cybergeisha

How to use English Punctuation Correctly

With the dawn of the Internet, the birth of Internet slang, and the growing age of SMS, many individuals are forgetting the fundamental aspects of English punctuation. Would you like to write a great paper for one of your classes? Maybe you need to submit a polished, impeccable proposal to your boss? If so, it will help to know proper usage of punctuation. Consider this article a crash course in English punctuation, and read on.

How to use Apostrophes

Do not use apostrophes or quotation marks for emphasis. For example, take a billboard that says: Joe Schmo, the “best” realtor in town! It makes the word “best” appear sarcastic and untrue, rather than emphasized.

Good God, if people would only read these two articles, and nothing else… The Internet would be a better place. I’m sort of a grammar nazi, and abuse of apostrophes, quotation marks, and other punctuational errors sort of break my brain.

Besides, if you don’t pay attention to the article, you risk ending up on the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks or on Apostrophe Abuse. This is your warning, heed it well!

How to Use There, Their and They’re

The English language is full of problems like the one presented by there, their and they’re. Most native English speakers pronounce these words the same way; therefore, it is difficult for some to judge in which situation to use which spelling. Each spelling means a very different thing; if you’d like to learn the difference, read on!

I often worry about the state of the English language. There’s a trend, obviously, towards typing as we speak, as the self on the Internet has become a second version of the physical self. We don’t see the contractions, punctuation marks, pauses, and other such written things as we speak, so once we start using text as a speech medium, of course it’s less and less common to see properly written things.

Good? Bad? I don’t like it but I don’t know whether it will get better. This isn’t a problem of education, or “where are the parents.” It’s deeper than that.

Shoes that grow with your feet

A new type of children’s shoes will save parents from rushing to the shops so often - because the shoes grow with them.

Well, that just sounds creepy. To me, anyway, it sounds like you put the shoe on the kid and it becomes a part of the body or something. Eek! Shoes that grow!?

But then, I read further:

The Daily Telegraph reports that Inchworm shoes can extend by one full shoe size - so all parents need to do is adjust the shoe to fit.

This is done by pressing a button on the side of the shoes and extending the toe out to the correct length.

Damn. That doesn’t sound creepy at all. It just sounds weird and uncomfortable. I can’t imagine that shoes that adjust “up to three sizes” could be anything but wretchedly uncomfortable.

When it comes down to it, I think I like the creepy “growing” shoes idea better.

Yesterday, Erik and I went to the Pacific Science Center.

It was so fun! When I was a little girl, it was my very favorite place to go in the entire world. Like, seriously - I liked going there more than going anywhere else. Maybe that’s why I love science so much as an adult - I was exposed to it often and in a fun, interactive way as a child.

There are so many cool things to see and do at the science center. It’s all geared towards kids, ostensibly, but it’s fun for people of all ages. It’s all interactive science - they have stuff like a scale you can step on that tells you how much you weigh on all the planets and a display where you can input different numbers into the Drake Equation and see the result.

There’s also a big display of animatronic dinosaurs that they’ve had for more than 20 years - it was my favorite when I was a little girl! The best thing is that they keep it updated and fresh, with new discoveries and science. Other favorites that have been there since I was young is a replica of the Gemini spacecraft - Erik and I climbed in and took a bunch of pictures, flipped the switches, and generally goofed around like we were little kids.

The switches and knobs all work, they light up, and it’s incredible to be in there and realize how freakin’ uncomfortable and tiny it is. And people went to SPACE in a tiny little thing JUST LIKE IT! It’s incredible. Science is so cool. Just thinking about the fact that humans have figured out how to go to space, carbon date things, synthesize natural stuff in a lab… wow.

There’s a big display of stuff called “Body Works” where you can do different stuff like see how you can transform kinetic energy to electricity by riding a stationary bike that lights up a string of light bulbs, try to balance on a pole, look at a human skeleton, test your eyesight, hearing and reaction time.

There was also an industrial robot against which you can play tic-tac-toe, in the robot display. Fun!

Their special exhibit right now is “Strange Matter,” which is all about strange properties of matter, like gloppy mud-like stuff that you can play with and then hit a button and it’ll “freeze up” because the button activates a magnetic field. Lots of stuff like magnetic liquids, man, I wish I’d gotten some pictures of that. Highly recommended!

Other favorites were teh shadow wall, where you can stand against a wall in a dark room, a flash bulb goes off and you can see your shadow, a tide pool display where you can touch sea anemones, and an oscilloscope where you could turn two knobs to change the tones and look at the shape generated.

And possibly most beautiful, they had an activity where you had to use suction cups to move a metal ball into a little cup and it looked AWESOME… but it was really difficult!

The Science Center is also home to the IMAX theatre and the planetarium. We planned to go to the planetarium show at 4PM, so we took a break after 2 hours of science fun and went to Bamboo Garden, our favorite Chinese restaurant in Seattle. All their food is vegan, but so delicious! You can’t even tell it’s vegan. I didn’t even know, the first time I went there! It’s right across from Seattle Center so we just walked there.

I’m not sure what was up with all those warning signs… It was a big empty PARKING LOT with no visible construction equipment or anything. Heh. Lunch was delicious, as it has been every time I’ve gone to Bamboo Garden.

We made it back to the Science Center with plenty of time to spare before the planetarium show so we poked around at some of the space-related exhibits, looked at the boa constrictors, and gave some love to Jupiter. It may be a failed star… but it’s not a failure in our hearts. Awwww.

The planetarium show was awesome. It was fun and informative, the guy who gave the presentation was funny. We decided we need to build our own planetarium. That’d be sweet.

We stopped before leaving and I went in to the Tropical Butterfly House (Erik didn’t want to go in, maybe he doesn’t like butterflies…). I hadn’t seen that before - it wasn’t there when I used to go to the Science Center as a child. But it was SO COOL! There were all of these gorgeous, exotic butterflies fluttering around! I took a few pictures, and one even landed on my head (no picture of that, unfortunately).

It was very warm and moist in the butterfly house, obviously, since it was a tropical butterfly habitat. The butterflies were EVERYWHERE! You had to go through this “air lock” sort of entrance and exit to make sure the butterflies didn’t get out.

I don’t have a lot of pictures of Erik and I together, since I’m usually the one with the camera. But I took a few yesterday. I’m really angry that my camera is broken, all these great pictures have a big dark patch in the middle. Afterwards, we went out for coffee at Vivace, and he gave me a hug and we went home. It was a ton of fun - yesterday was a good day.

So, rather unexpectedly, I have moved back to Seattle. I’ve been back since Saturday night.

I know this is pretty sudden and some of my friends are probably going to be rather surprised and possibly alarmed.

Life in San Francisco started unravelling VERY fast. In February, I lost my job. Then, I was EXTREMELY ill for the entire month of March. I found out on April 1 that I had to move out of my apartment by April 30, and I decided that faced with having to find a job and a new place to live in less than a month, that it was time to pack it up and move back to Seattle.

I miss all my friends down there, and I hope I will be back sooner rather than later, hopefully at some point back to stay. But right now, moving back to my hometown and taking a break while I regroup and get my life back together is what’s most important to me.

The hardest thing was making the decision to move without getting to say goodbye to most of my friends down there, without getting to go to Death Guild one last time, without getting to do any of the stuff I wanted to do before I left. But, it was better that I left once I had made the decision to leave, rather than hang around.

Erik came down on Thursday, April 3, and we rented a moving van, helped my friend Kurt move a desk, and rested up to do the Big Move the next morning. On Friday, April 4, we packed the van up, cleaned my room, stopped for a bite to eat and hit the road. By that evening we were at the California/Oregon border (in Yreka), where we stopped for the night. We made it to my mom and dad’s house by 21:00 on Saturday night and unpacked a bunch of my stuff on Sunday. We finished unloading the rest of my stuff Monday and returned the truck.

Living with my parents is taking some getting used to, that’s for sure. Their house is beautiful and comfortable, I don’t have to pay rent and I dont’ have to worry about IMMEDIATELY GETTING A JOB, so that’s good. But giving up the independence I’ve had the last 8 years has been a tough transition. I live out in the middle of nowhere (seriously - pizza hut doesn’t deliver all the way out here!) but I have my car.

At least I’ve been able to get some of my decorative items out of boxes and put them up to make my space a little bit more “my own.” I am happy with how my dresser has shaped up with all my postcards on it. The lamp (on which I’ve hung the goggles I wore at Burning Man and several necklaces) and dresser are both antiques and I have had both of them since I was young. All in all my space here is pretty nice. It’s clean and quiet and I have room to spread out a bit.

Other than cleaning and decorating, I’ve been trying to keep myself happy and amused. I’ve been doing a lot of laundry. I’ve also been making efforts to eat better.

The best thing I can do right now is focus on myself and get my life back in order. So that’s what I’m doing. Even if “focus on myself” means “go out on the front porch and blow soap bubbles for 20 minutes.”

I moved home from San Francisco. I will write more about it soon. In the meantime, I leave you with a picture of my buddha statue wearing my sunglasses, sitting next to my new purple orchid.