Mike called me up today. He had made arrangements for Rossi to go to the doggy day care for the next week or so, as he couldn't have her in the house until after Easter. Turns out that, the doggy day care won't take her if her vaccinations aren't up to date (which is completely retarded, by the way, for a 14 year old dog who has had her vaccinations every year for the last fourteen years). I said, bring her over, because, you know, what's one more dog?

I've been trying to convince Kris that, since I can't have a cat, a pocket beagle would be a perfect addition to our household. I mean, come on, how cute would a 9" beagle be?

Answer: infinitely cute.

Neither Andy, nor Kris, think this is a good idea. Three dogs in the house? You stop playing man-on-man defense, and have to resort to zone defense on them. Not a good idea. Just ask Andy!

To practice, we have Rossi with us for the week. Somehow, she just fits right in:

I annoyed an old lady today. Well, not so much annoyed as completely pissed off. More her problem that mine, but I still pissed her off.

I was coming back from the local salad joint, having spent the last two weeks wihtout a healthy dose of fruits and vegetables and just needing (absolutely NEEDING) some vegetables, and decided to take the back streets instead of the major streets around. I did this because school was letting out, and the crossing guards were being particularly obnoxious with their traffic stoppings, causing long lines at intersections on the major roads, lines I could avoid taking smaller streets.

So, there I was, tooling down the street, approaching an intersection. I was also listening to an audio CD, an interesting one at that, so despite having my lunch next to me, I wasn't in any particular hurry to rush home.

As I approached the intersection, I saw a woman approach the intersection on the sidewalk to the right. She was hunched over a wheeled walker, carrying a bag of some sort. When I saw her, I slowed, and stopped farther back from the intersection than I normally would, to indicate to her that I would wait for her to cross the street.

Near the same time, she saw me pull up to the intersection. She stopped and, after catching my eye, waved me to pull through and go first. I didn't move, deciding to take the opportunity to listen to more of the book.

She glared at me, and started gesturing more vigorously, all of her body language screaming at me to go through the intersection first.

I waved, indictating to her she should go first. She was at the intersection first. I wasn't in any hurry. Go already, old woman, go.

Instead, she stood there, a big HARUMPH expression on her face, her body in a coiled spring of anger.

She furiously gestured again for me to cross. I didn't move. In seemingly heroic resignation, she gave up, and crossed the street in front of me.

The glare I received during the crossing was surely meant to replace the bird she wanted to give me.

I'm sitting in one of the last panels of the day, and I have to say my hunger is contributing to my annoyances with the speakers' grammatical errors. I know that English (and all languages) are ever-changing, and when I was kid, you didn't say bad when you meant good or have run on sentences or non-parallel sentences. No really.

But these two peeves have reared their ugly heads, and they're annoying me.

One panelist said something like,

"it's not about me abandoning one service for another..."

The correct use of the personal pronoun is not the objective case, but actually the possessive case when referring to a gerund. Specifically, in this case, the speaker should have said, "MY abandoning," not "me abandoning". The "me" refers to the "abandon."

Not 10 seconds before that statement, a different speaker made the comment

"It's about sharing data between different networks..."

when referring to a group of six or seven networks. "Between" is referring to a connection of two objects. "Among" refers to a connection of more than two objects. The speaker should have commented about sharing data AMONG different networks.

I'm pretty sure that very, very few people noticed these, or that anyone notices them much any more. As the language evolves, grammar will also evolve, specifically when the common usage because the rule. We don't use thee or thou or, sadly, the subjunctive case in common speak anymore. It happens, the language changes.

Doesn't mean I'm going to stop complaining about it.

Okay, so, I'm drying my hands in the bathroom, and turn to see a woman in front of me walking out with toliet paper stuck to her boot. This is quite humourous to me, so I hurry to run out behind her, whipping my backpack off my back to get my camera. Why, oh, why did I put my camera into my backpack? Why is it not in my front pocket and easily accessible?

She's out the door, and I'm grabbing the pack handle, hurrying out behind her, a few steps behind.

The woman makes it 10 steps out of the bathroom, and I have my hand on my camera, when another woman taps the toilet-paper-on-the-shoe woman on the shoulder, pointing down to her shoes.

DAMMIT! I was going to tell her about the toilet paper, but only AFTER I had a picture of it.

Have I mentioned how much I hate this game? Probably not recently.