Your NOT welcome!

What's wrong with the subject title of this post? That's right, I incorrectly used a modifier as a second-person verb-phrase.
Except that I did it on purpose as a joke to prove a point, and every day I see people making this error multiple times without knowing they're doing it. Today in fact, a co-worker made this error in emails sent to me, not once, not twice, but four times! "Your welcome Kat". ARggghhh... It took all of my willpower not to go running down the hall to her office to throttle her.

"You're" is a verb phrase that is a contraction of "you are". "Your" is a modifier adjective. Easy!
Do not use "you're" to modify nouns. "Your keys."
Do not use "your" as a second-person verb phrase. "You're up early." Here's a phrase with both: "You're moving your car, right?" In other words, you are moving the car that belongs to you.

I know I am a grammar snob. I can't help it. I also know that everyone makes mistakes like this once in awhile. I do it too! It pains me to admit it, but it's true. So I'm not about to bust out the Word Police grammar error citation cards but please people just think about what you're typing (See? Not hard at all) before you hit that send button.

See also: They're/Their

Obama-mania

Over the past several weeks/months, I have been cautiously optimistic about Barack Obama's chances of becoming our next President. But last night I've got to tell you that for the first time I finally got super excited about this election and potential outcome.

The Obama-mercial was the most well produced piece of I-don't-know-what that I've ever seen. I actually got chills CHILLS at least 5 times during the 30 minute piece. And then afterword his interview on "The Daily Show" was equally brilliant. So here I am, the world's worst cynic actually feeling hope. It's strange.

On the other hand, as Obama himself has said, Democrats have an uncanny ability of "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory", so I'm not going to feel completely fine until November 5.

You annoy me!

Today, I encountered a bunch of things that bug me to no end. My list of pet peeves continues:

• Short-sleeved dress shirts on men - I suppose occasionally it's okay for a guy to wear one of these (without a tie please!) on a casual Friday at work, but for the most part short-sleeve dress shirts are totally fugly. And wearing a tie with one like my co-worker sported today is unforgivable. You end up looking like Andy Sipowicz from "NYPD Blue". That's not a look you should be striving for.

• Yellow cars - I'm sorry. No matter what the model, yellow cars look ridiculous. They just do.

• Tasseled loafers on men - eh, I don't want to keep excluding the ladies; these are bad on anybody. Loafers with tassels make people's feet look weird and twee. And I've never seen a pair that wasn't horribly unfashionable looking. Just gross. Guess who was wearing a pair of these today at work? Yep, you guessed it - the fashion plate above in the short sleeves and tie! He's special.

• Made-up words in Business - In the past 10 years the professional sector seems to have gone crazy making up words and phrases; changing verbs into nouns and vice versa. It's really annoying how so many of these have been adopted into everyday usage. A harmless example is a word like "networking". But others send me right off the ledge. The one I saw in an email sent from our executive director today was "on-boarding". The hell? Stop it right now.

Pet Peeves List cont'd

• The click-click sound of nail clippers - I hate the sound of clipping nails. I don't even like clipping my own nails. I file them down instead or save the clipping for the beauty salon where I can try to drown the sound out with the whirlpool jets that my feet are soaking in. That metallic clicking goes right through me and sends me into irrational fits of rage if someone is clipping their nails around me. Like what's happening right this minute in the office cubicle across from mine where my coworker is clipping her fingernails while she talks on the phone! I just yelled "STOP IT!" and then quickly looked down and away hoping that she doesn't know it was me. That's the thing - I get super angry about stuff like this but I find a hard time actually approaching people in a constructive way to get them to stop. Grrr...she's still doing it! How many fingers does she f*cking have anyway? Wait, I hope she hasn't moved on to her toenails...am I going to have to do another post here about inappropriate grooming in public? Sigh...

• Magazine subscription postcards - Seriously, has anyone ever actually taken one of these from their US Weekly or Vanity Fair, filled it out and mailed it in? I hate these damn wastes of paper! It's hard enough to find the article I'm looking for without these things getting in my way and falling out all over the place. And why so many of them? I'm not kidding, I was looking through my TV Guide last night and no less than 6, SIX, of these cards fell out as I was trying to figure out what I needed to Tivo for the week. F*ck you TV Guide. And that leads me to another annoying aspect - when they're in magazines that I already have subscriptions for. I don't need these stupid cards! I already got a subscription to your damn magazine using a more efficient method. But you're starting to make me regret this decision, so I'm definitely not going to pass one of these lame cards onto a friend or loved one. I can't imagine that these companies make enough money in subscription sales to offset the production of these cards each month/week etc.

Kat's Pet Peeves

It's time to once again publish my list (my LOOOONNNNGG list) of pet peeves. I'll be doing it a little at a time and adding to it frequently I'm sure. There are other people out there that have done similar lists, and done them better I'm sure, but putting the things that annoy me on here makes me feel better, and is a form of anger management! Here we go...

• People who talk on their cell phones in the bathroom - And I mean any bathroom; public or the one in your bedroom. But of course it's horrifying public restroom cell phone talkers who are the worst! First of all, public restrooms in general have strange acoustics; they are tinny and echoey and people are usually self-conciously trying to pee or poop etc as quietly as possible, so when someone is talking on the phone in there the conversation seems really loud. Second, people (cell phone talker included) are PEEING AND POOPING ETC.! Do you know how uncomfortable it is to be taking care of business while someone in the stall next to you is having a conversation about what they did over the weekend or about the problems they're having with their child's daycare provider? And there's the flushing! Flushing toilets are loud things; especially public toilets. Inevitably the bathroom cellphone talker just ends up yelling over the flush and making things worse. And what must it be like for the person on the other end of the phone? Can you imagine talking to one of your friends hearing maybe the faint sound of urine streaming but ignoring it and then hearing the tell-tale flush sound and knowing - you've been talking to someone who's been using the toilet! YUCK! You gross motherf*cker! People of the world I beg of you - stop doing this!