Words, goats, Christmas Music

During work today I had several discussions about words. The first was with the lady who is the head of our education department. She and the man who hired me were in a bit of a competition to get me in their respective departments and he won the argument - only to lose it now. It is looking like I will be moving into the education department as a trainer for the company. When that will take place is not clear to me at this point but from the discussion of interest I had this afternoon, it will be early next year. There will be a great deal of training required on my part to certify for the position as they envision it, but I believe it will be a good move long term.

Later in the day my little group of peers and I got into a discussion of often misused and mispronounced words; particalar vs particular, nuckular vs nuclear, satistic vs statistic, alumnium vs aluminum, aks vs ask, expecailly vs especially, irregardless vs regardless, etc. It turned into a fun discussion. From out of the blue one of my coworkers wanted to tell us about one of her redneck relations who confused the entire group gathered for a get together of some sort by talking about “the comma in the air.” Complete with exaggerated hand motions; “You know? The comma in the air? You can’t spell the work right without it.” Someone made a wild guess and ventured an interpretation. “You mean an apostrophe?” “I don’t remember what you call it. It just in the air and not on the line.” I can relate to that conversation.

Mama and I took our lone nanny goat back to Bowie this evening because she needed to be with a billy again. I do not know who missed in the last attempt but she should have had kids by now and we are kidless at the farm. Rick was telling us when we dropped her off - well after dark - that he had 36 little kids running around in the paddock next to his house and that 27 of them are little boys. Mama and I are hoping for a different outcome but we will take what we get. I think both of us have un-spokenly decided that we will whether any of the males we get -or sell them when they are young. She and Victoria will not even get into the lot with our little billy because of his unusual aroma and the fact that he loves to rub his stench onto whatever clothing they happen to be wearing. Since it is natural for a billy to pee all over his face and neck they can build up quite the smell. I am told that the little nanny goats love it. So much for good taste.

I like the way many retailers waited until after Thanksgiving to get the Christmas items in full view but I have not heard much Christmas music in any of the stores. Granted, I have not been in that many stores since Black Friday, but we are sadly bereft of all the familiar songs. Not only the Christmas carols (those are decidedly religious in nature) but I have not heard Burl Ives’ “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” or Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”. To be perfectly honest, I could go the whole season without hearing any of the tunes as Elvis rendered them, who did about as poorly as many of the pop singers since him, but I do miss the sounds of the season.

Yesterday I heard and interesting statistic (or satistic, if you must); that women who gain weight over the holidays live longer than the men who point it out.