I have spent the entire day studying. Tomorrow is a final for my second course Alternative Dispute Resolution. I still have about 40 pages to read, another essay to write, and a couple of quizzes to take. I am hoping to complete all of it tonight and tomorrow. I just needed a small break.

My next classroom opens tomorrow and the actual start of the class is on Monday. The class is Employment Law. I'm not too sure how enthusiastic I am about it, but I'll try to get into it from the start.

Lastly, EverQuest II releases on Monday the 8th, so I want to try and get my first week completed by Thursday the 4th, so I can get a jump on the 2nd weeks work. That way, I can spend some quality time playing this new version of EQ.

Oh, I almost forgot, yes, the notes for the vacation have been compiled, and the pictures have been developed and placed on CD. I am hoping The Wife and I can sit down and put it all together for this coming weekend's update.

Okay, back to studying.

It has been 8 years to the day, that The Wife and I had a party at the Crystal Rose Inn in Arroyo Grande, California. The party was a costume party to help us celebrate the exchanging of our vows to one another.

Here are a couple pictures from that day.

Back home to Dustie the Cat, and back to our usual routines, The Wife and I do have a slight tan and very sore muscles from all the walking last week.

The Birthdays for the week have been updated, the Journal was archived, the Feature page was archived and will be updated sometime this week with the details of the trip. In the meantime, there is a picture as a placeholder.

The Wife and I have a few things to catch-up on before we can write out everything, sorry.

Okay, The Wife and I are out of here!

There will not be a site update tomorrow, Sunday the 17th.

We will be back sometime in the evening of the 23rd.

Don't fret, Dustie the Cat has somebody here taking care of her.

For a taste of what we will be doing this week....big comfy airplane seats with free drinks and food, five star resort with large jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom, EPCOT for the International Food and Wine Festival, a night at Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, and helping the Disney engineers prepare the locomotives for the day at the Magic Kingdom.

Be Back Later.

I know Fridays are usually reserved for the Friday Pic, but The Wife and I are headed to Florida (Disney) tomorrow which changed my post. Actually, it's my damn site, I can post what I want when I want.

There will not be a site update this coming Sunday.

Lastly, here's where we'll be having cocktails tomorrow.

I have been doing lots of reading, schoolwork, organizing, pogo and preparing for the vacation, which kept me from posting yesterday, and prompted this small post for today.

I hope everybody is having a constructive week as well.

Only 5 days until The Wife and I sip cocktails on a plane to Florida!

I have a ton of schoolwork to do today and tomorrow, but I did locate a place within a mile of our resort that I can access the Internet for $0.40/minute. This way I can participate in the DQs on Wednesday of the vacation. No big deal really as we both wanted a day for reading educational stuff.

Back to reading.

Lots of images added to the Gallery today. There is a new page for the Harvest Festival that we went to two weeks ago at McLaughlin Vineyard. And, I also added 6 images to the Porch Garden page that show the fruits of The Wife's green thumb.

Of course the Journal was archived and the Birthdays updated on the Recordings page.

Hopefully you all had a great weekend and are prepared for another week.

So, which title would you like to have seen used for today's post?
1) People Need To Learn To Pronounce Words Correctly
2) At Least Keep Up With Current Pronunciations
3) The English Language, Sure It's A Bit Weird

-*-*-*-*-

It has always irritated me when people speak and mispronounce words. For example, lots of people say ekcetera, not etcetera. That is just plain wrong and there is no reason for any grade school educated person to mispronounce such a word. Hell, it even has an abbreviated version that has a "t" not a "k" in it (etc.).

However, there is another one that really has bothered me. What is up with people who do not say "ask", but instead, "ax". For example, "He axes me all the time". Well, although it will always bother me, I have discovered the truth about "axing" per Dictionary.com

Ax
v. Nonstandard ax·ed, ax·ing, ax·es

Variant of Ask

Our Living Language Ax, a common nonstandard variant of ask, is often identified as an especially salient feature of African American Vernacular English. While it is true that the form is frequent in the speech of African Americans, it used to be common in the speech of white Americans as well, especially in New England. This should not be surprising since ax is a very old word in English, having been used in England for over 1,000 years. In Old English we find both ascian and acsian, and in Middle English both asken and axen. Moreover, the forms with ca or x had no stigma associated with them. Chaucer used asken and axen interchangeably, as in the lines “I wol aske, if it hir will be/To be my wyf” and “Men axed hym, what sholde bifalle,” both from The Canterbury Tales. The forms in x arose from the forms in sk by a linguistic process called metathesis, in which two sounds are reversed. The x thus represents (ks), the flipped version of (sk). Metathesis is a common linguistic process around the world and does not arise from a defect in speaking. Nevertheless, ax has become stigmatized as substandard, a fate that has befallen other words, like ain't, that were once perfectly acceptable in literate circles.

Nuff said.

My hacking has subsided dramatically, but I still feel like crap. A couple of naps yesterday seems to have helped. I am going to read a bit more after this post in the hopes I fall asleep for a nap today.

Speaking of reading, I have completed my reading through Unit 4. So, I need to do a whole bunch of writing, but am planning on doing that in the afternoon.

Only 11 days to go. Yes! You are now going to get the countdown.

On to Unit 5 and hopefully some more Zzzzzzz.

Twelve days to go until The Wife and I are on a plane to Disney, but I wake this morning with what feels like somebody standing on my chest. It's hard to breath and when I try to get enough air in my lungs it hurts and I hack for a minute until I tear up.

The Wife gave me some Echinacea this morning and instructions to take some more around three o'clock. No discoloration in my nose, or in anything that I am coughing up, so she tells me this is a good sign.

I intend to simply lay under a nice cozy blanket on the couch for the better part of the day reading for Unit 4 and maybe Unit 5 of my ADR class. If I fall asleep, so be it. I will have paper and a pen with me to jot down ideas for the schoolwork, but do not want to be up and down the stairs all day checking my computer. Maybe I'll come back down when I take some more Echinacea and check the usual email and web sites.

So, I feel like crap, have lots of reading to do, and better be healthy again for vacation. I'm sorry about this kind of whiney post, but I really hate not feeling good.

I hope your day started out better than mine! *cough hack cough*

With vacation coming up in less than 2 weeks, I need to focus on schoolwork as much as possible. However, I did find time to update the site for this week. I couldn't sleep more than 4 hours, so instead of tossing and turning, here's the update.

To start, I have put up a new Gallery page displaying some of the neighborhood wildlife. I have added two pieces of music (October theme) to the Recordings page, as well as the updated birthdays. And, I performed that weekly archiving of the Journal page.

With that, go... Have an enjoyable week!

Um, WAIT!!! Check out the updates first silly.

Amazing, overnight we had a month change right under our noses. This is a month that will entail lots of hard work on my part, but The Wife and I also get to play hard mid-month during our vacation.

As you know from my post yesterday, my first class is over and it's on to my second class, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Remember, each class take place during a one month period. Therefore, I need to get all the work completed for this month within approximately 3 weeks as we are gone for a week. That's not the real issue though. See the class work is week by week, so I need to make arrangements to actually do more work before the vacation and turn it in since I won't have access to a PC during vacation. (This is the kind of time I wish I had a laptop)

So, I intend to get all my assignments turned in before vacation, pre-write my answers to the Discussion Questions (DQs), and then take the quizzes upon my return. Basically doubling my work load prior to vacation. Hopefully, I can find a location where we are vacationing that has PCs with internet access that I can use to fulfill my additional participation in the DQs, but am not sure how that'll work yet.

Anyway, what this means is that my updates and writing here might be less over this month than previous months. Just fair warning to the half dozen of you that actually visit.

Final few words about October. I love this month, one of my favorite holidays ends it, but just before that is the anniversary of The Wife and I getting married. This year will be our 8th. Have a great month!