September 18, 2007

Things that need (to be) said....Who knew?

It was my Senior year of College!! before anyone said anything about the absence of "to be" in my grammar: "Can someone cover for me tomorrow, my paper needs written", "This tape needs labeled", "The schedule needs filled in-do it now!"

It seems to me like the kind of thing that your English teacher, or your parents would tell you before you left the state to pursue higher education. But then again, it also seems to me that you parents wouldn't let you make it out of Kindergarten before telling you that the sleeves on a shirt are not called "arm-sleeves"! (pant legs, arm-sleeves it made sense to me)

What follows is my edited (read: stolen and chopped up) version of what yinz would find over on Wikkipedia

need, like, or want + past participle
Examples:
“The car needs washed”; “Babies like cuddled”; “The cat wants petted.”

The Right Way:
“Babies like cuddling” or “Babies like to be cuddled”; “”The car needs washing” or “The car needs to be washed”; and “The cat wants petting” or “The cat wants to be petted.”

Useless Facts:
Need + past participle is the most common construction, followed by want, and then like. The forms are "implicationally related" to one another. Put another way, the existence of the least common construction implies the necessary existence of the two more common constructions, but the existence of the most common construction does not necessarily entail existence of the two less common constructions.

Origins:
like and need + past participle are Scots-Irish, want + past participle could be from Scots-Irish or German, but it seems likely that this construction is Scots-Irish.
The distributions of all three constructions are implicationally related, the area where they are predominantly found is most heavily influenced by Scots-Irish.

(Murray, Frazer and Simon 1996; Tenny 1998; McElhinny 1999; Murray and Simon 1999; Montgomery 2001; Johnstone, Bhasin and Wittkofski 2002; Murray and Simon 2002; Wisnosky 2003; Johnstone and Baumgardt 2004; Johnstone, Andrus and Danielson 2006; Crozier 1984).

Look at me gettin' all fancy with sources n'at.

breakfast & blogs

Usually, I go back to bed after micah leaves in the morning. This mornign i stayed up and ate a bowl of Corn Pops. I bought 3 boxes of cereal on Sunday. Buy 2 get 1 Free! There are now three times more boxes of cereal in the appartment than there are people living here. I do not know what I was thinking. I blame genetics. Visit Miss Brenda's blog and ask her how many boxes of cereal she had last week before the Great Cereal Purge of '07.

While I was eating my cereal, I redesigned the template on Miss Brenda's Blog. She compared me to her plumber. I am pretty sure that was not flattery. I expect the flattery will begin once she sees my handiwork.

September 17, 2007

Coming Soon...to a Blog Near You!

(the title needs read out loud in your most dramatic voice)

I have a whole list of stuff to blog about.
in the upcoming days you can look forward to reading about:
- strange things in the doctors office
- my new hair=my brother's old hair (with pictures!)
- our new car
- a link to wedding photos (better late than never, eh?)
- Henry-Slovakia Update
- to be homesick, you have to have to define home
- Campfest 2007!!
- driving across the country
- proper omission of "to be" (i.e. "this entry needs lots of quotes and parentheses")


not guarentteed to appear in this order.

how do you spell garinteed?

geranteed?

garentead?

gaurantteed?

garentteid?

garunteid?

gahrunteed?

geruntead?

geruntteed?

I believe there's a "U" somewhere.....and a few double letters....i dont know why i'm convinced that double T's seem right....it's a lot more fun to play with it than to look it up.

Maybe learning to read with phonics will turn out to be a problem after all. But making those letter snakes out of my dad's old tie was so much fun in kindergarten. (Miss Brenda, do we have any pictures of my snake??)

September 13, 2007

gettin' all science-y here

Has anyone else noticed that the ammount of perishables in your grocery bag and your need to get to the bathroom directly corrolates to the ease with which your key fits into the lock and also the ease with which it turns? it also seems to be related to how far the kitchen table juts out into your path, but that may be incidental

September 6, 2007

Nick the Amazing

loook!! Nick the Amazing strikes again!! he fixed the T in my header!!!
Hi Nick, i didnt even know you were reading :)
I made an apointment today to get my hair cut on monday. I'm going back to the short style i had last september.
in spite of having internet, i am rather dull.
We spoke to a missions comittee on Tuesday and Micah's COusin;s church is going to support us to go to Slovakia!!
YAY

August 31, 2007

Ta DAAA

I have quit playing with my template. I wish the T was capitalized in "this" but I rasterized my font in Photoshop. that means it would be a pain in the neck to fix it. It also means that I am too lazy to fix it.

Micah has 3 days off this weekend!! Initially he told me that he had to work Saturday and Sunday. He likes getting a rise out of me...not that it's a difficult thing to do. Tonight Micah took me out to dinner instead of bringing me flowers since he stopped at the dentist on the way home.We had pizza. Not at the place downstairs, we went to the really fancy restaurant....Pizza Hut!! Then we went to the library and got a library card to check out a few Andy Griffith DVD's. Then we went on a romantic walk to the gas station to buy a newspaper. I love Friday date nights :)

August 29, 2007

glasses & the internet


I have given up on having good hair. I am settling for having clean hair...and really good looking new glasses :)
Just so you know, my face isn't really purple. I have no clue what is wrong with my white balance


Also, you may be wondering, why all the posting? most of the answer is that it beats doing the dishes.
The real answer is that last week after having little or no internet in the appartment, I went over to the barber shop across the street and asked if he would give us the password to his wireless internet in exchange for a small fee. After convincing him that I was "the nerd" in my marriage and he didn't need to discuss this with my husband, and after assuring him that neither of us would hack into his business account, he gave me the password.
And, since I braved the barber shop, Micah put away the groceries. Somehow the egg noodles ended up in the refrigerator. But we have internet and I didnt have to carry the groceries up the steps, so I'm not complaining.