Ambiguous Acronyms

“brb, ttyl ok? wow, i saved a 'ton' of time with those acronyms.”   ~Stephen Colbert

I picked up this flyer at play school recently:

Apparently FISH is an acronym (though no one seems to know what it stands for) for a charitable organization that collects food.  I'm glad I checked because this is what I was going to donate:

I picked this up at Kahneeta last weekend:

There were two of these originally.  I used one, liked it and brought the other one home.  But then I began to wonder: "Is it LA Fresh, the letters L and A like Los Angeles or La Fresh like La Pine or La Center?"  It's not a big deal but if I'm going to ask if Target carries this brand of makeup remover, I don't want to sound like an idiot.

And, while I'm on the subject, I don't begin to understand why those towns are called "La Pine" and "La Center".  How does it make sense to combine the Spanish feminine word for "the" with "pine" and "center"?  I would really like to know what the people who named these towns were thinking.

And again, while I'm on the subject, where do you stand on the toiletries provided by hotels?  I am usually of the "use some while I'm there but leave it all behind when I leave" school of thinking (the obvious exception being the recent makeup remover wipes).  Jeff, on the other hand, is of the "use the bare minimum so we can pack it all up and drag it back home with us" school.  It's not a point of friction in our marriage or anything, I just think he's crazy.

Finally, here is a recent Facebook conversation that took place between some of my friends and I that seemed to fit in nicely with the theme of this post.  "TCC" for those of you not aware stands for "The Country Church."

Major shout-out to my Mom: you're the best!

Hot Water, Family and Clean Clothes

“There is profundity to explore, but also laundry to do.” ~Bruce Feiler, The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me

This past weekend we actually had plans.  We rarely have plans but, since we did, there was, of course, a major catastrophe.  Last Wednesday my washer died.  I thought it was a small, fixable injury but it wasn't.  And, of course, there were no clean clothes.  So on Thursday I did a massive amount of laundry at my neighbor's house (God bless her).  And on Friday we took off to Eastern Oregon.

We went to Kahneeta, swam and played and had a very good time.  Here's a picture of Alex at Kahneeta:

Then we went to my Uncle's house.  My cousin Dennis leaves for the Navy at the end of the month.  Here is a picture of him with my Uncle John (his Dad) and our Great Uncle Bill.  My beautiful Great Aunt Joyce is in the background:

Here's a picture of Alex playing with corn cobs (gross, gross, gross).  You had to hold onto your corn because he would take it away before you were done if you weren't watching:

Here's a picture of Mom and Mark and me that I like because we're all smiling:

And here's a picture of the whole family (everyone who counts that is, there are others but they didn't show up for the festivities so I've crossed them off my Christmas list):

No, I'm not crying.  I don't know why it looks that way.

And, finally, here's a picture of the new washer we bought when we got home:

A trip down Highway 99

"If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave."     ~Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

The Grammatically Correct Tagger loaded her offspring and camera into the car earlier this week to take care of some things that had been bothering her:

I choose to believe that the "U R" is due to a lack of letters rather than laziness or the bringing of text-speak to signage.  I'm probably wrong but thinking this way makes me feel better.  After taking care of business at this establishment, I drove away quickly to avoid the salesperson who was rushing toward my car.  That seemed simpler than trying to explain what I was doing there.

Let me preface the next picture by saying that we eat regularly at the restaurant to which this sign belongs.  The waitresses recognize us; in fact, one waved to me as I drove in to their parking lot to take this picture. 

Because I like this restaurant's breakfasts, I will acknowledge the possibility that this sign's creator meant to say "Best Pie Is In the County" and is correctly using "Pie's", a contraction of the words "Pie" and "Is".  Because the phrase appears in quotation marks on the sign, there is also the possibility that it is a quote.  Perhaps this restaurant was reviewed in a newspaper and the journalist writing the article misplaced the apostrophe.  I would like to think that journalists, or at least their editors, would know about proper apostrophe positioning but, it's possible, they don't.  While these are valid options, the most likely scenario is that the apostrophe was incorrectly placed in a plural word which is why the sign has drawn the attention of the GCT.