My second favorite thing about Read Away the Day Day, is that people come in costume to read. For this day, no one had volunteered for Kristen’s class, and so I was pulled into duty. The costume is all Kristen. I said I would wear whatever, as long as I didn’t have to think of the whatever. Kristen happily whipped me up this Sam costume. Do you like green eggs and ham?
However, people who understand the correct use of quotation marks (and, I will agree, we are in the minority) will giggle because by putting quotation marks around the word stop, they are actually encouraging us to not stop our vehicles. Had the company, or the sign makers asked us, we would have told them that when trying to draw people’s attention to something, perhaps the use of the exclamation point would have been a better choice.
Yes, that’s right folks. When you look up how to use quotation marks correctly there is a whole lot of information about using them for dialogue and where the commas go and on which side of the quotations the punctuation lives. There is nothing that instructs you to put them around “words” willy-nilly when you are trying to draw people’s attention to them.
Do you know why? Because when you put quotes around things that aren’t dialogue, it can often be read that the word you are quoting is not true. My favorite example from my workplace was at Bread and Circus and the sign in our Prepared Foods department advertised “fresh” sandwiches. “Are we trying to tell people we only serve old, moldy sandwiches?” I asked aloud before erasing their quote-ish presence. That sign above? It is saying to keep driving right through there. Don’t stop, no matter what other context clues tell you.
And really, what is wrong with the exclamation point? They are scattered all over the blogs (including this one) as well as enthusiastic people’s letters and notes. Why are they not used more on signs? Are they not dignified enough? And shouldn’t sign makers know better? Why not have an English major on staff to proofread those signs before you print them? God knows there are tons of unemployed English majors out there. Do us all a favor and hire one. The English major gets a job. Businesses don’t suffer the expense of incorrect signs and the general public isn’t assaulted by incorrect grammar.
Happily for those of us who get pleasure in the misuse of quotation marks, there is a blog. Yes, you too can enjoy The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.
Well, my Guidelines did their job, but they went out with a whimper.
Up and dressed: yes, Friday and Saturday
1 hour study: yes, Friday, no Saturday
1 hour blogs: yes, Friday, and then 20 fruitless minutes spent searching for a count up timer for the blog on Saturday
1 hour exercise: yes Friday, yes Saturday. Both days there was jogging.
4 hours work: I think I did some work on Friday, but probably not four hours. No on Saturday
Keep up with dishes and picking up: Yes on both days.
Nap maximum time 30 minutes: I think I didn’t nap on either of those days.
Eat only when hungry, stop when full. Nope.
Plan food. Nope.
Fruit and veggies while watching movie. Nope.
So overall, I would say the guidelines kept me from going into a slide early on. I count them a success and will use them on my next break.
I took yesterday off from my guidelines and had a day of sloth. There was much consumptive entertainment. So here is the report from Wednesday:
So, on one hand, I missed a lot of my goals. But I am taking cheer in the fact that I’ve had portions of vacations that passed with multiple days like this day.
This is a time of relaxing, for sure. I don’t think I have met any of my goals for work 4 hours of work for awhile now. Today was no different.
Not bad day. Just no work.
It was long. It was hard. I fell off the wagon more than once, but I am glad I made this resolution. I’ve made new letter friends (all about 30 years older than me) and have reacquainted myself with some old friends as well as the pen and the paper, rather than the computer and the keyboard. I love the stamps, the paper and envelopes and also pulling a letter out of the mailbox and curling up on the couch to read it. In 2009 I will try to write three letters per week. This was too much fun to give up after only one year.
My resolution for 2009? The infinitely easier and much less time consuming.”eat while sitting down.”
I want to say that I went out with a bang, but here is what happened: I got tired. The first two days of December I wrote two letters to go in my packet to be mailed off to LEX. Then I decided to count my Christmas Cards as part of this project, even though they were more of an assembly line project than actual letter writing. There were 25 cards, so that brought me to December 28-31. Only four more letters were needed to complete the year. I didn’t write them.
So the month breakdown looks like this:
December 1. LEX.
December 2. LEX
December 3-27. Christmas Cards.
December 28. No one
December 29. No one
December 30. No one
December 31. No one.
Alas.
Hi there. I know you are pretty busy being the most utilized library of cities our size and everything, but I have a small wish that I am hoping you will fulfill. I’m sure you probably think it is helpful to package entire TV series as one multi-disk package for people to check out. After all, it is easier to check out and watch an entire season of, say The Office Season Four over a three week period than it is to try and reserve say, disk one of The Office Season Four, watch it, return it, and reserve disk two.
But here is the deal. When handed all four disks of Season Four at the same time, I tend to want to watch all four disks right away. I have no self control. It’s like in Old Yeller, when the boy who doesn’t like Old Yeller ties the hunk of meat low enough so Old Yeller could eat it, but Old Yeller is Old Yeller and the next morning hasn’t touched the meat thus gaining the boy’s esteem and further winning our hearts? Except I’m not Old Yeller. Were I the dog in that situation, the morning would find the rope hanging slack and me sleeping off the meat food coma. With an entire season of a DVD that I can have for three weeks I will inevitably finish it before the first week is out.
I’ve recently checked out the series Sports Night, which I remember reading was good when it was playing on TV (where they only air one episode per week if you are lucky) but I wasn’t really watching a lot of TV at that time. It turns out that the buzz I heard lo those 10 years ago was right on. Likable characters, snappy dialog, zany-but-real situations, and every episode some character manages to bring up some random obscure topic to become obsessed with. I’m enjoying it tremendously. And therein lies the problem. The Sports Night DVD is not just one season, but the entire series. Six disks! 40-something episodes! I know my lack of self-control isn’t your problem but if only you would just give me one disk at a time I would be so much better off. Netflix operates that way. So do the movie rental stores. But you, oh generous library. You give me everything at once.
So think about it. More packaging, I know, and more checking in and out etc. But if all your various television series were packaged individually, just think of the boost in circulation numbers.
Sincerely,
Patricia Collins.
Proud Multnomah County Library Patron.
Okay, these are probably the most boring posts ever, but they are really keeping me in line. This morning, after not sleeping well last night, I really wanted to just go back to bed. But I couldn’t do that because I would have to mention it in the guidelines report. Also, as you will see below, I didn’t really meet my work requirement or my exercise requirement yesterday so I have already made plans to come closer to meeting both of them today. I’m on day 11 or so of these guidelines and I haven’t collapsed in food coma yet, nor have I lost a whole day doing nothing. I’m finding a good balance between work and leisure. So thank goodness for posts about guidelines.
All in all, not a bad day. And Sports Night is a great show.
Watching TV on DVDs = crack. Especially when it is a half-hour sitcom. I sit down to watch two shows and four hours later I’m still sitting there. This was a mildly unmotivated day.
Overall, not bad. I get a goodly amount done during the morning. I’d like to say that I am going to limit my TV viewing today, but I would be lying.