Old age has some fine moments. One of these moments is now, as I am ensconced in my fine office chair (a gift for my birthday several years ago), writing this post in glorious leisure while my neighbour scrubs out my bathroom for me. I can’t manage this kind of work any more and so I have hired her – young, muscular and hard-working – and my bathroom is looking good. It will also smell good and be organized when she is done.
Our first job was to empty out the storage closet. An embarrassing
number of things were stale dated (some by years) and got binned. There is also
a collection to take to our local recycling centre. And the things to keep are
being returned to unstained, clean shelves. It is a salutary operation to sort
out the keepers from the junk. In my case, a little voice in my head keeps
saying “WHY did you ever keep THAT???”. Not sure how you shut up that kind of
little voice.
As you can see from the paragraphs above, the downsizing is
going on. It gives me the cold chills, however, to think about doing my office.
This afternoon the hockey teams are in play for a place in
the finals. I am not sure I have the strength to watch; one more incident like
the one that took out Crosby and I may have to stop watching entirely. These
days Olympic level play is about the only thing left where the game is a game.
Other than hockey and skating, ignoring the scoring in the latter, I don’t
really care for the winter games. There is too much that is not fun to watch – long
track speed skating, for instance – or too nerve-wracking – short track speed
skating, for sure. Ah well, I am sure Canada’s teams will be out there trying
today.
If my mother could read this, she and Grammarly would have a field day. The Microsoft Word grammar check, on the other hand, is quite happy to pass the whole thing.
I often wonder what my parents would think of computers today. Dad died before computers were everywhere. He would have been fascinated. He’d appreciate spell check. Mom wouldn’t need it.
ReplyDeleteMy father disliked what he knew of computers because he had never used a keyboard. When our library changed from a card reader search to computer search, he was lost. Looking up and down over and over. But he would, yes, have loved spell check. Not that he needed it because my mother WAS spellcheck. And Grammarcheck. Um, that last? I think she may be going to haunt me.
DeleteI sometimes skip certain commas, but I feel bad about it. Or is it badly? I had trouble with that one.
ReplyDeleteI haven’t watched much of the Os, but now that the hockey is getting near or at the end in the ladies case, I am back into it.
We were two minutes from elimination in the men’s yesterday and two minutes from glory today. You can’t have it all, I guess. Did you see that Czechia had too many men on that go ahead goal? That would have been an awful way to lose.
Yeah, I saw the Czech foul. Both of them. Grr. Winning or losing by a goal in sudden death overtime is mostly luck, I think. Some skill to get there first, but it looked like a lucky break to me on both goals. The goalie's pad was just off the ice in the Men's game.
DeleteSee my post for 'bad' and 'badly'. I do have fun with a virtual classroom. Um, ladies? Women works better to my ear.
I like the comma after an introductory adverbial clause and phrase; the natural pause is there to indicate it. I am not a comma maniac, however, like First Lady Mary Lincoln, who put them in all over the place in her letters. I have a book of her collected correspondence (what there is left of it after her eldest son Robert curated it rather harshly), and it is hellacious for this former writing and grammar teacher to read.
ReplyDeleteGrammarly is fanatic about it. Maybe Mrs Lincoln's ghost is caught in the machine? And please note that I am not putting a comma in front of 'maybe'. A comma there would spoil the sense as well as the cadence.
ReplyDelete