste of the numbers: If you make $40,000 a year, there are 6,411,789,392 people in the world poorer than you. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty fortunate right about now.

How many of us think of ourselves as being among the monied elite?

To Comma or Not to Comma

Today is National Punctuation Day! To celebrate, let's talk about why you should always use the serial comma.

From Strunk and White's The Elements of Style:

In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.

Thus, write,

• red, white, and blue
• gold, silver, or copper
• He opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents.

This comma is often referred to as the "serial" comma.

From Words into Type:

In a series of the form a, b, and c or red, white, and blue most publishers prefer a comma (sometimes called the serial comma) before the conjunction, whether the items of the series are words, phrases, or clauses. The consistent use of this comma is recommended, for in many sentences it is essential for clarity. [...]

In the examples to follow, the use of the serial comma is necessary to prevent misreading. A series of personal names should have the comma before the conjunction to prevent the first name of the series being construed as a noun in direct address.

• "Anna, May and Walter are here." [Might be read as telling Anna that May and Walter are here.]
• "Anna, May, and Walter are here." [Can mean only that three persons are here.]

Now go forth and punctuate correctly.

Thanks to click for the link.

Hangers and Swimming Pools

There are often days when, come nap time, Sophie and Evie chatter away at each other for long stretches of time before they fall asleep. They sing together, laugh together, throw their stuffed animals around together, and in general have a fantastic time before eventually drifting off to sleep. On those days, I'm reminded of my own almost-sister and how she and I would talk late into the night about everything under the sun.

Any time Heather and I were fortunate enough to spend the night together when we were growing up, we were up for hours talking, even if we'd already been together non-stop for days. We never ran out of things to discuss. When we went off to college together and shared a dorm room, it was the same. Those first few weeks, it seemed like we'd never sleep -- our new experiences and new friends gave us oodles of new late-night-conversation fodder.

Heather has always been there for me. She's been my moral compass, my confidant, my role model, my friend, and my sister in every way that counts. I'm a better person because of Heather. I'm so fortunate to have her in my life. Happy birthday, Heather! I hope this trip around the sun is the best one yet.

No Baggins Here

Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has written a new book about the Supreme Court called The Nine.Kind of makes them sound like Nazgûl, doesn't it? The resemblance is striking: They dress in black, they were once human, and they are the Dark Lord's most powerful servants.

A Rainy Day, A Cozy Chair, and Thee

Another fun weekend assignment from Mr. John Scalzi: Here is my towering stack of books TBR, in no particular order. It's missing a few volumes, but these were all I could carry.

Most of these were gifts for my recent birthday, and last Christmas, and probably the birthday before that ... Well, I don't have a ton of time for reading these days. But I will catch up! I will! Maybe when the twins go to kindergarten.

There was a time when I logged no less than a book a month in my book log, usually several more. Now I'm lucky to get through two books a year. If I'd known birthing twins would have such a devastating effect on my reading habits, I'd have thought twice.

Who Are You?

I've mocked other bloggers (with only the kindest intentions) for assuming they know who their audience is, for thinking the readership of the vast blogosphere is knowable. I'm irritated when other bloggers make snide or unfriendly comments about persons who might actually be reading their blog, unbeknownst to the blogger.

I try my darnedest to avoid that sort of thing on this blog, mostly because it just isn't nice to say mean things about people, and partly because you never know who's reading.

The blogosphere might seem ephemeral and fleeting, with blog posts erased by a click of the "delete" button, but that is a false impression. Site feeds send your every post out to the world, even if you only had it up for five seconds. Archiving sites store every entry for future generations to peruse. The illusion of impermanence might lull us into unwise posting, but the savvy blogger knows better.

I say this smugly from my soapbox, but I have a confession: I, too, am guilty of assuming I know who my audience is. I know most of you by name, I have met (and am related to) perhaps the majority of you, and I can see where many of the rest of you come from via tracking software. (It sounds so Big Brother when you put it like that!)

But the fact remains: I don't know who all of you are. Thanks to RSS feeds (which I love -- don't get me wrong), my tracking software can't tell me who all reads my posts, and even the tracking info I do get is incomplete. I get blog hits from the strangest places, from the oddest search engine strings, and even from nowhere, as far as I can tell.

So today I ask you: Who are you? Leave a comment. Say hello. Introduce yourself. Oh, and lest I forget, welcome! We're glad to have you.