Apostrophe Catastrophe
Heavy on catastrophes, light on apostrophes.
An Uneventful Weekend
This past weekend was... decidedly uneventful:
On Saturday the 9th, we went over to my parents' and had takeout from Taormina's (and harvested a ton of tomatoes).
Then on Sunday, I'm pretty sure Kitten spent the entire day vegging on the sofa and watching TikTok videos... so I decided to continue our Super Mario World adventure from last week, and I single-handedly found all 96 exits and beat the entire game like I was a nine-year-old again...
Theau-Muhs Bagels
On Monday, I started reading up on Android app development—because mobile-app development didn't even exist back when I went through college, and I've managed to get by without learning it for nearly two full decades since. But it feels like it's finally time. <shrug>
Then, on Tuesday, I decided to have a bagel...
And here I am reading up on Android development, when some people can't even be bothered to read up on basic grammar!
Personally, I've always referred to these as THEAU-muhs bagels...
...largely because that's what their branding implies: that there's a bagel-making family (or some other sort of organization) with the name of Thoma—which has then been both pluralized with an S and made possessive with an apostrophe...
See, most people erroneously read this as some form of "Thomas":
- Thomas's - this would imply that there's one guy named Thomas, and he makes bagels (and arguably damn good ones, at that)
- Thomases' - this would imply a collective of people named Thomas—perhaps a bunch of Greek or Italian cousins who all share the same name, or a bunch of family members with the 'Thomas' surname—and they all make bagels together
Oddly enough, even the current generation of employees of the Theau-muh brand seem to be under the impression that it's somehow pronounced "Thomas"; yet, they elect not to convey that on their God-damn packaging for some reason.
At any rate, bad grammar is a pet peeve of mine; so, even though the bagels are delicious, having to see this stupid logo every time I eat one always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Here's another example I encountered just the other day...
What the hell is that?!
Is it a service that handles something called "Kevin trees"?
Is "Kevin" the family surname, thereby making it make sense in the same way that "Rosenberger Tree Service" makes sense?
Or is it just an ordinary tree service, and a guy named Kevin owns it, and that makes it "Kevin's," for @#$%'s sake?!
I've decided I can't take it anymore, so I've hung a sign of my own...
— 99% of society
Visions of a Molerat
Okay then. Well, for that other 1% of you, it's pop-quiz time!
On Thursday the 14th, Kitten finally got a call from...
- A.) the optometrist office
- B.) the optometrist' office
- C.) the optometrists' office
- D.) the optometrist's office
Anyone over the age of 11 who would ever reach for A or B in any situation at all should be immediately put in front of a firing squad and executed—and I'm only half kidding when I say that.
Anyway, the optometrist wanted to let us know that Riley's glasses were finally ready—about three weeks later than he'd said they would be.
So, we piled into the car and sped over there just before closing time.
And, we all know Riley: extraordinarily outgoing and forward-thinking enough to stop and take photos, because she knows she'll appreciate being able to look back on them later in life...
So, of course she let me get a picture of her in her new glasses!
So, yeah; it looks like something happened to that file. You should... maybe not download that—although, if it's on your screen, then you already have.
Welp? It was nice knowing you!
After we left the optometrist's, we decided to shoot over to Master Wok at the Neshaminy Mall and grab some Chinese food for dinner.
On our way there, we were treated to the Vanity Plate of the CenturyTM...
Introducing... BAPTITS!
BAPTITS!
BAPTITS!
BAPTITS!
I have no idea how in the world that plate slipped through the cracks at the DMV; but we certainly got a chuckle out of it :)
And then we feasted like kings!
FCS
Presented with virtually no context whatsoever, other than the fact that I happened to watch her pull in just a moment after we finished dinner, here is one of our neighbors to whom I refer as "Fat Caucasian Smoker"...
1. She's Caucasian, which is kind of a rarety around here—and, thus, a rather functional descriptor in this case.
2. She's... large. She walks like both of her hip bones are dust, which initially made me feel sorry for her when I first moved in, until one day when I noticed that...
3. She smokes like a chimney—like, to the point that she'll come home with a trunk full of groceries; and she'll light up a cigarette (which then occupies one of her hands entirely) while trying to figure out how to carry 15-20 bags of food inside with one free hand.
So, I simply combined these three facts, and ended up with "Fat Caucasian Smoker." (And, let's be honest, I've certainly come up with far more offensive nicknames in the past.)
But anyway, that's it: She didn't do anything; she just walked inside. But it occurred to me that I don't think she's ever made the blog; and so I snapped a couple pics anyway.
C'est la vie! You just gotta roll with it.
Fog of War in the Metro Area
Something was definitely going on the next afternoon though: I had never seen so many people home from work on a Friday, and it was starting to make me nervous...
Luckily, Joe's voice crackled over my walkie-talkie at precisely that moment!
We decided that if nobody else was working today, we didn't feel like working either! So we grabbed lunch at the Metro Diner in Langhorne, then popped over to my parents' house so we could stock up on tomatoes and herbs from the garden, and then went back to Joe's to hang out.
He wanted to fire up his Cadillac and take it around the block a few times...
...so I told Kitten we were headed out to go cruising for chicks.
She told me to pick up one for her as well.
Chinese? Please!
She also asked if I would be home for dinner—to which I said I wasn't sure yet. But apparently she and Riley were thinking about doing Chinese again.
Then Paula came a little while later and was asking Joe and me if we were getting hungry for dinner... because she was craving Chinese from Stone Wok up in Warminster.
So, that's what we did.
And that place definitely has some great food!
Aaaand I got a fortune that was absolutely, positively meant just for me—probably based on the positions of arbitrary stars and other celestial bodies that don't relate to each other in any direct way, because that's how "fortune-telling" works...
This app-development stuff I'd been reading all week? Relatively straightforward.
This @#$%^&! English grammar though? Damn near impossible! How do you do it?!
Have You Seen This Kitten?
I got a cool picture of the sunset as we came out of the restaurant...
Then Joe and Paula drove me back to the apartment... where I found no sign of Kitten, and she also wasn't answering her phone.
The way Odin and Penny were swarming me, I quickly realized that they hadn't been fed—even though it was about 9:45 P.M. and we normally give them dinner at 8:30.
That meant Kitten had been gone awhile...
So then I checked the linen closet and found the hamper missing.
Mystery solved: She was at the laundromat, and probably folding clothes and unaware that her phone was ringing.
She got home a little while later :)
The Little Engine That Couldn't
Saturday the 16th, it seemed there'd been a theft in the middle of the night while the good people of Morrisville slept!
When ol' Drew came out to fire up his rented Ferrari, he got a nasty surprise when he popped the hood and found nothing but empty space.
He called a tow truck immediately...
...and I can only imagine how that conversation must have gone:
So... yeah. That was this week in a nutshell.
Remember in grade school, when they told you that knowledge is power?
