Working for The Weekend [refrain]
Every few weeks on a Friday afternoon Postmodern Sass quits work early to thank her readers for reading, and shares some of their email messages and other tidbits with you.
* * *
Last Sunday Tim said nice things about my stories, which begat a flood of new visitors, comments, email messages, and linky love. I am still catching up. And Tim begat Bryan, and one, or perhaps both of them, begat Sisyphus, and so on, and so on, until my head exploded and I found myself engaged in a protracted metablog discussion with La Tortue Cynique. In French.
Tim: In a gesture akin to the mouse who lives in the straw in the elephant's cage offering a rose petal to that elephant who, in turn, tries, though not with too strenuous an effort, to avoid accidentally stepping on that mouse, I want you to know that you'll be receiving a copy of a certain textbook in the mail later this month, and, when you do, you should turn to the acknowledgements page.
* * *
My French is almost as good as my German, which is to say, not very, so Vielen Dank to my new friend Mark Anders, in Germany, who wrote to tell me that it should be "Mann, wer hätte das gedacht" over there in the right margin. I'd neglected the umlaut, and anyone who knows German knows that umlauts do not appreciate being neglected. According to Mark there are some grammatical situations in which it would be correct to say hatte rather than hätte, however, my situation (to wit: quoting from the song "99 Luftballons") was not one of them. It was when Mark apologized for being a grammar geek, I knew I was in love. (Which is OK, because he's in the northern part of Germany, not Schwabenland, so I'm pretty sure he's not one of my cousins. I have a lot of cousins in Germany.) He said, "Anyway, to me it looks very refreshing in a time when Denglish is all over every German web site, including my own... In case that you should care at all about this..." and then he explained, in great detail, not only why the umlaut needed to be over the A, but gave me a lesson in the evolution of the umlaut.
* * *
Speaking of lessons Brian G., is not, as it turns out, the lanky blond kid at the back of my intro to marketing class, however, he knows a great deal about the psychology of multiple choice tests. I love mysterious men who instruct me in such arcana.
* * *
Thank you to Hyperion and Neil for their too-kind words (which they emailed to me). Good thing they can't see me, because they made me blush.
* * *
Last night was Thursday, which, you may remember, Gentle Reader, is the new Friday. I got to The Banknote at 11:30, and not five minutes later the phone rang. Sid answered it, then handed it to me.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is this Sid?"
"No, Sid just handed me the phone."
"Oh! You must be the blogger!"
"Um... well, I'm a blogger."
"I am, too. I was there earlier and Sid said I should phone back around this time, that you'd be there."
Her name was Teri, and this is her blog. She's an expat Californian. I told her about the GTA Bloggers, and she emailed me this morning to say she'd signed up.
This is just a wee bit frightening. I got a phone call at The Banknote. Pretty soon they're going to be calling me Norm.
* * *
My best friend Kay emailed me from that island where she lives and asked me what I thought of her MBA thesis proposal. Apparently she believes that since I'm working on my PhD, I must know about these things. She's forgetting that I am a marketing geek who knows nothing about finance. Numbers make my head spin and my eyes go all blurry. Kay is something called a wealth management banker, and her thesis research question is, Will the aging of the U.S. population negatively impact the offshore financial services industry through reduced earnings on fewer investable assets? I am so not worthy!
Kay says, "I still stress about when I'm sounding smart that I actually am making crap up and someone smarter will come along and correct my theories, thereby reminding me that I'm from Beamsville and was supposed to marry the farmer boy next door."
Boy, do I know that feeling.
Of course, in her case the farmer boy next door was the handsome redheaded son of the Vidal family, the ones that named the grape. And, by the way, would everyone please stop pronoucing it vee-dahl, like some malapropitious merlot maven. It's pronounced to rhyme with bridle.
* * *
Thank you, Blundering American, who last month sent me a link to the Big News about Wayne Gretzky's wife with the subject line, "Guess he should have married you, eh?" A man who actually pays attention. If only I lived in Florida.
* * *
Fellow fiction blogger Susie Applegate writes The Applegate Trail, an ongoing blog novel about the townsfolk of Germaine, Oregon. I don't know whether that's a real place (or, for that matter, whether Susie Applegate is her real name), but it's a darned fine Sprachspiel. Susie links to me on her links page, and says I have "some interesting stuff." I'll take that as a compliment, rather than as damning with faint praise. And I'll be checking out the other fiction bloggers she links to.
* * *
Thanks to Tracy, who offered to bring me Nyquil all the way from Maine when I had a nasty cold in January. I hear they make blueberry beer up there. Bring some of that instead!
* * *
I have a date with Udge—in six months. Well, it's not a date date, if you know what I mean. An engagement, I should say. Well; that's not accurate either. It is he who has the engagement—something about an opera at the new Toronto opera house. He's coming all the way from Germany to see it, which is ironic, because it's Wagner, and while he's here in Toronto he wants to go to The Banknote.
* * *
Finally, Tracy, Wendy, and Udge all tagged me for the "Four Things" meme, and I don't want to seem like a poor sport or a snob, but memes, like mimes, are just not for me. I simply can't imagine that you, Gentle Reader, could care a packet of pins what my favourite TV shows are (and in any event I've already told you about two of them, here and here). Or what I had for breakfast. Unless, of course, there's a good story in it, like, say, having your intestines explode shortly after eating it. I've also told you about one job I had in the past, and about the one I have now. A third job I've had was waitressing at a café in Montreal, which is one of the places I've lived. Maybe one day I'll write a story about what a terrible waitress I was. If you recognize the picture in this story, then you know what my favourite movie is, and if you've been paying attention you can guess what are the four places I'd rather be:
Last Sunday Tim said nice things about my stories, which begat a flood of new visitors, comments, email messages, and linky love. I am still catching up. And Tim begat Bryan, and one, or perhaps both of them, begat Sisyphus, and so on, and so on, until my head exploded and I found myself engaged in a protracted metablog discussion with La Tortue Cynique. In French.
Tim: In a gesture akin to the mouse who lives in the straw in the elephant's cage offering a rose petal to that elephant who, in turn, tries, though not with too strenuous an effort, to avoid accidentally stepping on that mouse, I want you to know that you'll be receiving a copy of a certain textbook in the mail later this month, and, when you do, you should turn to the acknowledgements page.
My French is almost as good as my German, which is to say, not very, so Vielen Dank to my new friend Mark Anders, in Germany, who wrote to tell me that it should be "Mann, wer hätte das gedacht" over there in the right margin. I'd neglected the umlaut, and anyone who knows German knows that umlauts do not appreciate being neglected. According to Mark there are some grammatical situations in which it would be correct to say hatte rather than hätte, however, my situation (to wit: quoting from the song "99 Luftballons") was not one of them. It was when Mark apologized for being a grammar geek, I knew I was in love. (Which is OK, because he's in the northern part of Germany, not Schwabenland, so I'm pretty sure he's not one of my cousins. I have a lot of cousins in Germany.) He said, "Anyway, to me it looks very refreshing in a time when Denglish is all over every German web site, including my own... In case that you should care at all about this..." and then he explained, in great detail, not only why the umlaut needed to be over the A, but gave me a lesson in the evolution of the umlaut.
Speaking of lessons Brian G., is not, as it turns out, the lanky blond kid at the back of my intro to marketing class, however, he knows a great deal about the psychology of multiple choice tests. I love mysterious men who instruct me in such arcana.
Thank you to Hyperion and Neil for their too-kind words (which they emailed to me). Good thing they can't see me, because they made me blush.
Last night was Thursday, which, you may remember, Gentle Reader, is the new Friday. I got to The Banknote at 11:30, and not five minutes later the phone rang. Sid answered it, then handed it to me.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is this Sid?"
"No, Sid just handed me the phone."
"Oh! You must be the blogger!"
"Um... well, I'm a blogger."
"I am, too. I was there earlier and Sid said I should phone back around this time, that you'd be there."
Her name was Teri, and this is her blog. She's an expat Californian. I told her about the GTA Bloggers, and she emailed me this morning to say she'd signed up.
This is just a wee bit frightening. I got a phone call at The Banknote. Pretty soon they're going to be calling me Norm.
My best friend Kay emailed me from that island where she lives and asked me what I thought of her MBA thesis proposal. Apparently she believes that since I'm working on my PhD, I must know about these things. She's forgetting that I am a marketing geek who knows nothing about finance. Numbers make my head spin and my eyes go all blurry. Kay is something called a wealth management banker, and her thesis research question is, Will the aging of the U.S. population negatively impact the offshore financial services industry through reduced earnings on fewer investable assets? I am so not worthy!
Kay says, "I still stress about when I'm sounding smart that I actually am making crap up and someone smarter will come along and correct my theories, thereby reminding me that I'm from Beamsville and was supposed to marry the farmer boy next door."
Boy, do I know that feeling.
Of course, in her case the farmer boy next door was the handsome redheaded son of the Vidal family, the ones that named the grape. And, by the way, would everyone please stop pronoucing it vee-dahl, like some malapropitious merlot maven. It's pronounced to rhyme with bridle.
Thank you, Blundering American, who last month sent me a link to the Big News about Wayne Gretzky's wife with the subject line, "Guess he should have married you, eh?" A man who actually pays attention. If only I lived in Florida.
Fellow fiction blogger Susie Applegate writes The Applegate Trail, an ongoing blog novel about the townsfolk of Germaine, Oregon. I don't know whether that's a real place (or, for that matter, whether Susie Applegate is her real name), but it's a darned fine Sprachspiel. Susie links to me on her links page, and says I have "some interesting stuff." I'll take that as a compliment, rather than as damning with faint praise. And I'll be checking out the other fiction bloggers she links to.
Thanks to Tracy, who offered to bring me Nyquil all the way from Maine when I had a nasty cold in January. I hear they make blueberry beer up there. Bring some of that instead!
I have a date with Udge—in six months. Well, it's not a date date, if you know what I mean. An engagement, I should say. Well; that's not accurate either. It is he who has the engagement—something about an opera at the new Toronto opera house. He's coming all the way from Germany to see it, which is ironic, because it's Wagner, and while he's here in Toronto he wants to go to The Banknote.
Finally, Tracy, Wendy, and Udge all tagged me for the "Four Things" meme, and I don't want to seem like a poor sport or a snob, but memes, like mimes, are just not for me. I simply can't imagine that you, Gentle Reader, could care a packet of pins what my favourite TV shows are (and in any event I've already told you about two of them, here and here). Or what I had for breakfast. Unless, of course, there's a good story in it, like, say, having your intestines explode shortly after eating it. I've also told you about one job I had in the past, and about the one I have now. A third job I've had was waitressing at a café in Montreal, which is one of the places I've lived. Maybe one day I'll write a story about what a terrible waitress I was. If you recognize the picture in this story, then you know what my favourite movie is, and if you've been paying attention you can guess what are the four places I'd rather be:
- San
- Fran
- Cis
- Co
3 Comments:
HA! Have a good weekend, Sass.
See you tonight Sassy Pants.
For the rest of you, she's (hopefully still) coming to my bands show. It's like Winners: "You should go!"
PM Sass -- OMG, I just read this! Thanks for the mention and I promised not to call you Sid or Norm.
I wanted to tell you that Breakfast TV is planning to do a piece on blogs. They mentioned it in their show on Friday AM. They asked viewers to send in their favorite blogs...you deserve a mention! Of course I also told them about Purple Women and Biking Toronto (Joe really puts up some quality content and he has this whole blog thing figured out).
Send an email to BTV at btv@ctv.com (double check the address though).
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