Heh. That leads me to think about how I use the word "ladies": I call my students ladies and gentlemen, and I will say "a nice lady asked me to..."
When I am sending out emails to my group of girlfriends, I either say "Hey, ladies!" or "Hello, my bitches!"
I guess I use lady/ladies when addressing people, and woman/women when describing something in a more general way, i.e. "it's important for today's women to have blahdeblah."
Guess what? I weighed myself this morning on my scale that, up until today, wasn't able to show my weight because I was over its limit. Well, I got a number instead of an error message! I'm down to 405 pounds, which is 75 pounds since mid-October.
I'm 25% of the way to my goal weight!!!
OMG KATHY!!!
I'm so pleased and proud of you! That is fantastic.
Congrats, Kathy! That's so great.
Kathy, wow!!! That's so exciting! How do you feel?
For a side note on the ladies who lunch, there are several women now here in tech support, but we don't have the option of taking a leisurely Friday afternoon off. But that plays into the whole vibe we have here of being the ranchhands out in the bunkhouse watching the fancy folk in the main house having one of their fancy soirees. We're even in a separate building across the parking lot from the fancy big building.