So THIS is a blog.

For those of you who know me, reading my blog might provide a safer option for obtaining updates on my life, if violating your celly minutes contract or the possibility of aural exhaustion frightens you. At least here, there's a "close" button, which is the e-version of politely asking someone to shut the hell up, stuffing cotton in your ears, or putting your hands over your ears and singing, "la la la la la, I can't hear you...", except I won't know about it.

I suppose it might be therapeutic to channel my typical verbal torrent into a written format. It might also eventually be tantamount to keyboard abuse. I haven't rubbed the letters off of my keyboard just yet, but then again I am just getting warmed up. Miraculously (and much to the chagrin of those closest to me), my vocal cords have never worn out either.

So one of the funnest (you heard me) things I've seen lately is on my friend C's blog - she has a troupe of incredibly erudite contributors to her 'comments' section of her blog (like attracts like!) that have introduced me to the word verification game. When you enter a comment on one of these here blogs, you will be prompted to type the letters you see in the box to verify that you're a human and not a spambot. The fun part is to make up a definition for the (usually non-sensical) assemblage of letters. [C, I hope it's ok if we participate here too. Imitation is the sincerest form... :) ]

For example, to set up this blog, I was presented with "INGLING". This was too good to be true. Being a fan of Yuengling beer (PA in the hiz-ouse, w00t!), I first thought about pursuing that route since it rhymes, but I think a better definition might be:

Ingling (Ing' ling) v., irresistable urge to add -'ing' to words to create hipper, more descriptive gerunds and participles.

Ex:

R: Where's Terry?

J: "He's dorking out over his new iPhone"

R: "stop Ingling, asshat!"

J: "Sorry, my bad. I'm totally slobbing up the English language, eh?"

R: "Aaarrgh!"

Thus ends today's Word Verification.

Pet Peeve count: The Other Half (referred to from now on as "OH" - we're both JC, so that just wouldn't work) clipped his nails four times today. Four. Times. Today. Let's do the math, shall we? One man. Two hands. Five nails each. Two feet. Five nails each. I'm no math genius, but that still only adds up to 20 nails. Problem is, he doesn't just clip each nail once. Noooooo, that would be too easy. He clips each one a minimum of 3 times. "Plink, plink, plink. Plink plink, plink." There's actual phrases and rhythm to his nail clipping. Is that a Latin thing, I wonder? What I don't understand is how there's enough nail material to make the annoying plinky sound that sets my teeth on edge. When one molecule of nail protein makes it's presence known by daring to show itself as a little while dot of nail, he immediately assaults it with the clippers. So how does he get 3 plinks out of each one? It's a mystery to me, and since that sound is my kryptonite, I'll never get close enough to find out.

The third time today was when I was on the phone with a customer. It took everything I had to tear my focus away from the plinking and respond to the customer's questions, so distracted was I. I momentarily searched nearby objects for something moderately heavy but padded that would deliver my point if thrown, but decided that wouldn't paint a flattering picture if word got out that I assaulted my husband for excessive personal hygiene. Why do these scenarios always make me look like a freak? Seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

If you're marveling at how incredibly trivial, trite, and othewise trifling my comments about his grooming habits are, clearly we haven't met. Consider yourself warned, this is what I'm all about. Tune in at your own peril.

Footnote: apparently "Trebuchet" is Latin for "surreptitiously adds excess line breaks". Try it sometime - type in some common, innocuous Courier-type font, then switch it all to Trebuchet and just SEE what happens. Am I crazy? Or are the fonts conspiring against me too? Next thing you know, they'll be clipping their serifs while I'm typing just to mock me.