CRINGE--FAYETTE COUNTY TALK--2017

My brother commented that I had not published a 
"CRINGE--FAYETTE COUNTY TALK" article this year!  Since 2010, I have shared "FAYCO" twenty-two times.

With a great number of events came a great number of opportunities to add to the collection.


VICE-A VERSA rather than VICE VERSA.

FLUSTRATED rather than FRUSTRATED

FERSHURE rather than FOR SURE

LIBARY rather than LIBRARY

FUTHER rather than FURTHER

ACROSSED rather than ACROSS

ATH-UH-LETE rather than ATHLETE

REAL-UH-TOR rather than REALTOR

NOTHER rather than ANOTHER

and, of course:

the use of IDEAL rather than IDEA!

DRIVING SKILLS FOR LIFE

A friend was riding with me in my car to an event. Having ridden with Gerald and me numerous times, she knows that we have differing views on air conditioner usage.

When I turned on the air conditioner, she asked, "Doesn't Gerald think that you should drive with the windows open to save gas?"  

I said, "That's a myth."  She laughed and asked, "What does Gerald say?"  I said that it is an "ongoing discussion" with us!  

I told her that I had "researched" and that according to the Driving Skills For Life website:  "the power-robbing effect of air-conditioning compressors is less hurtful than the aerodynamic drag created by traveling down the road with the windows open, especially at highway speeds.

After accelerating to forty miles per hour, it is more fuel efficient to operate the air conditioner than to have the windows down.  The turbulence caused by open windows will require more horsepower, thus causing the vehicle to consume more fuel to maintain a steady speed."

The website recommends using the recirculation feature, because it is more effcient to cool already cooled air from the interior than outside air.  Another good tip is to run the vent fan setting once the interior cools down.

MORE GOOD TIPS

Mona Lisa called and said, "Hey, we haven't seen any GOOD TIPS lately."  Just for you, ML; this was published in 2011:

1. Reheat Pizza

Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove; set heat to medium-low and heat until warm. This keeps the crust crispy; no soggy micro pizza. I saw this on a cooking channel and it really works.

2. Easy Deviled Eggs

Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag and seal. Mash until they are broken. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, and keep mashing, mixing thoroughly. Cut the tip of the bag, squeeze mixture into egg white. Just throw bag away when finished.

3. Expanding Frosting

When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. This can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

4. Reheating refrigerated bread

To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

5. Newspaper weeds away

Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go; cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic; they will not get through wet newspapers.

6. Broken Glass

Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't easily see.

7. No More Mosquitoes

Place a dryer sheet in your pocket; it will keep away the mosquitoes.

8. Squirrel Away

To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it.

9. Flexible vacuum

To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

10. Reducing Static Cling

Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. The same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and the static is gone.

11. Measuring Cups

Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add the ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it releases.

12. Foggy Windshield

Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser. Works better than a cloth.

13. Reopening envelope

If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place the sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two; it easily unseals.

14. Conditioner

Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's a lot cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs very smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair.

15. Goodbye Fruit Flies

To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2 full with
apple cider vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

16. Get Rid of Ants

Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it "home", can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

17. INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS

The heating unit went out on my dryer! The man who fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load of clothes.) He took the filter to the sink, and ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material; I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. The hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn't go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh and that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free; that nice fragrance too, you know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box; this stuff builds up on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire and potentially burn down your house! He also said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (and to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot, soapy water and an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long!

Note: I went to my dryer and tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water and a nylon brush; I had it done in 30 seconds. When I rinsed it the water ran right through the screen. There wasn't any puddling at all. That repairman knew what he was talking about.

I LEFT MY HEART IN--TRUNCATIONS?

In a Grammarphobia posting (see below) I was reminded of a recent Facebook thread about pet peeves, where a Facebook friend of mine who is of the Roman Catholic faith, wrote that she finds it offensive for people to use abbreviations such as "Frisco", "Saint Nick", "Berdoo" and "Saint Rafe" ("Berdoo" is for San Bernardino and "Saint Rafe" refers to Saint Raphael, her church in Springfield).

When several people asked why those examples were offensive to her, she replied, "They are the names of our Saints and should not be abbreviated or subjected to slang."

My Facebook reply:  "Although I do not find them offensive, those examples are TRUNCATIONS, not abbreviations!"

Sometimes, I just can't help myself!

From Grammarphobia:

I left my heart in … Frisco?

Q: My North Beach uncle used to respond negatively when I used the term “Frisco” to refer to San Francisco. He considered it a huge no-no. He loved the city and thought the usage was disrespectful. What’s wrong with it? I (a Midwesterner) kind of like it.

A: Like your uncle, some San Franciscans object to the use of “Frisco,” saying it’s too touristy or it recalls the city’s gritty past.

Etymologically, it’s simply an abbreviation of “San Francisco,” perhaps introduced by 19th-century sailors who used the shortened name for the port.

We know that the nickname “Frisco” has been around since at least as far back as 1849. The city was officially named San Francisco in 1847, taking its name from the already well-known Bay of San Francisco.

Long before the official naming, though, sailors had referred to the town, the port, and the surrounding region as San Francisco.

For example, Richard Henry Dana uses “San Francisco” for both the port and the region in his sailing memoir Two Years Before the Mast (1840).

The earliest published use of “Frisco,” according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, is from an 1849 letter written during the Gold Rush.

The letter, quoted in Octavius Thorndike Howe’s book Argonauts of ’49 (1923), is dated Dec. 30, 1849, and was written by a New Englander who had recently arrived by ship. He uses both the abbreviation and the full name:

“Made good passage to ’Frisco. Captain David Carter of Beverly [Mass.] died on the passage out. Think San Francisco the most contemptible dirty place one could wish to see. Not fit for man or beast.”

Note that the letter writer uses an apostrophe before “Frisco,” so he regarded it as an abbreviation. The apostrophe appears in many early uses.

As we said, this is the earliest known example. But we suspect that earlier ones will turn up, since that letter-writer used the term so casually, as if it were well-known.

“Don’t call it Frisco. It’s San Francisco, because it was named after St. Francis of Assisi. And because ‘Frisco’ is a nickname that reminds the city uncomfortably of the early, brawling, boisterous days of the Barbary Coast and the cribs and sailors who were shanghaied. And because ‘Frisco’ shows disrespect for a city that is now big and proper and respectable. And because only tourists call it ‘Frisco,’ anyway, and you don’t want to be taken for a tourist, do you?”

"AS IT WERE...."

Yesterday someone used the phrase "couldn't hardly";  unlike the cartoon, I did NOT correct.

However, that usage transported me back in time: I recall my teacher Miss Digman physically recoiling when a classmate said it. I knew at the time that it was incorrect usage, and that I undoubtedly would never say or write it in my lifetime, but that vision of Miss Digman's reaction is indelibly etched in my brain and has kept me vigilant.

Definition of hardly:  scarcely
(used to qualify a statement by saying that it is true to an insignificant degree)

Adverbs such as hardly, rarely, scarcely, barely, and seldom should not be used in the same clause with a negative as it creates a double negative. Adverbs which suggest "few", "little", and "not often" should not be used with a negative.

A friend recently quizzed my using "were" instead of "was" in a sentence, "If that were the case....." Of course I know that "if" in that sentence requires the subjunctive mood and "were" is correct, but my friend said it sound "stilted", and although pleased with her use of the word "stilted", I replied, "It sounds correct, as it were."

My brothers and I laugh and imitate our teacher Mr. Kelley when we use the subjunctive mood, as Mr. Kelley would often say "As it were..." and "As is my wont...".

I think our long-gone teachers would be pleased to know they still influence us. 

Miss Digman would oftentimes use 
"je ne sais quoi".  CERTAINEMENT, indeed!

THE LADY OF THE HOUSE....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my husband.  The article below is from Sue's News, published in 2010.  It is still my favorite story about my husband.

   

        MY FAVORITE STORY ABOUT MY HUSBAND

When we moved into our home twenty-five years ago, my husband still had his hippie long hair.  Shortly after we had moved in, he was outside, tearing down a rotted fence.  He was dressed in shorts, muscle shirt, and flip-flops, with his hair tied in a pony-tail. Bob Mace, our back-door neighbor, was also one of our County Commissioners.

Gerald came in the house and told the following story:  Mr. Mace leaned across the fence and asked him, "How much do they pay you to do that kind of work?" Gerald answered, "Oh, they don't pay me anything, but the lady of the house lets me sleep with her."  I said, "Oh, no, do you think he believed you?  What did he say?"  Gerald said that he walked away quickly without saying another word. I was incredulous and asked, "Why on earth did you say that?  You usually have good manners."   Gerald laughed and said, "Oh, I think he was being a little condescending and I wanted to shock him!"

The next evening, Mr. Mace and his wife came to the door, with a pan of apple strudel, and I invited them to come in to visit. He had obviously checked the voter registration roll as he said, "We just wanted to welcome some good Democrats to the neighborhood." I told him that we had always voted for him. He proceeded to ask me about where we worked, etc. When he asked about my"hubby", I said, "You actually met him yesterday;  let me tell him you're here;  he'll be glad to see you again!"

Gerald was unaware that the Maces had come to welcome the "good Democrats" to the neighborhood. I went to the staircase and yelled; Gerald came bounding down the stairs with his hippie hair bouncing freely.

Whenever I tell the story, I say that it was ALMOST worth the price of the house to see the priceless expression on Bob Mace's face when he saw the one who slept with 'the lady of the house'!

Mr. Mace tried to apologize to Gerald, but Gerald stopped him by saying, "I've already told the story ten times and I'll probably tell it a hundred more times!" Gerald also told him that the quote wasn't original but that Carl Rowan had said it to a neighbor when he moved into an upscale suburb in Cleveland.

Gerald said, "If you're going to swipe something, make sure it's a good quote!"