Fingernails down a blackboard

Wednesday, 11:40 am

By Kate

Jan

02

2008

If I never hear the word surge again, it would still be too soon. What an overused word that has become. Every darn time I read an article about anything, there seems to be some sort of surge going on. How did people express themselves before surge became the word of the hour? This has been grating on me for quite a while. Every time I run across it, I want to shriek in pain—a daily occurrence, now.

Evidently, I’m not the only one. Reuters reports that the word is included in a U.S. university’s annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned. I hope journalists pay attention. The article is entitled “Perfect Storm” of cliches make bad English list.

Exercised in more ways than one

Wednesday, 10:46 am

By Kate

Jan

02

2008

I’ve had my invigorating walk for the day. After dropping my car off at the mechanic’s shop, I set out to take the short way home and ended up taking a much longer route because NO ONE shovels their sidewalks any more. Being a very old town, many of our streets are extremely narrow and it’s all your life is worth to walk down one that is narrower than usual, owing to the snow. So, I stuck to the main roads and walked close to two miles rather than one. People were kind enough to avoid splashing me with road slush. Thank you, people. I do appreciate it.

So. Now I am waiting for the lad to wake up. Probably won’t be for a couple of hours. We arrived back home rather late last night. His flight didn’t get in until almost midnight, after sitting on the runway at O’Hare for over an hour. When we got home, he rearranged his room to his liking and even packed his stuff away in the closet. That pleased me to no end.

However, this morning, when I walked into his room, his television, DVD player, and Playstation 2 were all on. That did not please me. We will have words about that today and it won’t happen again. He knows the drill. His little oversight cost me an extra kilowatt hour, according to this morning’s meter reading, and that makes me very unhappy. A good rule to live by is “Don’t give Mom an excuse to unplug stuff, ‘cuz she will.”

I have also done the carpet sweeping, regular sweeping, rug shaking, and cat feeding. I think I’m all set. Except for that pile of laundry that mysteriously appeared on the kitchen floor.... huh. Wonder where that came from.