Wordless Wednesday: Does this spark any memories?

The story behind the picture tomorrow.

I think I just had an apostrophe!

Yesterday I saw a small blip on someone's Facebook status announcing National Punctuation Day. I thought it was one of those made up things to emphasize someone's sarcasm about the lack of appropriate language skills we have come to in 2010. But no, it is a real day of recognition, not a holiday, but a remembrance of the language skills we all used to be taught and loathed. 


Punctuation can be difficult in these internet and messaging driven days, where not using end marks or capital letters or even correct spelling is common and accepted by some. But it is important to someone who wants to write well or who wants to appear to be somewhat intelligent or professional. It is very important. It can be life saving in some cases. Just think about the ramifications: 


"Let's eat, Grandma!" becomes "Let's eat Grandma!"


*shudder* I think you see what I mean.


I wrote a post once using the metaphor of a comma to show how my life felt after our first child left the nest. As I just looked back over that post, I actually got the graphic for that post from the National Punctuation Day sight! The original post was 5 years ago. I am so forgetful! Anyway, I love using good punctuation as a way to get my thoughts across to the reader, whether it is in editing or as a metaphor to make a point. 


Personally, I do love apostrophes, commas, exclamation marks and quotation marks, but my favorite of all (do to my explainage tendencies) is the parentheses. This, even though I use the ellipsis  more often. (I had to look up what they were called and found out I really should not use them the way I do...drat!) Although they are correctly used as a way of letting the reader know that words have been left out of a quote, I have been using them in that modern, electronic messaging sort of way, as explained by Wikipedia:

The ellipsis is one of the favorite constructions of internet chat rooms, and has evolved over the past ten years into a staple of text-messaging. Though an ellipsis is technically complete with three periods (...), its rise in popularity as a "trailing-off" or "silence" indicator, particularly in mid-20th century comic strip and comic book prose writing, has led to expanded uses online. It has been used in new ways online, sometimes at the end of a message "to signal that the rest of the message is forthcoming."

Even though Wikipedia is not a really reliable source of factual information,  it is definitely a good source for modern cultural reference. And today, it saved my pride by giving respect to the modern manipulation of our language.  It is a cultural phenomenon I guess. 


What do you think? Does the modern manipulation of punctuation, spelling and grammar bother you or is it an accepted part of your culture?

God hears

God hears, God sees, God speaks, God answers the fervent prayers of His children. Tomorrow is an event called See You At The Pole. It is an international event. Any kids who want to can show up at their school's flagpole an hour before school starts, where hopefully they will find other Christian kids who are standing up to prayer for their schools. Besides standing in the gap for the people at their schools, they can also see fellow Christians who go to their school and meet them.

This year's theme for See You At The Pole is Reveal. Pray that God would reveal Himself, His incredible LOVE, in our schools, to this generation, through this generation of students. We adults need to be praying this for our community's schools too. The verse this year is the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:9–13, read from the Message modern language Bible:

With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this: Our Father in heaven, Reveal who you are. Set the world right; Do what's best—as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil. You're in charge! You can do anything you want! You're ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes. 

Watch the video, tell all the kids you know that tomorrow is the day!

Reptilian floral arrangements

Something caught my eye as I turned on the light in the bathroom last night.

Our glass shower door was open and a streak of bouncy brown was wriggling across the shower floor. My first thought was a cricket like the one I found trying to hide behind my sudoku book the other day, and although I am nicknamed after that sort of creature, I shriek whenever I have to deal with one in the house (they always jump toward you and not away, freaks me out). So I looked closer, but not actually close and it scrambled farther along and I wondered if it was a scorpion. I am shrinking with a cringe even thinking about that. There are plenty of houses that have little reddish scorpions lurking around in Phoenix, but I have never seen one in this house. Well I put my big girl panties on and looked closer still. It was a wide eyed little, tiny, cutie patooty baby gecko!

He had huge black eyes, translucent body and I could see that he was heaving with fear even though he was tiny.  I wrote about the geckos here once before and that was in September too, so this must be the season for baby gecks.

I didn't know what to do because although I like looking at geckos, I really wouldn't touch one unless it was life or death. Charles was already asleep, so I just shut the shower door really tight. Then I heard flipping around noises. I had panicked him and he was having a fit. So I took the beautiful red rose that was on my bathroom sink counter in a vase and dropped it into the shower, hoping it didn't land on him.  My thought was that he could hide under it and feel more secure instead of flopping around trying to climb the wall, which obviously was not workin for him.   I got curious later and opened the shower. He was no where to be seen, so I touched the rose stem...just a touch. SHOOP! Out he came scampering. So I quickly shut the door again and went to bed.

Thankfully I caught Charles this morning before he took a shower and told him about the gecko.  He loves catching them so he went right back and reported that it was not there. He put the rose on the back of the toilet tank, took his shower, then went to gather his things to go to a meeting.

Curious again....you've got to be curious when there's a gecko somewhere in your house and it is not where you left it....I looked into the shower and looked up on the ceiling and around the bathroom. Then I picked up the rose to throw it out when I saw a little head pop out and look right at me. (can you stand it, the babies are so cute) I guess he  either didn't trust Charles enough to make an appearance for him or maybe he was soundly asleep deep in between the lovely rose petals. (I kept thinking all day about how nice it would be to sleep between soft, velvety rose petals all night. ) By this time I was holding the rose over the bathroom sink and the gecko was trying to decide whether to  jump and run or stay and look at me.

He stayed long enough to get Charles in there, who took him out to the front porch to be free to eat bugs and climb the stucco walls at night and hopefully find his mother, who will scold him for sneaking off from her.

*Photos are from google, I didn't have time to get the camera.

RSSes

Okay! I asked for suggestions on rss readers since I am helpless sometimes at finding good solutions out of the huge amount of information out there.

Thank you Joann!

She recommended Google reader, so I looked it over and on Bloglines there is a nifty link under your blog list that lets you export all of your subscriptions to another RSS reader. It was super easy. Now I will still get all of my friends' blogs each day without clicking 60+ bookmarks. Joann is so smart! (and that is not the first time someone has said that about her)

Google reader also has this wonderful tool under the scroll down menu that says, "view settings" called "view in Reader Play" and it is like a slide show of your blogs! Beautiful!

:like:  :happy:

Bloglines?

I just read today that Bloglines is shutting down on October 1, 2010. ehn

So if you subscribe to this or any other internet sights through Bloglines, please get busy and save your subscriptions to another rss feed reader. Right now I have not found one that I like, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

I loved having all of the blogs I read on the same page updated daily so I could see who had put up a new post.

What to do....

...cupcakes and muzzles

I have to go help my sister make 150+ chocolate cupcakes tomorrow for our ladies' fancy luncheon on Saturday! Chocolate with cherry filling....or something like that.

I asked her if I was allowed to sample if I helped and she brought up the Bible verse about not to muzzle the ox while it's treading.

I think I'm insulted. She just laughed.

1 Corinthians 9:9-10  ⁹ For the law of Moses says, “You must not muzzle an ox to keep it from eating as it treads out the grain.” Was God thinking only about oxen when he said this? ¹⁰ Wasn’t he actually speaking to us? Yes, it was written for us, so that the one who plows and the one who threshes the grain might both expect a share of the harvest. 

[or the cupcakes]

Going changes you

"Therefore, go 

and make disciples of all the nations, 

baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. 

And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:19-20 (NLT)


God bless Mozambique.