Omnis, I'm at Renaissance tower. That's the one with the X lights on it and th funny little towers on top. It isn't super close, but halfway somewhere around St. Paul wouldn't be difficult at all on the train.

Yeah, mostly when I say sir or ma`am it`s to kids.

DJ, is that what that building is called? When you say train, do you mean DART? or something else. Oh, and I wanna know about the tunnels. So many things to learn about this city. Stupid work eating too much of my time. Grrr.

That's the train I mean. The stop isn't far from my office and St. Paul isn't far from yours. There are some good places down in the tunnels. They aren't easy to navigate though. Let me know when you have time!

I have an interview with a professor in a Theology department today. Acceptance~ma and possibility-of-funding~ma would be much appreciated!

Job~ma, Stephanie!

Ongong better-health~ma, askye. Yay for cleared infection.

Chatted with cute girl on OKC, there will likely be coffee.

Fantastic! (I met The Girl on OutEverywhere. Don't tell anyone.)

All the most interesting discussions here go on after I've gone to bed. Loved reading the discussion about women, standoffishness, etc. It's interesting to think that some of my 'must please others' ridiculousness might be, at least in part, about being a woman in a patriarchal society. In an odd way, it helps me see my issues there as something I can have more power over, as a feminist. Which is very cool indeed.

I know that I've got some mild Asperger's tendencies. One of them is that social small talk is really difficult for me. Saying things I don't really mean -- like "I'm fine" in response to "How are you?" when I'm really not fine, or "Nice to see you" to somebody I really didn't want to see -- does not come naturally. I know how to follow those sorts of rules for situations when I have to, but I am not going to waste time with lying to a friend.

Absolutely. My autistic spectrum stuff has lost me a lot of friends over the years, because I told them the truth when I wasn't supposed to, or because I couldn't read their body language, or because I repeatedly didn't understand social conventions and they got bored. I'm a lot more willing to accept those aspects of my character as 'just me' than I am others. Which is interesting, and I should think about why I'm so keen to make sure that the way I act makes other people happy.

Depends on the situation. In a social situation, first names are fine. Anything else, I use Mr./Ms.

I was calling The Girl's father 'Mr' until a couple of months ago. I've known him about three years. Tells you how terrified I am of him, if nothing else!

I particularly feel this with regard to first names. I hate it when people I don't know use my first name.

I would love to have the confidence to correct people with 'Ms J.' when they use my first name and it's not appropriate. I'd particularly like to be called 'Ms' at my many medical appointments. The social inequality of discussing my health with soemone who I have to call 'Dr' and gets to call me 'Naomi' is annoying as hell. Particularly as one of my areas of research is disability discrimination and the medical profession.

As for shortening names, almost everyone I know well (including my parents) calls me 'Nay'. The problem comes when people I don't know well start calling me that. At one job, all my colleagues started with it, including my boss. I winced every time I was called 'Nay' in a staff meeting. Fortunately, my students never picked it up from the other teachers!

[link]

"Dr Morrison added: 'Our research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression, but what we don't know is which comes first - are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?'"

I have no words. Except maybe *headdesk* ad infinitum.

I suspect it's a Virginia thang, but i "sir" and "ma'am" just about anyone (and everyone) as a deferential or default if i don't know their name. There's at least one person at work who wants to punch me because i responded "yes ma'am" to some instruction she gave me before finding out it was a pet peeve. Shortly after moving north of Richmond i dropped the "miss" and "mister" for people my age or younger as i started getting feedback that it might be perceived as "plantation" *sigh* .

IOmeN, i started off my day with a visit to the chiro, complete with ultrasound and massage to break up scar tissue in the mending foot. Then i swam and did some water aerobics. All that ws fine. The i cooked a tasty chickpea curry and all the standing caused true pain. Thankfully a good icing has quieted it down, but seriously this was the first incident of foot pain since week two of the break. Do not like. Standing shouldn't lead to pain. especially when i made cupcakes yesterday that still need frosting. Which means standing at least enough to combine ingredients. thankfully i have three hours of videtaped LOST to keep me sitting on the couch for most of the evening.

I don't know, it seriously weirds me out when people I don't know use my name.

I realize that I'm in a completely different sort of space than most of you, but that sort of thing doesn't bug me. I suppose that's good, now that random strangers who've seen me on the Internet will come up to me and go "Jilli!"

I default to "Miss" "M'am", and "Sir" for people I don't know. I also have gotten really good at saying "I'm sorry, I'm very bad with names and faces. Please remind me of your name?"

I work in a first name industry and I have a pretty simple monosyllabic first name, so it usually get pronounced correctly. I am, however, surprised at how often I am asked to spell my first name. I mean really? It's the past tense of draw, how hard can that be?

I'm pretty forgiving on my last name as well since it's pretty uncommon and gets butchered fairly often, they is also the fact that it's gaelic in origin so the accepted pronunciation of it in english is no where near what it really should be. The only reason there is a "z" sound in the english name is because there is a symbol in gaelic that looks kinda like a "z" if you squint at it, and so when it got shifted to english a "z" got shoved in the middle.

All kinds of fun.

how should your last name be pronounced?

It's a little hard to type out the actually pronunciation since it uses a sound that doesn't have a direct equivalent in English, but it close to a "Y" sound. Here's a bit of an explanation:

The unintuitive spelling of the name is due to it being an anglicisation of Gaelic Dail-gheal, meaning white dale. The sound now spelled with a "y" or "z" is historically a lenited slender /g/, which in Gaelic is pronounced [j] (like English "y"). The English form of the name was originally spelled with a "ȝ" (yogh); this was later replaced with either a "z", the letter of the modern alphabet which most looks like yogh, or a "y", which more closely represents the sound.

So the correct pronunciation doesn't really have the first "l" sound in it, and where the "z" is you make something like a "y" sound only a bit farther back in your throat. Also the first "a" sound in the name isn't the flat sounding "a" that is expected, but a bit more like an elongated "ai" diphthong.