a [photo walk] on a sunny day

Wednesday was an anomaly. It was so beautiful and warm outside, and I was excited because I was able to sport my cut-offs. Living in San Francisco has made me truly appreciate the days I am able to wear shorts or a skirt without tights, as they are few and far between. It is perpetually autumn in this city, except the leaves never fall and the brisk wind that is usually whipping about can make even a warm day feel chilly. So yesterday, because it was absolutely gorgeous I was desperate to spend as much time outdoors (with a reason), I got my camera and went on a long photo walk. Here are some of the fruits of my adventure.

A discombobulated post, hooray for lists

Hello everyone and Happy Humpday! I hope that you loved the two guest posts I have this week from my dad and Stacey! Personally, I thought both posts were fantastic, and I thank them for letting me post their words on these pages. I also want to take a moment and say thank to my most recent followers for joining. I hope you stick around. Here are some things that have been going on in my life and in my head.

- Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer was a great and funny little book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I was enjoying it so much I didn't want it to end, so as I got to the last forty pages I was only reading in snippets. Does that ever happen to you when you're having fun with a story? It's like a good dream, right? The book is about a man (the author) having a mid-life crisis in the late 90s and documents his travels all around the world, from Detroit to Libya, from Rome to the Philippines. It reads like a series of journal entries, and I assume that's how it was composed, from his notes and scribblings as he wandered over the globe. It's a quick read and I was laughing so much while reading Ben had to check in on me to make sure I was okay.

- PETA wants the San Francisco Tenderloin to be renamed the Tempeh district. LAME. If you've never been to San Francisco, the Tenderloin is an area of the city close to downtown known for its drug dealing, massage parlors, hotel rooms rented by the hour, and prostitutes. I think the name suits the location and renaming a historic neighborhood to make it more comely to vegans is pretty ridiculous. To the people advocating for this: why not spend that time you're wasting by doing something constructive, like volunteering in one of the Tenderloin's soup kitchens or drop-in clinics, or donate some time to an organization that really helps animals, like the ASPCA? Why not do some actual good instead of this nonsense? And seriously, how many vegans who actually live in San Francisco are distressed by the name Tenderloin? Right, that's what I thought.

- I can't afford to shop there, and even if I could I wouldn't. The amount of lawsuits due to discrimination within the company, and to customers, is sickening enough. Plus I'm not one to wear t-shirts with racist/sexist messages printed on them. Anyway, I heard this story the other night on the news and I almost threw up in my mouth: Abercrombie & Fitch is making push-up bra bathing suits for seven year old girls. First off, why the hell does the company think it's okay to sexualize little girls? Second of all, what do they think this is going to do to the children's self esteem? This is just wrong on so many levels.

- Sage burning! We burned the sage on Sunday night, around 11 PM. Ben lit the sage, I opened the windows and we went from room to room chanting "Bad spirits must leave. Stop bothering our cat. Stop chasing her around. If you are a bad spirit you must go!" I have the whole thing on videotape but Ben isn't letting me post it online. Oh well. I do have some photos, though. The burning sage smelled weirder than I expected, kind of like an armpit. Ben said it smelled like hippies. The atmosphere in the apartment felt calmer after we burned the sage, though the jury is still out regarding the ghosties. I'll let you know when we feel that they've been banished for good.




This looks like a prop from a Cheech and Chong movie.


- Blog contest! I'm up again, and this time you only have a few hours to vote! So please vote, and check out the post I wrote! :)

- Bookstores are closing. All the Borders in the city are closing shop, and I fear for the smaller shops that I love to frequent. Bookstores are going the way of Blockbusters when Netflix took over the scene. Damn you, Kindle!! It's sad, but I guess if they aren't making any money they can't stay in business. I hope this is just a by-product of technology and doesn't mean that people aren't reading anymore.

- Ben and I went to a Giants game the other night to take photos of his SOMA-1 jacket to use for an advertisement for The San Francisco Examiner. I am proud to say that I took the photo used in the ad, and yes we were really there. It's just that ballpark lighting that makes the scene look surreal.




See? It was a beautiful night for a ball game!

- "Disconjointed" is not a real word. I was going to put "Disconjointed" in the name of this post but the red squiggly line appeared under the word. I looked it up. There's one Urban Dictionary definition, but no Merriam-Webster definition. I was very surprised. "Disconjointed," to me, means "not properly put together" much like today's blog entry.

Friendships and self-esteem

Image by *~Dawn~* Busy Bee ~ Be back SOON! via Flickr

Last week I was washing the dishes and thinking about the friendships I've had over the course of my life. When I was younger I had some good playmates that were fun to hang around with, but mostly the kids at school liked to tease me about my interests and the way I looked. I had trouble fitting in with the majority of my classmates-- I was a smarty-pants who won the spelling bees and made science-related jokes to the teacher ["Oh no, Ms. Elias! You're covered in epidermis!" I would exclaim and the teacher would freak out. haha]. My different sense of humor and my contrarian attitude growing up were an obstacle when trying to make new friends. Eventually, I let the name-calling and hounding get to me and I started playing dumb (because if no one likes a know-it-all, then they must love a fool, right?) and conforming my interests to those of my peers. Unfortunately, these tactics didn't win me any friends worth keeping, either.

High-school was a lot better-- I began to find myself and not worry so much about how others perceived me, and I made decent friends that I still have today, which were built on trust and shared interests and worth more than just having someone to sit next to in the lunchroom. Even if I did get teased by some of the kids at school (because kids at school do love to tear other kids down) for ridiculous and superficial reasons, I tried to not let it affect me (even though it did). It wasn't until college that I finally shed a lot of that bottled-up frustration and low self esteem and found a bunch of really great friends that I treasure. I'm not saying I have perfect self-esteem now, but I try not to let the judgment of others affect how I carry myself. The people who I love, I take their opinions seriously, but I try not to give too much weight to what strangers think. With all of these ideas brewing in my mind, I began to wonder if self-esteem and meaningful friendships were connected. In my case it is true, and I feel like it should be true for others-- for how can others love you if you do not truly love yourself? I decided to spring this question on a new friend of mine who I see as being the epitome of high self esteem and kindness. Without further nonsense from me, here is Stacey's guest post:

When Alexandra asked me if I'd be willing to write a guest post, my face lit up like a 5-year-old who just received a pony for her birthday. I'm less than confident in my writing abilities, but if she has faith in me, why not? The excitement quickly faded, though, when I realized that I was actually going to have to think of a topic worth writing about. Thankfully, she quickly posed this question, "Do you think self-esteem and the ability to have positive and meaningful relationships are intertwined?" Hello, worthwhile topic!

My immediate response to the question was "Absolutely!" I initially thought she was referring to a relationship with a significant other, but the more I thought about it, I had the same response when it came to any relationship. Self-esteem is key.

When I was in college, I suffered from depression and extreme anxiety. I still do to an extent, but college was such unfamiliar territory that both were intensified. I was put on Zoloft to help control everything, but my doctor strongly suggested that I see a therapist so I could also learn how to manage my feelings. As scared as I was to go, I knew logically that it could only help matters. Boy, was I wrong! I managed to get what was, quite possibly, the worst therapist of all time. Our first session was spent getting to know each other, an ice-breaker session.

"Do you drink?"
No.
"Do you smoke?"
No.
"Do you do drugs?"
No.
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
No.
"Hmm."

Hmm? Was was that supposed to mean?

"Have you ever had a boyfriend?"
Once, in 8th grade.
"Hmm."
I'm not actively pursuing a boyfriend, though! I'm happy being single.
"Hmm."

*insert more pointless ice-breaker questions*

"So you're really never had a boyfriend?!"
Just that one in 8th grade.
"Hmm. That's weird..."

I held it together for the rest of the "interview" but as soon as I was outside, I started bawling. What was so "weird" about my lack of a boyfriendf? Was it really a big deal? Was I some sort of a freak? When I got home, my mom asked me how everything went. Of course, I started bawling again. After hearing what had happened, my mom's inner lioness came out. She took it upon herself to call the Psychiatrist's office and rip them a new one. Thank goodness for her, because I was obviously too big of a wuss to do anything about it. Needless to say, I never went back.

Seven years later, and I still haven't had a "real" boyfriend. I think I'm grateful for it, though. Sometimes I get down on myself because most people my age are with someone, married, or are even raising children. It makes it somewhat hard to feel like an adult when you're essentially living the life of a 16-year-old. It's too easy to think sometimes "If I had a boyfriend or husband, this would all be so much easier." But that is where I stop myself. I have relatively low self-esteem and no matter how hard I work at a relationship, it will never be successful until I get my issues under control. I don't want to be that girl who only feels validated by a relationship. I want to be happy with myself because of my accomplishments, because I think I'm good enough. A boyfriend would only be a band aid in this situation. We'd inevitably begin to resent each other, and at this point in my life, I want a serious relationship. Not one where I'm going to be stuck playing middle school break-up games.

And the same goes for friendships. A few years ago, I had a falling out with my best friend, and since she was the queen bee of our group, basically all of my friends cut off contact with me. I was pretty depressed for a while. I had other friends, but none I was that close with. I kept trying to remind myself that these "friends" sucked, and that I had been trying to find a way to split from them, anyway. It didn't matter, though. The fact was that I went from having someone to talk to and hang out with every day, to essentially no one. I was alone.

Eventually, I started blogging in an attempt to make my life less miserable. I never could have imagined the phenomenal people I'd meet, including a handful of literal life changers. These people showed me that it is possible to stand up for myself and my beliefs without the threat of being publicly ridiculed, which is what the old "friends" were best at doing. Poor self-esteem had always kept me from being an individual, and these new friends were showing me that it was indeed possible. Of course, it didn't hurt that they were some of the least judgmental people I've ever crossed paths with.

So, with the addition of some amazing people in my life, people who have showed me what it means to be a true friend, I am slowly building up my self-esteem. I am learning how proper give and take is managed, and one day (hopefully sooner than later) I'll be able to apply these findings to a meaningful and lasting relationship with a guy.



I really love this song. It was stuck in my head while I was writing the introduction, so I thought I'd include it. Please enjoy!

Oh, the vulgarity! a post by my Dad

Cover of William Shakespeare

My dad has a lot to say, much like someone else I know (she may even write this blog), and keeps an awesome blog called Rumpletweezers World. He recently posted an excellent read about swear words that I thought my followers might enjoy (remember when I posted about swear words?). I tweeted about it last week, but I decided to repost the article here, in its entirety, in case you didn't catch it. Enjoy!


“Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.”
-- William Shakespeare

“The human race is in such a dreadful state that no rational person can talk about it without resorting to seditious and obscene language.”
-- Henry Louis Mencken


You know what is starting to bug me? Of course you don’t, so I will tell you.

What is starting to bug me is the sheer volume of coarse language that is being used more often these days. Movies. Cable TV. Eff this. Eff that. Mo’Fo this and that. And milder versions of A-List swearwords now appear in network sitcoms with regularity. Crap. Ass. Sucks. Hooters. Jugs. Butt. Dork. Balls.

It almost seems as if you can’t even read an article in The New Yorker today without being subjected to an air force of literary types eff-bombing their readers. It’s as if today’s writers have lost the Thesaurus or Dictionary they were given when they entered college.

Why do editors even permit this?

And don’t get me started on Blogs. So many swearwords, so little time.

Now, I am not a prude, and I do my own share of swearing, cursing and speaking crudely. I honestly regret this fault. I wish I could control my language better, and swear less. Though I am in no way a golly-gosher a la Ned Flanders. Gosh-darn-it has never been a phrase of mine; likewise Cheese-um-Crackers, nor Jiminy-Christmas! But when my kids were small, I definitely tried extremely hard to be more careful with word choices and used cuss words far more judiciously, at least in their presence. I do happen to believe that a well-placed obscenity now and then provides real shock value and can be truly useful when dispensed in a miserly fashion.

My kids could pick up on the subtext of my use of cursing as they got older. My reaction to bad behavior followed a fairly predictable pattern of escalating entreaties to cease. By the time it reached Defcon 2, it was serious. I used to tell my children when they were badly misbehaving, “God damn it, you can tell I am angry with you because now I am swearing.” This was meant as a signal for them to knock it off. Immediately. If not, well, we would then be in Defcon 1 territory, which could mean anything from timeout corner, to suspension of privileges, to a spanking.

Thank goodness we rarely reached Defcon 1.

My own mother used to address her first three children, unruly sons all, through tightly clenched teeth when she was just about to wale on us when she had reached the end of her tether. However, she rarely, and by rarely I mean never, used foul language to us. Ever. Well, that’s not strictly true. When I was a truly obnoxious and punky teenager, I got her so angry once that she called me a little son-of-a-bitch. To which I replied... Well, you’re my mother, so what does that make you? Wham. Zoom. Bam. (Proving that I was, indeed, a little son-of-a-bitch!)

My father, on the other hand, was a liberal curser of the old school, and a taker of supremely colorful and heroic oaths. His talent for the curse-word is a different matter and is well worth his own column. See the Rumpletweezers World link below for more on his lively damning of both people and inanimate objects.

Frequent swearing and cursing, however, is often frightening or threatening, and is basically swaggering, anti-social behavior. It also used to be said that it is the mark of a limited vocabulary, or of a lazy intellect, or perhaps the sign of a combative and disagreeable nature: of one who doesn’t really care what others think, an inconsiderate oaf who is so supremely self-absorbed that anything they say, or do, no matter how loudly or obnoxiously, or how often, is perfectly fine.

Witness all the swearing we overhear on the street as people conduct ‘conversations’ over their cellular telephones. I think that in the cases of the majority of these winners, they are barely conscious of the fact that others can hear them at all. It’s almost amazing to listen to the absent minded drivel and basely stupid conversations between moronic friends, lovers, spouses, and business acquaintances... and all of it punctuated with gutter talk.

So much for Darwin.

Maybe people don’t even think about what the words they habitually use actually mean any longer. When you hear the word “sucks” in a sentence, what does it mean to you? Does it mean that something is so poor that it sucks the air out of the room? That it sucks all the joy out of life? That it sucks lemons, or rotten eggs? Or is it a throwback to the schoolboy reference to the sexual act of fellatio... inferring that the person or thing that “sucks” is perverted beyond belief, or depraved somehow? Or does it now mean anything at all, or, nothing at all, because it has become so commonplace?

I think I would prefer that “suck” retain its shock value. And as such, it should be used sparingly. I flinch whenever I say this word to an older friend or relative, as I can tell that they really do not wish to hear it, no matter how poor the movie was (or whatever).

But suck is mild indeed compared to its rhyming cousin.

I overheard this word used by an older neighborhood acquaintance when I was a lad of six or so. Anxious to discover its significance, I innocently inquired of my mother one I had gotten home: What does 'fuck' mean?

Well, I learned that saying it would get my face slapped. After being told to never use that filthy word again, I hastened to include it conversation with my peers at appropriate intervals for weeks. Though the word itself has (mostly) positive connotations, this one should be used very sparingly, indeed.

Yelling at one’s wailing baby to shut the fuck up is just about the worst thing a mother can ever tell a child. Likewise, calling them “stupid little mother-fuckers” in public spaces may become commonplace in some neighborhoods, but I certainly hope that this phrase eventually does not mean “anything at all or nothing at all”. It is just so manifestly crude and awful and at bare minimum calls to mind Oedipus, the original Mo’Fo. But even Oepidus did not know what he was doing until much later, and so should be forgiven, or at least excused to some degree.

This is a powerful word and is in danger of becoming devalued through over use. Some of what passes for today’s music stars are doing a yeoman’s job of propagating the use of the extended version of Mo’Fo in the popular lexicon, as well as the continued use of the never-popular N word. But that is a subject for another day, if I ever feel up to it.

Wine-colored dresses and warding off evil with sage

Image via Wikipedia

Good day to you! I hope you all are enjoying your weekend and having a lovely and lazy Sunday. I know I am.

I think we're finally going to do the sage burning house blessing tonight after many failures to do so before due to food-induced comas and some television shows that just had to be watched.

I think the reason I'm putting off this ceremony is because I'm afraid of opening a window I cannot close, spiritually speaking. For those of you who don't believe in ghosts I know all this must seem so silly, but it's a real fear for me.

I don't want to mess with something I don't completely understand. I'm sure I'm overreacting and burning sage is as usual and customary as doing the sign of the cross, but my exposure to so many horror films has skewed my perception.

[Skeptics reading this right now probably think I'm an idiot for entertaining any of these ideas. It's okay. I'm just paranoid and I like letting my imagination run away with itself.]

Let's get to the point of this post. Here are some outfits from this past week!

This is the dress I wore the day I met Ben. It's a special dress. I used the belt that came with to cinch the waist of my cardigan. Also wearing a pearl necklace my mom gave me, a quilted gold hued clutch, a new trench, and my favorite mary-janes.







I found this sparkly red vest at Thrift Town for two dollars and wore it for the first time yesterday with this black turtleneck and an evil eye necklace given to me by my Aunt Stella. I hadn't worn a turtleneck since grade school and I had forgotten how constricting they are on the neck. I felt like it was choking me all day.






An outfit I wore on a really rainy day because the bright colors made me happy. Ben teased me for wearing these jeans with the blow-outs in the knees in the bad weather, and kept asking me if my knees were wet. What a jokester!



Angie at Lariats and Lavender drew this for me after I posted this outfit on Chictopia. How sweet of her!

What did you do this weekend? I did a whole lot of laying around and eating. We bought all of these delicious Italian groceries at Lucca in the Mission and I've been munching on Italian butter cookies like the cookie monster himself. Sooo good! <3

Thoughts on the UCLA idiot

Image via Wikipedia

Is it too late to comment on that student from UCLA who posted the hateful video rant about Asians in the library? I was shocked when I first saw the video, but I decided not to blog about it because everyone else was. Now that everyone is now talking about Rebecca Black's "Friday" (*shudders*), it's time for me to discuss this idiotic story. I'm not going to post the actual video because it's had more than enough hits already and she doesn't need any more infamy. The idiot I'm speaking of is named Alexandra Wallace-- we may share a first name but that's the only thing we have in common-- and she went from an unknown busty blonde co-ed to one of the most watched and talked about videos on Youtube in a matter of days. She kvetches about the entire Asian population at her school (except for her friends, of course), using all kinds of really racist slurs and stereotypes to "prove" her "point." Those items are in quotations because she had no point, and all she did was prove to the whole world that she is a malevolently ignorant dolt.

I think it's sad that we give so much of our attention to people who do dumb and hateful things. For all the virtual ink major media outlets printed in this moron's name, how many other more important news stories didn't receive the attention they deserved? [So then why am I talking about it? I know, I know] Ms. Wallace's rant was so stupid and so unnecessary, yet it was the topic of everyone's Twitter and blog posts. And as long as we're talking we might as well learn some things from this incident. A lot of people underline the fact that she did the world a favor by telling everyone how horrible she is, thereby eliminating herself from the job pool. This is true, and I hope Ms. Wallace has as much trouble getting a decent job as anyone else who's ever been fired for having "drunk photos" found by their employers on Facebook. In my book, what this idiot did was way worse. Yes, we do have the freedom of speech in this country, but it is not there for anyone to crap on. You should respect that freedom and think about what you are offering up to the internet before you open your mouth. I wonder what would have happened if she just kept this opinion to herself, or perhaps decided to share it with her alleged Asian "friends." What would they have told her?

Another reason why this firestorm of nonsense bothered me is because I am of the paler persuasion and I, and most other people, do not share her views on the subject. At all. Not all white people are racist/xenophobic assholes, I swear, but the proliferation of the vlog kinda makes it seem that way. If you're going to complain about cell phones, cell phone manners are bad no matter where you go, and it's not any one group that needs to learn to pipe down when they're chatting to their friends. Her timing with the video couldn't have been any more worse, as she posted it just after the tsunami in Japan. Way to make yourself look really cruel and insensitive! I hope she gets kicked out of UCLA (though I just read a Huffington Post article about how she chose to leave the school due to the "death threats" she was receiving) and is made to go to a manners boot-camp or sensitivity training course, the kind cops have to take when they publicly mess up. She should also have to study the human genome so that we all come from the same place (Africa) and learn that race is only a social construct (it does not actually exist, scientifically speaking) and it's morons like her that keep these invisible racial barriers up. So long as we have people like her who have no problem feeding and spewing their blind hatred against entire communities of people, there will always be a divide.

Sorry for the rant. I hope you're having a splendid Friday and that you have a fun filled weekend. Do you have any cool plans? I also just want to add that if at any time you disagree with something I've said or done on this blog or in the bloggersphere that I hope you come to me, leave a comment, or send me a message about it. I'm a pretty open person and I appreciate the feedback, whether it's positive or negative. This blog demands discussion! I hope that you already know that, but I also just wanted to throw it out there. Have a wonderful weekend!!

Some photos I took and Winchester Mystery House!

It's a rainy day and all I want to do is curl up in my warm bed and finish reading my book, Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It, by Geoff Dyer. So that's exactly what I'm about to do. It's a really funny book and I will tell you all about it later. Right now, it's bitterly cold in my office and I'm beginning to lose sensation in my fingers. Typing this is becoming increasingly difficult. I should get one of those Dragon headsets so I can write my blogs with speech, like that annoying girl in the commercial who supposedly writes an environmental blog (though I doubt she actually does because her "science" doesn't make sense). Okay, photos!


I really liked this saying. I heard it on Celebrity Ghost Stories.










Here are some photos from when Ben and I went to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. The Mystery House belonged to Sarah Winchester, wife of the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. She was left a childless (she had a daughter who died in infancy) widow at a fairly young age, fell into a deep depression because she believed her family was cursed, and then sought psychic help. Her spiritual guides told her that she was being haunted by all the people who were killed by the rifles her family made, and that she ought to move West and build a house for herself and her spirits.







She never stopped building her house (for fear that she would die), she held nightly seances, she decorated her home with what she felt would protect her (the number thirteen was her favorite and, if you're a counter, you'll notice its recurrence all over the house) but did so in style. Beautiful stained glass Tiffany windows are around every corner and painstaking attention was paid to every single detail of the home, with all sorts of kooky traps, false stairwells and doorways to trick the spirits.







I remember watching something on Nickelodeon about this house when I was in grade school and being fascinated with it, and when Ben and I found ourselves in San Jose one weekend we decided to check the house out. It was really amazing, from an architectural design aspect and also coming from someone who's obsessed with all things ghostly.

Funny conversation about cannibalism

Image via Wikipedia

Ben and I just had a humorous exchange which I thought you might enjoy. Here it is:


Me: "My stomach feels weird. I must have eaten something funny yesterday."

Ben: "How do you eat something funny?"

Me: "You know, like when you realize you've just eaten spoiled clown...."

Ben: "Uh-huh."

Me: "I was hungry so I started gnawing on Jim Carrey's leg..."

Ben: "Right."

Me: "I didn't want to, but I starving and Norm MacDonald was right there!"


Yeah, I went there with the cannibalism reference. One of my mom's favorite jokes is about cannibals: Two cannibals are chowing down on their freshly caught dinner, a clown. One turns to the other and asks, "Does this taste funny to you?"

In other news, I didn't win that blogger competition, but it's cool because I still get to compete in another round with another post. Congratulations to the winner-- it was a really close match! I took 45% of the vote and I would like to thank the one-hundred-thirty-something people who voted for me. You rock! Speaking of winning, my dear friend Apfel at Apfelicious Amplifications gave me an award this morning, just for being a good bloggy friend. How sweet is she?! You should all check out her blog if you haven't already.



In morbid news, Ben and I are planning on blessing our apartment tonight with a sage burning ceremony. Have any of you ever done something like this before? Any tips you want to pass along to a first-time burner? I want to ward away the ghosties that keep bothering Sookie, my precious kitty. I'm also not too keen on her staring at something I cannot see just over my head. Go ahead, call me superstitious! I've always been fascinated with the macabre.

The Grammar Stickler

Image by National Media Museum via Flickr

So I have a problem... it's my insane obsession with editing everything I read. I can't help it, I swear, and I know it's obnoxious. I just left a comment on a blog in which I responded to the post and then left a post script pointing out her misuse of a word. And I kinda felt like a dick about it, even though I pointed it out pleasantly and added a "but I could be wrong..." for safe measure. I do not judge people by their bad grammar (though if it's especially atrocious lyk dis n stuf, I won't be able to read it at all) and I recognize that everyone makes mistakes. However, there are some grammatical errors that I keep seeing (and hearing) and it drives me mad in a small way. I wasn't sure if writing about grammar would be that interesting, but after hearing Jay Leno use the word "disinterested" incorrectly the other night on The Tonight Show I was inspired to write this post. So let's start off with that one....


- "Disinterest" means you are unbiased on the matter, like a judge overseeing a trial. If you think something is boring then you are "uninterested." This is one that I read and hear all the time and it bugs me!

- A "segue" is an interlude, a transition from one topic to another. A "Segway" is a contraption with two wheels that you see people from out of state riding around on in a tour group.

- I shouldn't have to mention this one, but "they're" "their" and "there" are three different words with three entirely different meanings. They are not interchangeable!

- Using the word "I" when one should use "me." People do this all the time and I don't know why. Is it because they think using "I" sounds more educated? Example of this mistake in use: "Here is a photo of Katie and I at the beach." This is incorrect because if you take Katie out of the equation it's just "I" at the beach. That sounds funny, right? That's because it's just a photo of me at the beach. Get it?

- Saying "well" when one should say "good." This is another scenario where I think people are afraid to use the word "good" because they think it sounds unintelligent. An example "The new paint job on the house looks well." Just say good. Someone can do well on a test and you can say they did a good job. Again, not interchangeable.

- When something occurs without warning, it happens "suddenly," not "all of a sudden." My tenth grade English teacher taught me this and I'll never forget it. Thank you, Mickey.


I think those of my biggest grammar pet peeves. On the other hand, I do not mind slang so much in speaking or in writing, because if that is the voice that you use, or if that is the effect you are going for in your writing, then it is appropriate. However, there is a difference between employing slangy dialects and having a complete disregard for the English language. If you're not sure what a word means, just look it up. The occasional typo is understandable, it happens to everyone. I had a funny conversation with someone the other day about writing and catching ourselves spelling "their" when we mean to spell "they're" and how it's likely due to reading so much unedited online content. Have you been in a forum lately? This all probably says something greater about our society and they crazy way that we communicate these days, and there may be a moral within it. I just don't know it. I only know that I hate it when I misspell a word in a tweet because I hastily pressed "send" and didn't thoroughly edit my thought. I usually delete it and post again with my spellchecked version.

Speaking of Twitter, I asked my friends what some of their favorite grammar pet peeves were. Here's what they had to say:






So what about you? Is there anything that you commonly see or hear that jars you every time? Any grammatical error that you think should be on my list? Maybe there is a mistake that you see in this blog that you think I should know about? Please tell me! Let's have a grammar chat!

A rainy birthday for my stabby princess

Good morning and Happy Monday! I hope that you all had a lovely weekend and aren't hurting too bad from all of the excessive St. Patrick's Day partying residuals. Before I get into what I got into this past Saturday, let me first ask that you (if you have not already) please check out Thank, Q's blogger Tournament and cast a little vote for the blogosphere's favorite redhead (that would be me, because really, how many other [natural] redheads do you know?)!

My friend Juv celebrated her birthday this weekend with a party at a swanky Union Square bar inside The Crescent Hotel. I came out to wish her the best even though the supposed Supermoon (which I never did get to see because of all the cloud coverage) was making it rain like a bunch of ballers at The Gold Club (that means it was thunderstorming really hard, my suburban friends). I made Juv a collage and also picked up some little jokey items from a store on Haight street. Juv got me a snow globe that says "Bitch" on the inside for Christmas so I bought her a bar of "Bitch" soap (the word bitch stays on the bar of soap until the soap is finished), as well as an eco-friendly shopping bag with a cowgirl and the words "Boss Lady" printed on the front. The coolest part of the gift is the collage I made, which you see Sookie helping me with in the photo below.


Mommy's little helper!



Evy, Juv, and me posing in front of a piano in The Burrit Room at The Crescent Hotel. I just realized that if you add an "o" to the end of the bar name it would be The Burrito Room. Mmmm. Now I'm hungry!



Some ladies brought their dogs to the bar, and the doggies were very friendly and hopped up to our table to check out the Birthday action. Here Marie is making a new friend.



Delicious lemon tarts that Valeria made which reminded me of my childhood and eating Tastykake lemon pies. So good. Juv ordered a bowl of punch for us all to share.



One of the girls who brought the pups started dancing with Juv's friend.



The collage in its full glory.


That's all for now, folks! I'm in the midst of cooking up some delicious blog posts for you all. One is about grammar and the other concerns the ghoties living in my apartment and a sage burning ceremony. Woo-hoo! What did you get into this weekend?