On the L home this evening, several young women got on and I heard them pronounce Wabash as "wuh-BASH". I snorked and thought of you guys.

It's WA-Bash, right?

sumi, I think I have a handle on your first name from other similarly-named friends (the key thing is that in Japanese, syllables are pretty evenly emphasized, so not su-MEEE-ko like English default emphasis would have it?, or am I totally messing that up?) but I realize have no clue if your last has an E sound or an A sound. And let me know if I'm not vagueing it up enough.

I heard some folks from back east talking about things they were going to see on vacation and how some friends had said "The Mo-jave Desert was lovely." I thought real hard and said, "Do you mean the 'Mo-hav-ee' Desert?" "There's no H in it!"

I made two of my regular authors my fans for life by pronouncing their last names correctly: Akyildiz and El-Hawary (ah-KYILL-deez and El-Howree (sorta)).

I started going by my middle name (Elizabeth) because I got sick of people mispronouncing my first name (Leone). This summer I'm making it legal and switching first and middle.

I try really hard to pronounce names the way their owners want. It matters.

I have a friend who apparently doesn't mind the standard (at least in our office) Americanization of her name, because for the life of me, I can't even hear how she says it herself. It's so awkward! I listen so hard, and can't figure out how I would reproduce what she's saying. And don't get me started on the transliteration -- it makes literally no sense.

"wuh-BASH" is a cartoon sound effect.

so I have received 2 red light camera tickets at the same intersection in a month. Both times turning right on red. once just after the light had turned red and the other time, pulling way past the line before stopping for a millisecond then turning. I was protesting one, but then I saw the video, yeah no.

stupid me and my aggressive driving.

My parents made many foibles when the first moved (independent of each other) to SoCal from the midwest in the early 60s. La Jolla, in particular.

I hadn't seen Loki in a bit, so I went looking in his usual spots. He wasn't in any of them. He's lounging in the tub, staring intently at the faucet, willing a drip. He's so odd sometimes.

People repeat my name back to me wrongly often enough that getting it wrong after thirty seconds is unremarkable. The second time I say it it's really me saying, no, I care.