October chitchat

[Virginia]

Guess I am out of date, as far as saying lovely, because I still use that word. I can't think of another one that quite replaces it so I will keep using it.

[agate]

I use it a lot too.

I do have pet peeves when it comes to new words or phrases though. Here are a couple that make me cringe:

transition is a verb as in "This company is transitioning into a new product line." Transition isn't a verb. Its ending is a noun ending. Why make a long, awkward word when there are many other ways of saying what you mean?

And then there's relocate when move would do just fine, as in "My employer is planning to relocate." I don't see why a 3-syllable word should be better than a one-syllable word.

But if anyone here ever uses any of my pet-peeve words, I wouldn't say a word. Free speech, etc. People can say whatever they want. I'm just venting a couple of my opinions.

[Virginia]

Agate's post brings to mind when I was working at the Pentagon many years ago. A directive would come out from a general, that when writing letters, we should keep our words as simple as possible. There was no need to try to impress anyone with big words. It seemed as soon as this happened I would notice a colonel or lieutenant colonel using big words in their letters. Some of them still had the need to impress. I thought it was so funny.

I think transitioning and relocate are in vogue right need now.

[agate]

The military is well known for its way of saying things so that everything looks very complicated.

And for not saying what something really is, as when there was a war going on with Iraq, and on the news the commentators were saying things like, "Are we going to take Saddam out this time?"

Take Saddam out for a walk? Out on a date? I'm so dim-witted, I guess, that it took me a while to figure out that they were talking about killing him.

[agate]

I came here today after another Internet outage that started yesterday at midday. The Internet seems to be back just now but there's been no notification from Century Link. I'm signed up for phone notifications and the latest word was that service would be restored tomorrow afternoon. So I may not be here for long as this connectivity I'm getting may not last.

The building's computers had no Internet either even though the building uses a different ISP.

So anyway, here I am and with a question. Virginia, you were working at the Pentagon? Sorry to be so nosy. You can ignore that question of course.

[Virginia]

Agate,hope your internet holds out. Yes I worked at the Pentagon. I also worked for the military for a year in France, then I worked for about 1 1/2 years for them in Germany. After that was when I went to the Pentagon. It was an interesting time and years in my life.

I am totally wiped out today. I am leaning back in my recliner trying to type on my tablet, too lazy to get up and go turn on my computer.

We had our family reunion at my youngest brother's yesterday. We were hoping for 35 or so, but one Niece had just kept her granddaughter who was then diagnosed with strep throat, so she and her family of 4 didn't come. Another great niece got sick and that knocked her family of 3 out. My youngest brother has 2 sons. One was working out of town and the other one went to Florida. His girlfriend was celebrating a birthday and her parents were flying to Florida from California so he went to join them. I think we ended up with about 26 or so.

It was a fun day, but tiring for me. I was the oldest, so they made me be front and center in the pictures. I stayed on my feet too much because of the mingling. However I did enjoy seeing and talking to everyone. I saw people that I had not seen in sometime. Everyone seemed to have a good time. The weather was beautiful, a little on the cool side for me but I had on a light weight sweater so I did ok. My nephew who went to Florida face timed with us, so his Mother was holding her phone up for him to see everyone.

[agate]

Wow, Virginia, that sounds like quite an event! I hope the food was good so that even though you're wiped out, at least you enjoyed some good things to eat?

I'm glad nobody in my family has decided to have a reunion. Or maybe some have but I wasn't told. Some in my family don't get along very well with others, and it just might not have been a very enjoyable occasion....

So far the Internet is holding out but Century Link is still saying it won't be fixed until late tomorrow afternoon. It was like this last time, in August, when the Internet was out for several days. I've concluded that Century Link doesn't know (or care) much about getting things right.

A cheap chair I've had for about 30 years broke, and today I spent quite a lot of time dealing with that. Just getting it to the dumpster was a project but it's actually done. It's a folding chair, and I could still almost fold it up and wrap it in a couple of large trash bags. Then I balanced it on top of my rollator and--carefully--steered it through doorways where it didn't exactly want to fit. But after I'd tipped it up to the top of the dumpster, I was having problems tipping it on into the dumpster while holding the lid open. The dumpster has two lids, and my plan was to set it on top of one lid and tip it in by lifting the other lid and "just" tipping it. VERY luckily a very tall woman neighbor came along and tipped it for me. She is always so helpful, and she's around quite often as she has a dog to walk.

These dog people are the eyes and ears of this building.

Another dog person was wrestling with the most popular washer here this morning when I went to the laundry room with some laundry. She and I and another neighbor couldn't get that washer to open up even though it had this woman's (laundered) clothes in it. We kept unplugging the machine and trying this and that for about half an hour. By some miracle or other, it finally opened up. I can't imagine how that happened but she was mighty glad to get her clothes out as she needed them, and there was no way she could have had them unless we had pried the door open with a screwdriver, which would surely have broken the washer, perhaps forever, and we'd have been held responsible, no doubt.

It's particularly bad that this happened just now because the manager is on medical leave for at least 6 weeks. Her office won't be open and there will be nobody here during all that time so far as I knew. A new maintenance man has been hired (at last) and so I'm hoping that at least he will be here in his office and working around the building during office hours. The problem there is that he's so new that he may not know much.

To make a long story short, I was able to contact the company that maintains the laundry machines and notified them about the washer problem. Now I'll probably be the one who needs to let the repairperson in but I hope that the maintenance person will be around.

Anybody still reading this incredibly tiresome story?

[Virginia]

I read it all. Sounds like you might be able to hand some of your building duties over to a maintenance person quite soon.

Also sounds as though you got some extra exercise just getting that broken chair in the dumpster. Thank goodness for tall people who come along to help us short ones.

I did have some good food yesterday and brought some home for today. In addition, a neighbor made banana bread and brought me some. She got a baking bug she said but didn't want to eat it all due to the weight it might cause her to gain.

[agate]

Yes, that chair disposal project was so much exercise that I was feeling as if I wasn't going to be able to do it. Just balancing it on top of the rollator was a challenge.

So you're short, too, Virginia? Somehow I pictured you as being tall. Then you know how it is not to be able to see in situations where there are taller people in front of you, and all of the other little problems faced by short people.

I understand that tall people have their problems too, like being put into beds where their feet stick out because the bed isn't long enough and having their heads bump into the tops of doorframes but I still think that being tall is an advantage.

[agate]

I've lifted this from another site but it's all right to help yourself to images as long as you're not copying and pasting anyone's actual posts.

[flatcap]

Funny cartoon, but the rest is a mystery, including where the image came from.

[jingle]

[flatcap]

[flatcap]

[agate]

That one about the two men in the old folks' home was even funnier when I noticed the nose rings.