October Ouches

I really need to write about things other than grammar and spelling errors. They just hurt so badly that I can't stop.

This company sent an invitation to an anniversary gala that started with "so".

 

 

 

This National insurance company spelled "commercial" wrong on their website.

 

 

 

This company spelled "knowingly" wrong on their application.

 

 

 

From a high ranking executive: "may not of" instead of "may not have".

 

 

 

"There" instead of "their".

 

What is the proper etiquette for these things? We're not talking about the average Joe. We're talking about professional correspondence. Is it rude to point these errors out? I certainly don't want to point out errors to my management, unless I'm asked to review a document. I certainly don't want to sound condescending or talk down to anyone, but I'm sure there are other people out there who find these types of errors unprofessional.

 

 

Trickle Down Arghhh

Yes, it's another spelling vent. This is a snippet of an email we received from one of our highest ranking corporate officers:

"....we may of become too internally focused..."

I know this is a common writing mistake, because so many people hear "could have" or "could've" as "could of". It just saddens me to think people don't really know that the correct word is "have", not "of".

Perhaps we've become so audio-centric that no one reads anymore.

Eat, Craft, Eat, Craft

I love going to card workshops at our demonstrator Helena's house. She always has yummy snacks to keep us occupied between projects. She is a wonderful cook. This workshop was in early May so there is a hint of Cinco de Mayo in the menu.

 

We also made three great cards. I sent the birthday card to my sister, whose special day is mid-May, and you can never have two many sympathy cards, sadly. I can't post the third card as it going to go to a co-worker and I don't want to show it before delivering it to the recipient.

 

Being creative is just so calming. Who couldn't use more calm? I certainly can use some!

Who Did What Where?

While reviewing claims history for an account I was working on, I came across this description of a Workers Compensation claim:

"Employee was doing unknown activity that resulted in unknown injury of unknown area."

Try explaining that to a new carrier.

Grammar Police on Patrol - Vocabulary Division

In my business, I often search the internet looking for details on properties I am working on - such as year built, type of construction, number of stories, roof shape, etc. During these searches I often find myself on realtor websites who are selling units in these properties.

This one particular realtor repeatedly comes up with the closing paragraph "For discrete and professional service call me to ......" . Ouch ouch ouch.

Now, I know DISCRETE is a real word, but I don't for one second believe this realtor intended to use it instead of DISCREET.

I don't even want to wonder why someone shopping for a property needs a "discreet" realtor.

Postal Pause

This envelope was returned to my office as undeliverable - TWO MONTHS after it was sent.

This was mailed to a town 22 miles away from my office. Not across the USA, not to another country, but to a town less than an hour's drive away.

Pony Express took only 10 days to deliver mail from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast. It makes you wonder where this envelope was loitering.

On the bright side, while doing some brief research on the Pony Express, I came across all these postmarks.

So cool!  This makes me want to be creative and make greeting cards!

Email Pain

I opened my office email this morning to find a link to a local news report along with this suggestion from one of our Vice Presidents.

Might be worth sharing with your perspective clientele. 

Perspective. Not prospective. He probably doesn't even know he used the wrong word.

I'm sure some day I'll be rudely presented with a history of all my spelling and grammar errors. Until then, I'll continue to grind my teeth about things like this.

Snark Attack February 2017 Edition

Ok, here is my usual preface explaining I am a grammar and spelling snob and those types of errors jump off the page right in to my brain. It doesn't make the authors of the errors bad people, it just makes me a crazy person.

In the past week, I've seen an internal email wherein the author sent out a mass email using the word "orderves" rather than hors  d'oeuvres. I certainly understand this, as it is a word that makes no sense spelling wise or phonetically. It is a very common, easy to make mistake. As for me, this was one of my spelling words in grammar or middle school and it was drilled into the class relentlessly and occasionally appeared as a surprise word in subsequent spelling tests. I maintain a general idea of how the word is spelled, but usually look it up before using it, if spell-check hasn't corrected it for me. And if all else fails, just substitute the word "appetizers".

Let's move on to a second internal email. The author sent out a mass email using the word "attain" instead of "obtain" several times in his message. Though I cringed, I thought perhaps the author was using talk-to-text/email or otherwise rushing and after all, attain actually is a word, so of course spell-check didn't correct it.

But. This. Makes. Me. Crazy.

 

I know many people insert apostrophes (incorrectly) into words that are simply plural and not possessive. But this is from a shiny marketing communication that was titled - you guessed it - "Underwriting Reminder's".

 

 

This is not from someone in my office. This is not from a small locally domiciled company. This is not from a large regional carrier.  This not even a national company. This is from a huge International Insurance Company (albeit most of their business is in the USA), instantly recognizable by their logo.  Don't they have people, or even off site marketing departments, that review, proofread, correct? I believe this was probably composed by a local marketing representative without being run past anyone else first. But seriously, who sends out a "professional" document without having someone take a look at it first? Who knows how many insurance agents received this document? Of course, many people wouldn't even see the errors because they also suffer from an apostrophe disorder.

 

Argh.

 

 

 

 

Glow In The Dark - Stereo Edition

Recently my husband and I had to take a late night drive a few hours north to pick up my daughter who was returning from a vacation.

We made our usual stop at our usual rest stop about half way through the trip.

If you've been to Florida, you have certainly seen these little brown Gecko lizards running across sidewalks and up walls. Sometimes they run in mini herds in front of you. My cats love to bring them in the house to us. You have to be careful how you grab them because if you get the tail instead of the body, they will drop their tail and run off, leaving their still-wriggling tail in your fingers. Kind of creepy. But they are just harmless lizards, as common as flies or mosquitos and just a part of living here.

However, at the rest stop, late at night, under the harsh lights, these two guys looked like they were glowing. 

 

Hopefully they've not been bitten by any radioactive spiders.

 

Lizards and Spiders and Bears, Oh My!

Just another perk of living in Southwest Florida :

When your mail carrier asks you to kill the brown widow spider in your mailbox.

Snark of the Day

So, if you're in the business of Restoration and Mitigation, don't you think you should know how to spell LIGHTNING??

The Office comes to The Office

Our office copier was making odd noises last week and we called our copy repair center to come take a look. While the repairman was tinkering, he said he needed to make 50 copies of something to make sure the problem had been rectified. One of the girls in the office gave him a ream of unopened paper.

The repairman was enthralled with our paper. As my boss was walking towards him, he held out the paper and asked "When did this become a real thing?" I was thinking, "What, paper? Copy paper for a copier? Why is that weird?" The repairman continued to chuckle over the paper and took a picture to send to his wife. He started reading quotes off the paper wrapper. Again, I wondered why the paper was so wonderful.

After the repairman left, I took out another ream of paper and read the wrapping to see what was so marvelous about it. I found nothing. It looked like a standard ream of paper to me.

Then I googled the paper company name and learned it originated from the television show "The Office". Since I don't watch that show, the significance was lost on me.

At least the copier repair guy got a good laugh out of it.

Don't Like the Weather? Wait a Minute

Florida has always had odd weather, but it can generally be considered (in my head) either Rainy Season or Brushfire Season.

Thanks to El Nino (according to my local television meteorologist), we are experiencing some extreme weather. Here in Southwest Florida, we enjoy abundant warm sunshine until Christmas time, when the temperatures dip a bit. However, this past Christmas week, temperatures were 20 degrees warmer than usual and we were on track to tie the record high of 86 on Christmas day.

Then we had some of this, which I am calling smog:

 

And then some of this lovely rain and fog:

 

 

 

And last weekend, for the first time, I actually received a tornado warning on my cell phone. A confirmed F2 touched down a few miles from our home on 1/9/16: 

 

 

I've not seen this many blue roofs since we moved to Florida just ahead of Hurricane Charley in 2004.

 

On 1/14/15, we experienced sonic booms from naval air operations.

 

Then, this past Friday 1/15/16; all of us in the office received tornado warning alerts on our cell phones. We closed all the outer doors and prepared to take shelter in the restrooms if necessary. My daughter texted to let me know her school was lining up in the hallways for the tornado alert. An F1 tornado touched down a few miles from my office:

 

Notice the wooden boards driven upright into the ground.

On Sunday 1/17, an F2 tornado tragically claimed the lives of two residents in Duette. The couple's son and grandchildren were able to crawl from the wreckage. Also on Sunday, severe storms caused a "meteotsunami" in Naples. The water depth rose from average top of 4 feet to 7 feet:

 

A meteotsunami? Really? I've never heard of such a thing. My spellcheck doesn't even accept it as a real word. What is going on in Southwest Florida? It's not even rainy season! Not even close! 

 

Many times I've joked that the world is becoming just as "The Day After Tomorrow" predicted, but now I'm wondering if that is really a joke at all.

 

 

 

 



The Things That Stick With You For No Reason

Two lovely ladies are retiring from our office. They work in Wisconsin, so I have not had the pleasure of meeting them. Our webmaster posted a photo of the ladies with their congratulatory cakes  on our intranet:

This is a very sweet picture but immediately I thought of Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer on SNL as NPR hosts Margaret Jo McCullen & Terry Rialto:

 

All that Midwestern wholesomeness just jumps right out at you!

Not Quite Chicken Soup

Sometime in the past I tried new recipes using Ditalini pasta, bow ties, and barley. No, not in the same recipe. Now I've got opened boxes of pasta and a partially used bag of barley in my pantry. I hate that. The last time I organized the pantry, I took out the opened items and left them on the counter, hoping that would inspire me to throw them into something. Of course that idea didn't work and I just kept moving them around on the counter when I cleaned. Then I happened to look at the box of Ditalini and lo and behold, there was a recipe on the back that used BOTH Ditalini and barley. So I made soup.

 

It was really quite good!  It also had potatoes in it. It looked like Chicken Noodle Soup but of course it didn't have that oily slick that Chicken Noodle Soup has that prevents me from eating it because I find it so gross. I thought it would be perfect for my vegetarian daughter, and healthy for my son the personal trainer. I had two and a half quarts of soup left after we tried it. And then we looked at it in the refrigerator for a week before I threw it away.

 

Sigh.

 

 

Tender Tears

Happy New Year to all of you! 

It now seems ironic that my first post of 2016 is somewhat melancholy. At work today we received an email from our corporate office letting us know that the mother/grandmother of some of the producers in that office had passed away on January 1st.

The obituary was so warm, and loving, and personal, that I was practically weeping at my desk. I didn't even KNOW this person, nor do I know her son or grandson, who both work for our company. I don't know if it's the Irish references, Betty's personality jumping off the page, the fact that I had words with a family member last night that may have left me in an emotional state, or a combination of all of these, but I was both tickled and saddened to read about Betty. Here is a little piece of the email:

A devout Catholic, Betty personified what it meant to be a member of the Greatest Generation; ever devoted to her family, faith, and country. Betty was a graduate of Holy Angels Academy and Marquette University where she was a member of Kappa Beta Gamma. While attending Marquette, Betty met John Kuhnmuench, and she agreed to be his wife right before he went off to serve in the Army Air Corp in WWII. Although Betty left her maiden name Kelley at the altar, she forever remained Irish through and through. She had an amazing Irish wit and one would certainly be remiss if they tried to pull one over on her although her boys never seemed to give up trying. Despite the obvious struggles that came with raising five boys, Betty never lost her balance but rather she firmly held her ground in doling out order. She also had enough wisdom to know that there is not a bad situation that cannot be resolved with prayer and a bit of Irish blarney accompanied with the warmth of twinkling Irish eyes and the charm of an Irish smile.

In the early 70’s Betty, along with three dear friends, began the Settlers Estate Sales partnership which was the first estate sale business in Southeastern Wisconsin to sell directly from a clients home, while also extending their service to leaving the house not only empty but also clean for the new arriving occupants. After Betty retired from the Settler’s she had more time to do what she enjoyed most, spending quality time with family and friends. During the summer, Betty cherished her time at the family cottage in Elkhart Lake, WI, where she and John attended many a summer party in the company of life-long friends. In addition, Betty loved traveling with John to Ireland, Europe, Russia, and the Panama Canal. In her later years, she enjoyed a nightly cocktail with John in their home on Spooner while watching Wheel of Fortune. A voracious reader, she enjoyed good books, history, and politics. Betty’s passion for Bridge was well known and she played at a championship caliber level for most of her 94 years. Until her last days with us, she always had a genuine concern for the well-being of others. Betty truly loved life and the companionship that came with loving others.
God Speed Mom;
Dad, and Bob have faithfully been waiting for you.

Doesn't it make you wish you had known Betty? That you could have been lucky enough to count her among your friends? It certainly makes me want to live my life more like she did. I hope my friends and family remember me with a smile, much as Betty's loved ones remember her.

Weather Weirdness

 

 

I've noticed for years, during vacations and much more so since moving to Florida, that the Sunshine State has very odd weather. It may be pouring on your side of the road, and completely dry on the other side. We've sat on hotel balconies and watched the rain move in the distance like a black wall drawing itself over the blue sky. It's a very specific outline of precipitation. None of that misty all over the place rain.

 

Recently I drove home from work on a hot, muggy, rainy yet sunny afternoon and saw this when I was almost home:

 

 

It's a perfect double rainbow, glowing in the sunny rain.

Beauty can be found everywhere if you look for it!

Sev, You Are A-Changing

Seven Eleven, why are you doing this to me? We had a good thing going. You're in a convenient location just a few blocks from the house, and my daughter and I stop here nearly every morning on the way to work/school to get our Big Gulp on. Once you offered that 7 Rewards app, where every 7th drink is free, how could we not take advantage? 84 cents for a refreshing beverage, half Dr. Pepper and half diet Dr. Pepper (because I do read those articles stating that artificial sweeteners are worse for you than sugar)... and that syrupy sweetness sometimes lasted all day at the office.

Alas, one day we stopped by and a repairman was working on the soda dispenser. We stopped at another 7-11 closer to my office, which was very nice but they didn't have Dr. Pepper in their soda machine. I substituted Diet Coke and it wasn't too traumatizing.

The next day we went back to our local 7-11 and found the entire soda apparatus had been replaced with one of those newfangled machines that allow four different beverages to come out of the same nozzle. That wasn't an insurmountable problem, but now the seltzer -syrup calibration is way off and the drinks are heavy on the seltzer. Yuck.

I stopped at yet another 7-11 and found the same multi beverage nozzle situation with seltzery soda. Yuck.

 

I am so sad, Sev. I know I could just bring my own soda to work, but there's nothing like a good fountain soda. Plus you're losing all that impulse shopping I gave you. Now I stop at the 7-11 by my office and buy Diet Coke but it just doesn't make me as happy as Dr. Pepper.

I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper, he's a Pepper,  she's a Pepper, we're a Pepper, Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too? David Naughton, can you help a girl out and put in a good word with the folks at Sev?

Things That Don't Go Bump In The Night

 

 

 

The route to my office building includes a windy driveway dotted with black and yellow striped speed bumps. Many drivers don't like these and try to maneuver their vehicles in between the opposing bumps. Sometimes their cars don't fit but they still try to drive through the middle so that only one pair of tires has to roll over the tiny hills. Because actually slowing down would just be too much trouble, I guess.

 

Recently on the way to work, I saw this:

 

As you can see, one half of one side of a previously matching set of speed bumps is gone. I am befuddled. How does this happen? I could understand if the bump was askew because it was somehow forcibly bumped by a passing lowriding car. Or even if it was down the driveway quite a distance because it had been dragged. Or broken or cracked because some heavy object had bounced out of the back of a truck and fallen on it.

But gone? Who does that? Who consciously detaches and removes a speed bump? And why? What would a person do with a speed bump? Maybe they have a bumble bee themed yard? Why not just buy a slab of concrete and paint it? Or get one from a junkyard? Or use some other easily accessible item to slow down traffic in front of your house? I can't imagine that there wouldn't be an easier way to get a speed bump if you really needed one.

Maybe it was a fraternity prank? Scavenger hunt?

I just can't come up with a sensible guess.

Happy Third Anniversary RRA!

In September of 2015 our Florida office celebrated its third anniversary by going to lunch at The Twisted Vine Bistro in Fort Myers. I started working here just a few weeks before our 1st anniversary so it really only feels like a two year anniversary to me!

It's really been a great experience working with these folks. I don't know if it's because they're from Wisconsin that they are so laid back and easy to work with, but whatever the reason, I like the office environment!

I had not been to The Twisted Vine Bistro before and found both the décor and food to be very good! They started us off with crusty bread with oil.

 

Turkey Club with Fries

Twisted Bistro Burger with potato salad

LeBouef Cobb Salad

 

We all really enjoyed lunch at this restaurant and we will likely go back!