Glad It's Over

Thank God it's Monday. Now I bet that there very few of you out there that have ever prayed for the beginning of the work week but listen to this. Well for one thing I am under/unemployed so the kids headed off to school, the wife to work this morning and the peace and quiet have returned. But the last four days have been of hellacious in terms of the amount of Sheer Stuff that had to get done.

An Inventory and Timeline:
1) Took on a one week project last Monday, results due today. Reading, writing and, unfortunately, some arithmatic involved.
2) Coached three (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) of my daughter's softball games. We won the first round of the playoffs. Onward Pleasantville Cardinals!
3) Annual Pleasantville Community Day preparations/setup on Friday. This is the big annual event that the local Lions Club, of which I am a member, throw for the town. Lots of booths, games, pony rides etc., so the set up involves erecting a huge circus tent, collecting stuff from all over and just basically sweaty work for five hours.
4) Pleasantville Community Day opens Saturday morning in a light drizzle but we persevere. At high noon, the clouds open and thunder rumbles in the distance, there is a mad scramble for the cars and we officially bail out on Community Day. Missed you Kal.
5) The wife and I race home take showers and drive two hours to a wedding. Dance, drink, eat too much and drive home. Fall into bed at midnight.
6) Wake up Sunday at 6:00 and begin preparing for the PMC Kids Bike Ride/fundraiser we host for the Jimmy Fund.
7) Coach a portion of the aforementioned Softball Playoff game.
8) Come home, host 150 kids and their parents for our fundraiser. We raised over $10,000 for the Jimmy Fund. Missed your kids, Kal.
9) Had a couple of beers and headed off to a meeting on the Project from item one. Sat with a bunch of local activists to help them figure out how to save a huge piece of open space in their town.
10) Meeting gets out at 10:15. Drive home, drink another beer, realize that the reason I am buzzing if that I haven't eaten anything since breakfast. Heat up some frozen potstickers and some miso soup, snarf them and crash.

And then - Sweet Bliss, its Monday Morning. So I apologize to you working stiffs but Thank God It's Monday.

Bollocks Defined

Bollocks is one of those wonderful words that makes me proud to be a descendant of those pasty and snaggle toothed natives of the British Isles. The Picts, the Celts, the Gaels, the Franks, the Normans, the Germans and even the Romans (what have the Romans ever done for us?) all left their mark on the language we call English. Instead of being bound by strict rules of usage and meaning like the Romance languages, instead of having to set up the language police like the French, we have this wonderful hodgepodge of words and phrases that have evolved over time to make English one of the most expressive languages in the World, the language of Chaucer, Shakesphere, Donne, Dickens and Dick Francis. And as a result of the Sun Never Setting on the British Empire for 200 years, and the dominance of the US during the last century, English is also the official language of international business, though I am learning Cnatonese as fast as I can.

But I digress. I want to give you a sense of bollocks and bollix as the all-purpose all-stars that they are. The Concise Oxford Disctionary (I can't afford the big one) defines bollocks as British vulgar slang, being of Germanic Origin and originally spelled as ballocks, with bollix being an informal version. But what does it mean, you ask? Why, testicles of course.

And isn't more fun to say "Oh Bollix" than shouting "balls"? Why I have even used the word in business meetings with impunity. And if you are feeling superior, use ballocks, as Kingsley Amis recommends in "The Kings English". But he was always such a classicist snob.

Yet these little words have so many more uses. For instance, to bollix something up is to screw it up or, to use a more vulgar term, to fuck it up. And more germane to this blog, talking bollocks means to talk foolishly or to bullshit. Of course, there is perhaps the most famous occurance of the word in popular culture, on the Sex Pistols first album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols".

So please feel free to work bollocks into your repartee. You will find it most useful and, more importantly, fun.

Its early yet, give me some time

So today I head off into the great blogsphere (sort of a stupid word, eh). What will I have to say? What will my adventures be? Stay tuned as we work our way through this.

Five quick things about me:

1) I am 44 for now.
2) I am married with two beautiful kids.
3) I am currently unemployed (not expected to be a defining feature, but we will see).
4) I am stuck on three things (this may be harder than I thought, oh shit, what have I gotten myself into).
5) I live in Pleasantville and am friends with Kal.