I don�t know why I can�t seem to put a real entry together. I just lack all kinds of ambition these past few days.

Thursday was my last day of school. I�m not sure how well I did on the finals, but I kicked ass on my final projects. I got A�s on all of them... two of them perfect scores! And my teacher was very complimentary on my presentation. He wrote on my paper that I seemed very relaxed and confident and that I am a good speaker. Who, me??? Actually I was nervous as hell, but I reminded myself that if I were sitting in my seat I�d have no problem talking to the class... I�ve been known to tell an anecdote or two in class without even batting an eyelash! Realizing that made me much less nervous. Plus, I think I did a good job planning... unlike many people in the class, it occurred to me that since he wanted a five-page paper but only a five-to-eight minute presentation, that he didn�t expect us to present every last morsel of information. So, I kept my presentation to about eight of the most interesting highlights of the paper, and used things I understood well enough to explain without having to read them. Came off pretty well, apparently. This helps me to feel a little bit better about the speech class I�m going to have to take eventually.

So now I�ve got three weeks off, and as usual I have a shitload of stuff I want to accomplish. Didn�t do anything over the weekend, though. After all the stress of the last couple of months, it seems like now that I no longer have school anxiety forcing an overabundance of adrenaline into my system, all I want to do is sleep and sleep. Yesterday I finished my Christmas shopping, which mainly consisted of buying gift cards; today I actually got everything mailed out. Which was a lot more work than it sounds, once you factor in things like searching high and low for everybody�s address, and filling out the To�s and From�s on the giftcards, and fighting the cats for use of the table.

And then on to the post office. Criminy. What a nightmare. The line was hellishly long, and then I got stuck being waited on by the poster guy for the term �going postal.� Seriously, this dude seemed like he was on the brink of pulling out a firearm and wasting some folks, especially the lady with too much perfume which he complained was making his head hurt, and the makers of the post office�s own packing boxes who put the bar code on the inside of the package where he couldn�t ring it up once the package was sealed and so had to brave the angry mob going out to the lobby to find an unused box whose code he could scan. He bitched the entire time, and kept telling me my total before I was completely done with all my transactions and I kept having to say �Wait! I also need...� and by the time I was done he was looking some seriously sharp daggers in my direction and it was all kinds of scary.

I had all good intentions of cleaning my filthy apartment this afternoon, but by the time I got home I was drained, so I popped up some popcorn and watched �Chicago� for the umpteenth time. This time, I think I did it just to spite Dick, who mentioned on the phone the other night, �Don�t bother to see �Chicago�... it sucks!� How could I have spent 13 years married to such a person?

Speaking of Dick, he wants to have the Evil Childe come visit over Christmas vacation. Do you know what this means? This means that the Prince and I will actually have some time alone in the apartment for the first time in a year! Woo-fucking-hoo-hoo-hoo! We can have loud sex again! We can talk uninterrupted! We can go out without worrying if the apartment will still be standing when we get back! And we can have MORE loud sex! This pleases me greatly.

Ok, I guess that was kind of a real entry, but I�m going to post this quiz anyway, because I�m always interested in the regional differences in people�s speech. The Prince is from Georgia and I�m from Ohio, so we frequently tease one another on our peculiarities of speech. Anyway, here it is, lifted from trinity63:

The basics: I lived in Ohio for 34 years; lived in suburban Chicago for four.

What do you call:

A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks.

Creek

What the thing you push around the grocery store is called.

Cart

A metal container to carry a meal in.

Lunchbox

The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in.

Frying pan or skillet

The piece of furniture that seats three people.

Couch. (My cousin used to say �Grandma says �Davenport� to make the couch feel important.�)

The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof.

Gutter

The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening.

Porch, even if it�s just steps

Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages.

Grew up saying pop, picked up soda somewhere along the line

A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup.

Pancakes

A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself.

Sub. Although when I was a kid, the only kind of sub I ever heard of was a pizza sub... always hot, made with lunchmeat, mozzerella cheese and pizza sauce. I was shocked the first time I ordered a sub and got a cold lunchmeat sandwich.

The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach.

Bathing suit or swim trunks

Shoes worn for sports.

Tennis shoes

Putting a room in order.

Pick up

A flying insect that glows in the dark.

Lightening bug

The little insect that curls up into a ball.

Potato bug

The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down.

Teeter-totter

How do you eat your pizza?

Start at the point, eat to the crust, dip crust in garlic sauce if available (or chip dip!)

What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?

Garage, yard or porch sale, depending on location

What's the evening meal?

Supper or dinner

The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?

Basement

What word(s) do you use to address a group of two or more people?

�You� or �you guys�

Would you say "Are you coming with?" as a full sentence, to mean "Are you coming with us?"

Never. Never never never. I hate that. How fucking hard is it to tack on that one stinking little word?

Would you say "where are you at?" to mean "where are you?"

Yeah, I guess I do even though I know it�s poor grammar.

Modals are words like "can," "could," "might," "ought to," and so on. Can you use more than one modal at a time? (e.g., "I might could do that" to mean "I might be able to do that"; or "I used to could do that" to mean "I used to be able to do that")

I sometimes do, but only when I purposely want to sound goofy. I didn�t grow up speaking that way.

What do you call the area of grass between the sidewalk and the road?

I don�t think I ever called it anything.

What do you call the area of grass that occurs in the middle of some streets?

Median

What do you call the long narrow place in the middle of a divided highway?

Median

What do you call the drink made with milk and ice cream?

Milkshake or shake.

What do you call the miniature lobster that one finds in lakes and streams for example (a crustacean of the family Astacidae)?

Crayfish, crawfish or crawdad

What do you call the kind of spider (or spider-like creature) that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?

Daddy longlegs

What nicknames do/did you use for your maternal grandmother?

Grandma. Great-grandma was Granny.

What about your paternal grandmother (is there a distinction?)

She died when I was real little but I think I called her Grandma. Great-grandma was Nonny.

What do/did you call your maternal grandfather?

Grandpa

Paternal grandfather?

Grandpa

What do you call the big clumps of dust that gather under furniture and in corners?

Dustbunnies

What term do you use to refer to something that is across both streets from you at an intersection (or diagonally across from you in general)?

Catty corner

What do you call the activity of driving around in circles in a car?

Not sure what this means... driving around aimlessly in a car for entertainment is cruising. Doing tight circles in a parking lot is �doing donuts.�

What do you call paper that has already been used for something or is otherwise imperfect?

Trash

What is your *general* term for a big road that you drive relatively fast on?

Highway

What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?

Never called it anything. But I always look for the rainbow.

When you are cold, and little points of skin begin to come on your arms and legs, you have:

Goosebumps

What do you call the gooey or dry matter that collects in the corners of your eyes, especially while you are sleeping?

Sleepy sand or �sleep�

What do you call an easy course?

A cinch or �Mickey Mouse�

What do you call a traffic situation in which several roads meet in a circle and you have to get off at a certain point?

Never seen such a thing

What is the thing that women use to tie their hair?

Scrunchy or hair band

Do you use the word cruller?

Not unless that�s what they call it on the menu

Do you use the term "bear claw" for a kind of pastry?

Yes

What do you call someone who is the opposite of pigeon-toed (i.e. when they walk their feet point outwards)?

Penguin (usually not to their face though.)

Can you call coleslaw "slaw"?

Only if it�s on a sandwich, as in a �slaw dog.�

What do you call the box you bury a dead person in?

Casket or coffin

Do you say "vinegar and oil" or "oil and vinegar" for the type of salad dressing?

Oil and vinegar, or vinaigrette

What do you call it when a driver changes over one or more lanes way too quickly?

Um, if they do it right in front of someone, I call it cutting off. If they just do it in general but it doesn�t directly affect someone else, I just call it �pay attention, idiot!�

When you stand outside with a long line of people waiting to get in somewhere, are you standing "in line" or "on line" (as in, "I stood ___ in the cold for two hours before they opened the doors")?

In line. In line. In line. For poop�s sake, how stupid does �on line� sound, especially in these days of the Internet? �I was on line for four hours trying to get tickets� requires a bit of clarification in this day and age.

Do you say "frosting" or "icing" for the sweet spread one puts on a cake?

Frosting if it�s thick and fluffy, icing if it�s more drizzly like on rolls.

What is "the City"?

Chicago

What is the distinction between dinner and supper?

Dinner is the main is the main meal of the day, whether it occurs at noon or in the evening. I use supper interchangeably, but not lunch.

Do you cut or mow the lawn or grass?

Mow

Do you pass in homework or hand in homework?

Turn in

What do you call the insect that looks like a large thin spider and skitters along the top of water?

Waterspiders or waterstriders

What do you call the thing from which you might drink water in a school?

Drinking fountain

What do you call a public railway system (normally underground)?

Subway

What do you call the act of covering a house or area in front of a house with toilet paper?

TP-ing

What do you call a traffic jam caused by drivers slowing down to look at an accident or other diversion on the side of the road?

Rubbernecking

What vowel do you use in bag?

Short a

What do you call the paper container in which you might bring home items you bought at the store?

Grocery bag. The plastic kind I often refer to as Kroger bags, even though I haven�t shopped at a Kroger since moving to Illinois. Because when the plastic bags first came out, Krogers was the only place that used them for a long time where I grew up.

What do you call the night before Halloween?

Nothing

What do you call the end of a loaf of bread?

The heel

What do you call a point that is purely academic, or that cannot be settled and isn't worth discussing further?

Moot

How do you pronounce the -sp- sequence in "thespian" (the word meaning "actor")?

Thes-pee-yan

What do you call a drive-through liquor store?

Drive through. Although I haven�t seen one since I moved to Illinois.

What do you call food that you buy at a restaurant but then eat at home?

To go

What do you say when you want to lay claim to the front seat of a car?

"Shotgun!"

What word do you use for gawking at someone in a lustful way?

Staring or �checking someone out�

Do you say "expecially", or "especially"?

Especially

Here�s two that I added:

Do you say �when� or �whenever� to refer to a specific occurrence (as in �whenever me and Bobby got married...�)

When. To me, �whenever� refers to something that is done on an ongoing basis. Like, �whenever we go to the lake...�

Do you say �the� when referring to a store or restaurant (as in �the K-Mart� or �the Burger King�?)

Not usually, although I do it sometimes because I find it kind of amusingly white-trashy.

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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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