Color Me Surprised

I was reading an article today about the remains of a 35,000-year-old flute that was found in some cave in Germany. Whether or not the average person would find that interesting, I have no idea. It piqued my interest, being a music major and all, that even primitive man had a culture that included music, and even more that they actually crafted instruments. Halfway through the article, however, another of my passions was aroused: grammar. Actually, I wouldn't call it a passion, so much as a pet peeve when I find errors in places where there really shouldn't be. Seriously, is it so hard to proofread?

Sure, I make errors, just like anyone else. I try to catch them all before I hit "publish," but occasionally some will slip through. Still, there are two big differences between errors in my own writing and errors I find in articles like this: I don't have an editor to double-check my work, and I'm not getting paid.

Back to the point, I stumbled a bit when I came to the phrase, "The cave, which was occupied for millenniums . . ." Millenniums? Really? Well, imagine my surprise when I looked up in the dictionary and found that millenniums is actually an accepted word. It sounds a bit clumsy to my ear, but I suppose that's just because I've never heard it before. It's always been millennia. But either way is apparently correct.

I'm sure that anyone learning English as a second language would be thrilled at another word that simply needs to add an 's' to become plural, rather than memorizing some other strange rule. I've just started teaching myself German, and in that language, there are seven possible ways to form the plural of a noun. Seven! There certainly are patterns that emerge, but there are also a lot of words you just "need to know." (And I'm sure anyone who's studied a foreign language knows exactly what I mean about those certain things you just "need to know.") I can't compare to English, since I really couldn't tell you off hand how many abnormal ways we have to turn words plural, but Italian was so much simpler.

Ultimate!!!

Ultimate Frisbee (from here on called Ultimate) is probably my favorite sport right now. I played for several years in High School and then continued and played for Bradley in college. Starting this Summer, I've been playing with my brother in-law and some of his friends on Wednesday evenings and on the occasional Monday and Friday night in Wheaton. It's a great way to get in shape and make friends. Anyway, I just got back from that. I thought I was doing better with getting back into shape, but today it around 94 degrees. I'm surprised I made it for 2.5 hours of play. It was a great time though. Ok, not much more to this post. I told you they'd be short. If anyone is in the Lombard area though, feel free to come out and join us on Wednesday evenings at 5:30 at the commons.

Hot

Pat has been bugging me to post something, so here I am.

Summer officially starts tomorrow. I'm not a fan of summer. As a kid, I used to love it (what kid doesn't?) but that was probably at least partly due to not having to go to school for three months. But my tolerance for heat is not what it used to be. Spring and fall are my new favorite seasons, with those moderate temperatures that aren't too hot and aren't too cold. Technically I prefer spring (it just feels different), but spring comes with the knowledge that it's only going to keep getting hotter, and as soon as the weather settles on a good average temperature for me, I've got maybe a month, if I'm lucky, before it starts getting too hot.

Fall, on the other hand, doesn't have quite the same feeling that spring does, but the steadily dropping temperature over the autumn months suits me much better than the heat does.

At any rate, here we are, at the beginning of summer, and I know I have a long three months ahead of me. Air conditioning is my new best friend.

P.S. - I did actually have to look up online to see if today or tomorrow was the first day of summer. I can never remember. And it turns out there's a good reason why. The First Day of Summer, if anyone's interested in a quick read.

Roasted chicken is cheating

Ok, so we're roasting a chicken for the first time. It's supposed to be like the easiest thing in the world to make and it's pretty cheap. I don't know why we haven't tried it before. Anyway, on to my point. Roast chicken cheats. It's so easy to make, but it takes forever to cook. I declare that when something takes like an hour and a half to cook, it's not allowed to smell good after only 30 minutes! /drool...

P.S. Just as a heads up, my posts are probably going to consist of short little random blurbs. If you want less random and more thought provoking posts, you'll just have to wait 'till my wife posts.

I can't believe she let me post first

Look out world, I've got a blog to post on! Seriously though, anyone who knows us knows that Charleen is the writer, not me. We just decided that starting a blog together would be a good way to keep in touch with people that we may not get to talk to on a day to day basis anymore. Unfortunately for you, I got to post first. Mwahahahahah... Anyway, I'll wrap this up by saying welcome, pull up a chair, and make yourselves at home. Just no feet on the sofa please.