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.