A friend sent me this in an email, I couldn’t help but share! Reminds me of a Linguistics course I took in university during which we laughed at the silliness of some of the irregular verbs…

Can you read these right the first time?

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it - English is a crazy language!

There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why haven’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. PS. - Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”?

Lovers of the English language might enjoy this . There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is “UP.” It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has special meanings. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP. One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so……… Time to shut UP!

Some pictures of the kids I took during a recent vacation to Bathurst, NB.

Natalie about to go down the slide at Parc Atlas

Here is Natalie climbing to get up the play structure at Parc Atlas

Aidan had fun on the structure as well!

At Uncle Alfie and Aunt Yvonne’s place in South Tetagouche, Natalie decided she was a big fan of crab apples!

And, like her daddy used to do, ate lots of them and never had any tummy aches. So much for old wives’ tales! :-)

Last night the Port Authority put on a really nice fireworks show to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Conference of the Association of Canadian Port Authorities. This year the meeting was being held here in Saint John, so they decided to kick it off with a bang.

For photo nerds out there, these shots are done with a Canon Digital SLR mounted on a Manfrotto tripod, using ISO 100, f 9.5 or f11, and my shutter speed set to bulb, then I use a cable release to control when the shutter opens and closes (and keep from shaking the camera too much, although I think the camera shook a few times last night because of the wind and the crowd around me).

And, for the grand finale, I left the shutter open a little longer than usual, just to show the sheer numbers of fireworks going off. It was really quite impressive, one of the best I have ever seen in Saint John!

Natalie was sleeping, so I only took Aidan, but he loved it! Of course, he was asleep in the car only a few minutes after we started driving home…

I received this in an email today. It was one of those “Send to a bunch of people and you will have good luck” type of emails, which I never forward (nor should you!), but at least this one was much nicer than the usual suspects. You know, the ones where you have to send it to everyone on the planet in the next 6 seconds or a million people will develop a deadly disease, or a computer virus will miraculously munch away at your computer’s physical hard drive until it is left as a pile of sand inside the case, or where a little girl with some unknown disease will be sent money from Bill Gates if you forward it.

So, you are under no obligation to forward this to anyone. Nobody will die if you don’t, a computer virus will not infect your computer, nor will Bill Gates donate a gazillion dollars to help some poor child to get a new left butt cheek or whatever else may ail her. The advice listed below is just good life advice for anybody and so I am sharing it! :-)

***

ONE. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

TWO. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.

THREE. Don’t believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.

FOUR. When you say, ‘I love you,’ mean it..

FIVE. When you say, ‘I’m sorry,’ look the person in the eye.

SIX. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.

SEVEN. Believe in love at first sight.

EIGHT. Never laugh at anyone’s dreams. People who don’t have dreams don’t have much.

NINE. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it’s the only way to live life completely.

TEN. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.

ELEVEN. Don’t judge people by their relatives.

TWELVE. Talk slowly but think quickly.

THIRTEEN . When someone asks you a question you don’t want to answer, smile and ask, ‘Why do you want to know?’

FOURTEEN. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

FIFTEEN. Say ‘bless you’ when you hear someone sneeze.

SIXTEEN. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

SEVENTEEN. Remember the three R’s: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions.

EIGHTEEN. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

NINETEEN. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

TWENTY. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice

TWENTY- ONE. Spend some time alone.

A woman went to the emergency room, where she was seen by a young new doctor. After about 3 minutes in the examination room, the doctor told her she was pregnant.

She burst out of the room and ran down the corridor screaming.

An older doctor stopped her and asked what the problem was; after listening to her story, he calmed her down and sat her in another room.

Then the doctor marched down the hallway to the first doctor’s room.

‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ he demanded. This woman is 63 years old, she has two grown children and several grandchildren, and you told her she was pregnant?!!’

The new doctor continued to write on his clipboard and without looking up said: ‘Does she still have the hiccups?’

While visiting Bathurst this summer, I noticed that one of our relatives had a hummingbird feeder and the birds were coming to visit. I managed to set up the camera and snag a few pictures. I shot in RAW mode, using ISO 100, f5.6 and f6.3 and shutter speeds between 1/1500 and 1/3000. I used the flash to help stop the action of the wings. These ones turned out pretty decent for a makeshift attempt done on the fly.

This one is a crop, so it is a bit grainy, but I like the position of their bodies in flight!

OK, because of a week-long vacation to Prince Edward Island (posts and photos coming soon!), I was unable to crash the doors at Indigo the first minute it opened last week, so I just made it there today to visit. I have been saving gift cards for many months now until the store opened, and today I was going to spend them!

Having traveled extensively, Indigo is no stranger to me, nor are Chapters, Barnes and Noble, City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, and a few other large bookstores, so I knew what to expect. I also know that Indigo stores are not exactly like the Chapters stores. The ones I had visited were more glitz and glamour and less bookstore. But I was still a bit giddy that our little backwater town had finally managed to convince someone to bring in a chain book store.

So, how was my experience? Overall, pretty good, but there are some definite issues.

First, I was pleased with the selection. They had new releases, not-so-new releases, and a good variety of vintage books. I picked up several books that have been in print for years and was happy to note they had multiple copies.

Second, as a father, I was pleased to see the large children’s section. That particular zone is likely to keep me coming back more often than the entire rest of the store, if for no other reason than I can bring the kids there for a few hours to look around and still fulfill my own reading needs.

Third, they already had a few bargain bins set up, but I suspect it will be some time before the bargain bins start to fill up with mounds of unsold inventory. That is when the real treasures can be found and I have been known to pass entire afternoons looking for that one diamond in the pile of fluff!

Fourth, they have lots of areas for accessories and such, like book covers, lights, bookmarks, and an entire section devoted to journals (although for some strange reason, the only Moleskine notebooks they carry are the daily and weekly planners, not a single notebook… some kind of ordering mistake??? One can only hope!)

That was the good news. Unfortunately, on every party it seems a little rain must fall.

Being a fan of Chapters, etc., I was extremely disappointed in this Indigo store because of the lack of chairs and spaces set aside for sitting while you browse books. Strategically placed chairs and window ledges at every Chapters and Barnes and Noble I have frequented made my visit more warm and rewarding and less like the big box experience it really is. Indigo would do well to add a few places to do just that. Otherwise, I may as well continue to use Google and Amazon to do my browsing and ordering while I sit in the comfort of my chair at home.

And for all those Starbuckians out there, many of you already know I am not a big fan of their $2.25 medium-sized house blend coffee. And on top of that, all those frilly drinks are just a way of making you pay extra for what I find is generally bad coffee. I do, on occasions like today, force myself to drink the stuff while I am devouring various titles in a bookstore, simply because of convenience. However, I maintain my ages-old argument that a hyped-up, overpriced cup of Starbucks coffee has nothing on a good cup of (cheaper, fair trade) coffee from many better places, like Java Moose or the Red Whale Coffee Company.

A Husband and wife are sitting quietly in bed reading when the wife looks over at him and asks THE question…..

WIFE: ‘What would you do if I died? Would you get married again?

HUSBAND: ‘Definitely not!’

WIFE: ‘Why not? Don’t you like being married?’

HUSBAND: ‘Of course I do.’

WIFE: ‘Then why wouldn’t you remarry?’

HUSBAND: ‘Okay, okay, I’d get married again.’

WIFE: ‘You would?’ (with a hurt look)

HUSBAND: (makes audible groan)

WIFE: ‘Would you live in our house?’

HUSBAND: ‘Sure, it’s a great house.’

WIFE: ‘Would you sleep with her in our bed?’

HUSBAND: ‘Where else would we sleep?’

WIFE: ‘Would you let her drive my car?’

HUSBAND: ‘Probably, it is almost new.’

WI FE: ‘Would you replace my pictures with hers?’

HUSBAND: ‘That would seem like the proper thing to do’

WIFE: ‘Would you give her my jewelry?’

HUSBAND : ‘No, I’m sure she’d want her own.’

WIFE: ‘Would you take her golfing with you?

HUSBAND: ‘Yes, those are always good times.’

WIFE: ‘Would she use my clubs?

HUSBAND: ‘No, she’s left-handed.’

WIFE: —– silence ——

HUSBAND: ‘Crap…’

So, while cleaning out her house recently, my mother came across a bunch of old silver objects and silverware that had been stored years ago. Some of it is quite old, some not as old. Some is pure silver, some is silver electroplated onto stainless steel, some is silver electroplated onto copper. In any case, it was silver of some form or another, and it was badly tarnished and in dire need of a good cleaning…

So, starting with some of the worst pieces, I began following the instructions on a bottle of silver cleaner we had called "TarnX". It is supposed to be heavy duty and better than Silvo. Well, it did a pretty impressive job, but not without some added elbow grease and a lot of nostril ache from the smell!

I started with most pieces looking like this:

And ended up with this is some cases:

Or this:

(since I can see myself in the reflection on the sugar bowl above, I am very happy I wasn’t wearing anything too risque when I was shooting these images! :-)

Many of the pieces I cleaned will need another round of cleaning, but I decided I had done enough for one night! Here are some sample images of my work in progress. Sorry the scale is off, I zoomed in on each item. I suppose you can try to use the markings on the cleaning rag, it is the same rag for each picture.

Holder for silver coasters (with six coasters I haven’t started cleaning yet)

Milk dispenser (it was completely black when I started)

Hostess platter (hey, I looked at the engraving on the bottom… ;-)

This was completely blackened when I started as well.

Dinner bell with cherub on top

Candle holder, complete with wax droppings! I scrubbed for quite a while trying to get the "black spots" off with TarnX before I realized it was actually wax! :-)

Someday, maybe this will get donated to a museum so future kids can read about how people actually used wax candles for light in the "old days"…

Wine goblet

Serving tray

Serving Tray

Whew, I’m done! I will have to pick up some more TarnX or Silvo and finish the job sometime this week I suppose…

This past weekend, we certified another 8 new divers into the fraternity (sorority? ;-) of SCUBA diving by completing their open water checkout dives.

Here are two of my fellow instructors, Tom and Monica, showing the students how a little teamwork helps lighten the load when carrying lead weights!

Here Tom and Monica are in the water, waiting for the students to meet them. I was on the beach, helping them gear up and organizing the adventure on such a nice sunny occasion! :-)

The students are in the water and being briefed by Tom and Monica

Samantha (a student) looks back at me on the beach for a photo before she descends for her dives.

Every student here successfully completed their open water tests and received their certification cards on Sunday, July 6, 2008!