sherribabee

When I was at the Chinese lunch in NY several weeks ago and pronounced it HEWS-ton, no fewer than 8 voices responded in complete unison: "HOWS-ton" I think I was one of them. Only because the same thing happend to me when I first moved here. The one NY-ism I refuse to abide by is standing ON line. No! I am in a line not on it. I'm staning IN line. This one drives me batty.

I love to hear people order eXpresso. And no amount of correcting will convince my friend to say sangria instead of sangUria. I went to school in Bourbonnais, IL. The locals pronounced it bur-BONE-iss while the out-of-town students pronounced it bur-buhn-NAY. It was like an ongoing series of turf wars or something. Houston. In TX, it's hews-ton. In NYC it's house-ton.

Um... isn't the first T pronounced? I've always heard: [mõ-tRa-Se], and [mõ-Ra-Se] just doesn't seem right to me. (NB. I'm using a big "S" in place of the usual IPA symbol for "sh" which doesn't seem to work in Explorer; the big "R" means it is uvular). Ya heard wrong. It's just a quirk. There's no rule supporting mon'rashay, it's just the way the name is pronounced. Perhaps it's a trick to ferret out spies. It's a mute point.

Posts. I spelled my posts correctly. Next?

I generally think of Starbucks as a form of a quick, hot dessert. I'm not a big fan of their coffee, but I will go down (we have a store in our building) and get a soy hazelnut latte every now and again when I want something hot and nutty/sweet after lunch. I can hardly taste the coffee. I tried their "spiced cider" a few times, but something about watery apple juice with a few overpowering spices thrown in just doesn't do it for me. It's atrocious. Akin to that Thera-Flu cider flavored crap.

Yup, I've heard 'crown' on more than one occasion.

Oh yes. I just don't understand how people come up with certain pronunciations. Like how on earth does one get 'poim' from poem? Ah well...pick your battles, right? I'll think I'll go have some fwoo grass.

Well, I'll be the first to admit that I struggle to pronounce certain French words (but I'm certain I at least pronounce foie gras correctly, not that I'd ever order it). I never studied the scratch-a-frackin language, so gimme a break, will ya? I'm not mispronouncing it, it's just my accent. Do we poke equal fun at the English-speaking folks who can't pronounce English words? (I do!) Crayon. Aunt. Poem. Drawer. Ask. Coupon. Wash. Often. Nuclear. I bet we all mispronounce at least one of these words. We need more German food. I know I can pronounce that stuff.

Carrot cupcakes with citrus cream cheese frosting -- from my oven. I'm not sure I've ever purchased a cupcake anywhere. That mojito thingie sure sounds worthy though.

Lunch would be around noon that Friday. If Friday's a bomb, Tuesday evening? Which would be better? Woah, my post count was just 4444. Coool. Tuesday night works for me (I think).

I'll be out of town the day after Thanksgiving.

That wold be most excellent, thanks! My landlord doesn't seem to have any interest in fixing the problem, so if I can do something myself...

I'm there.

I put some poison out for my little mouse. He rummaged around in it yesterday and left me a gift of poop. I'm picking up some incense on my way home tonight, as I imagine he will be meeting his demise soon. Now, what to do about the squirrel living in my wall? We seem to have a standing date every day at roughly 3:00 AM -- he scratches and thumps around, I fling rubber bands at the wall. 15 seconds of fun. Thank god I'm a nightowl so he's not waking me up with his ruckus. He can't get into the apartment from where he's at, so I'm not terribly worried about it, but he sure is annoying (and freakishly punctual). I just hope he doesn't decide to die in my wall. I don't think any tolerable amount of incense could cover up that smell.

Yeah. Either that or simply go where you want to go, and if the picky person doesn't like it...just say, "whatevah, I do what I want!" Seems like the pickier the eater, the more self-centered s/he is.

Yeah, what on earth is he gonna eat?

can't you just push it back an hour? This sounds good. Jamie I'm down with that.

What about french fries?

I will never sleep again. Thanks.

Yeah, but you gotta catch 'em first. They're fast little suckers.

I found a mouse in my stove this past spring. I bought the little sonic thingies and plugged them into every available outlet in the apartment. Didn't work. In fact, I'm willing to bet that it actually attracts mice. I bought a few snap traps and loaded them with peanut butter. The little bugger managed to eat all the peanut butter without setting off the traps. I made a carpet of glue traps surrounding a sack of poison. The little fella managed to lay himself a carpet of dustbunnies to walk across to get to the poison. If he hadn't eaten all the poison, I think I wouldn've asked him to stick around and balance my checkbook. He was a smart little guy. A week later there was noxious evidence as to his demise. I just spotted a mouse poop in the kitchen near the stove, so I think the next generation has moved in. Gotta go buy more poison tomorrow. I doubt I'll sleep well tonight.

Does anyone else derive secret pleasure from taking extremely picky eaters out to places where you know they'll hate everything? I used to know a girl who only ate about 10 things (plain pasta, turkey cold-cuts, Zesta crackers, a certain brand of string cheese, Coke, uncooked white cake batter, McD's chicken nuggets, hamburgers, KFC and a couple other things...that's it...I'm not exaggerating). She absolutely refused to try aything new (people who refuse to try new foods irritate me like you wouldn't believe). I used to LOVE it when we'd be in a group and trying to figure out where to have dinner. I would inevitably suggest going to the Pakistani place up the street or to the Thai place, out for sushi, etc. Then I'd sit there and smirk as she either said she wouldn't join us or would go along and just sit ther drinking her Coke and eating plain noodles (if they would even serve them to her). I'm evil.

Somewhere, on a work related message board, she's complaining about the mean girl at work who bitched her out for eating at her desk. "I really have no idea what her problem is...one day I was just sitting there having a snack..." Ah well. At least I got my way! Now, if I could just find a way to keep the company from ordering anymroe clickety pens. The girl next to me can't walk away from her desk without clickety pen in hand and she clicks furiously as she walks around the office. But at least she doesn't chew loudly. Oh, I have dining annoyance...folks who have absolutely no table manners whatsoever. I recently had dinner with a guy who never put a napkin in his lap, licked his knife, demonstrated his Kentucky hand grip on his fork, drug his finger through the sauce on his plate to taste it, and then again later to make sure he got all the sauce off the plate. I was absolutely mortified. Weird thing is, he was otherwise quite refined. He was like the Rainman of eating.

But you would've had you had either of the items on you, right?

I won't be able to make it. *sniff-sniff* Perhaps you could take a few 'orders' for the next Burger Club meeting?