Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Then vs. Than

It's a pet peeve of mine when people use "then" when they should be using "than."

"Than" is used in a comparison, such as:
"I ran faster THAN Anne,"
or,
"Man, I would rather have my hand in a can, THAN a tan fan in a van."

"Then" is sequential, such as:
"First, I went to the dentist, THEN I went to lend a hen to Jen."

Hopefully, the above alliteration will help solve the world's minor grammer problems.
You're welcome.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Another day...

We had an interesting day here in mundane land! I finished chopping down the bush that was taller than the house in the front yard and it kinda fell on the fence. My dear husband was trying to sleep at that time, since he worked off and on through much of the night, which is why he wasn't there to help it fall away from the fence. He said he would rather do it later, but the trouble with later is that it never comes.
(A couple days ago, Ravenna, trying to quote a scripture, said, "Do not put off the day of your procrastination.")

So, I did what I could and then told him I thought it would be a good idea to get it off the fence before the dear neighbor with the perfect yard saw it. So, he hastened off to Sears to buy a chainsaw.

I fed my dear baby (7 weeks old today!) while he was gone. Then, we chopped up the tree together. Actually, there was no chopping involved, it just sounds wrong to say, "We sawed up the tree together," maybe 'sawed down' would sound better. Nah.

Then, Ravenna came home and did her homework. Then, we watched "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" together, with Christian, while Geneva & Dexter watched a couple "Thomas the Tank Engine" movies instantly on Netflix on the computer in the bedroom. It's so cool that they have Thomas movies on Netflix, available for instant play!

Oh my goodness, I just looked up Buffy on imdb.com and found that it is Paul Reubens that plays Lothos' servant, Amilyn! I love his dying scene! I had no idea it was him, I was just looking to see what his character's name was, because I didn't remember hearing it in the movie. He looks so different with ugly hair and fangs.

Well. You learn something new everyday. I hope.

Oh, the other exciting thing that happened today, I guess, I mean you can't portray tone of voice in print, but picture Ben Stein saying, "whoopee," and you'll know about how I feel about it, but I digress...
Uh, the phone guys came, about 2 hours ago, and fixed our home phone line, so Ravenna celebrated by making the first phone call and stayed on for two hours. Actually, she did hang up a couple times, but her friend called her right back each time and it was startling to hear it ring after all this time!
I said, "Let's unplug it."
She said, "It's music to my ears."

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Trevor at one month!


That last picture wasn't very flattering of my cute little baby, so here is a better one.

Baby hat


So, here is Trevor in the hat that I made for him before he was born.







Unfortunately, like most baby hats, it doesn't stay on his head.
Oh well, it was fun making it.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

phone home

I'm enjoying the quiet that comes from the telephone not ringing. Our land line has a short in the wire. I know because this happened the first time about 3 weeks ago. Chris called the phone company (on his cell phone, of course) and they sent someone out and he found a short in the outside wires and one on the inside. He fixed it and it was fine for a week, but then it stopped working again. This time we have put off calling them back, mostly out of laziness. I wanted the house cleaner than it's present state if he was going to have to come in the house again. Last time, I cleaned up the common areas, but my room was messier than I would have liked it to be. So, I cleaned it after he left and pretended that's how it looked when he was there.

I was joking to Chris that our phone problems are probably from bad Karma, because we have annoying answering machine messages. Our current one is a recording of the operator saying, "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try your call again. If you need help, please hang up and dial the operator." Then it does that annoying beeping. It really is a recording of what plays when you leave the phone off the hook. Ravenna left the phone off the hook and timed how long it took the recording to come on, and then started our answering machine recording at that time.

I was thinking maybe someone reported our line as being disconnected and so the phone company really did disconnect it. But, no, it's a short in the wire. Our wiring is so old in the house that we had to have an adapter in the bedroom to plug in a regular phone. It has a really old outlet, that is more like an electrical outlet, but with 4 skinny holes. I don't think I've ever even seen a phone with that kind of wire/plug whatever you call it. I would google it and post a picture here, if I was more ambitous.

When one person called and got the answering machine, they just figured they had dialed wrong, so they called back, which was fine, because it took us that long to find the phone anyway.

Anyone we really want to contact us has our cell phone numbers or e-mail address anyway, I think.
I'm not really anxious to pay my phone bill this month though. Maybe we could live without it and save $35/month.
Naw, then Ravenna would hog my cell phone, or worse, want one of her own!!! That time will come, but not yet. Not quite, yet.