Massive job ~ma, Sparky! May the powers that be see the wisdom in hiring you and giving you everything you want!

Argh. I love my niece, but I'm feeling annoyed. She sent me an essay for a fellowship she's applying for. I edited it, taking out the awkward turns of phrase and making a bunch of substantive comments.

She sent me the revised version, and it looks like she ignored most of my editorial corrections and only changed the substance/structure. I'm feeling put upon and annoyed. If you want my advice, don't ignore it. I am a better writer than you, and if I say use "chosen" instead of "decided", you should listen to me.

t grumble grumble

Random - a friend of mine from college called me last night, he recently moved from 13 years in the non-profit sector back to his first career which was financial services. He's in NY and working with Edward Jones. If anyone in the NY area is looking to set up IRA accounts or what have you, I can give you his name and number. He's nice and honest. (I guess anyone in the country could use him, but if you want to be able to meet face to face, he's in NYC).

ION - foggy misty here for the second straight day, it is oogy.

Come here!!!

How I would love to. The A's Fanfest is on the 8th and then b-day is the 9th. Unfortunately any extra dosh is going toward CJ and my Spring Training road trip.

I am a better writer than you, and if I say use "chosen" instead of "decided", you should listen to me.

In college, I had a good friend who transferred from the College of Education over to my College of Arts and Letters and we ended up in an American Literature class together. I'd had the professor before and knew what she liked, and the College of Education had, uh, a certain lack of rigor when it came to essay writing. She asked me to edit her paper, and in an attempt to be a good friend, I pretty much slaughtered her paper with edits & recommendations. I probably threw too much at her at once because she didn't take my advice.

Guess who aced the class and who barely passed? Yo, you think you can go from zero to Henry James without any help, it's no skin off my nose.

Offen. Or all Pirates of Penzance style, if I'm in that kind of mood.

I think, in general, people inside a group see it as more individualistic and people outside it see it as more conformist. Not that there aren't actual differences between groups, but I think that's a common difference in perception.

Random question: Do you pronounce the 't' in 'often'?

Nope. And I don't think it's more correct to do so, either.

She sent me the revised version, and it looks like she ignored most of my editorial corrections and only changed the substance/structure.

That's annoying, but also odd to me.

I pretty much slaughtered her paper with edits & recommendations

Turns out she didn't see my edits because she had revision mode turned off on her computer. While I was on the phone with her just now she turned it on, and was all, "Oh! Lots of changes!"

So I feel better that I didn't waste my time, and bad that I assumed she would ignore me. Technical problem, rather than human error.

Yeah, pronouncing the "t" in often is not more correct by any means, at least according to two different speech professors I've had (one at regular uni and the other at ACT). So no beating yourself up about not pronouncing it.

When I was three or four I noticed something strange about language--that if a word ends on a hard consonant and the next word begins with the same hard consonant, you only pronounce the consonant once.

So if you were saying "Cat tree" you'd only say the 't' sound once. For some reason this realization really bothered me. But after experimenting I realized that saying the 't' twice sounds really weird.

I'm not sure why this bothered me. Maybe it was that this was language rule that everybody knew but was not taught explicitly?

Anyway, the moral is that my brain has always been weird.