There, Their, They're; Let's Play Fun With Words

As I was driving over to the coffeehouse this morning, I saw something that I see often and almost always prompts the same response from me; muttering under my breath (not really) about (I mean, I was muttering but it was out loud) the quality of the education the bearer received.  Perhaps you've seen this too.  A car with either a window sticker or bumper sticker or, as was the case this morning, a license plate holder proclaiming there was an "alumni" of some institution of higher learning inside.  I've got news for you Mr./Ms. college graduate... unless there are two or more of you in the vehicle, or, possibly, if you're schizophrenic, you are NOT an "alumni" of any school.  What you ARE is, in fact, an "alumnus".

Look it up.

Here for instance.

You're welcome.

As I said above, this is not an isolated incident.  I can only recall one time off the top of my head where I noticed one of those things and thought to myself "Oh look!  Someone that gets it!"  Whereas I've seen, literally, hundreds of them with the wrong use of the word.

The things that occupy my mind...

I've gotten to the point where I completely disregard anything on social media until I proofread it.  You want to get your point across to me?  Spell shit correctly.  And I'm not talking about the occasional typo.  Everyone makes them, I know I do.  If I catch a mistake after I post something I almost always edit it and send it back out.  Here too.  And it still happens.  I typically proofread these at least twice before I hit the publish button and I still miss stuff.  I know that because I sometimes reread old posts.  And seeing my own errors makes me twitchy.

And fwiw, it's not "I could of done that" it's "I could have done that".  Jesus people, check out a book once in a while, would you?

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, let me tell you about my week.  Wednesday night I'm going with my friend Tom to see Wilco play a show in Rockford.  Needless to say, I'm stoked.  Plus there are few people on the planet I'd rather see a concert with than Tom.  So there's that.

Next, Thursday is (or should be) Caitlin's 32nd birthday.  A bittersweet day, as so many of them are.  A day like this can't go by without wondering, in the words of Kenny Chesney "Who You'd Be Today" and that usually being accompanied by a tear or two.  I may write more about her on Thursday, I haven't decided yet.  There's so much to write, and to think about.  14 years down the road how can you not wonder what would be?

We stopped doing The Walk in 2013, after 10 years of raising money for her scholarship.  After that, the Oldest One decided she wanted to do something more to continue Caitlin's presence among people that never knew her.  So she started Random Acts of Kindness for Caitlin as a way of doing that.  It's a wonderful way to commemorate her too short life and I heartily recommend it.  You can do a search on Facebook to find her page and participate.  Or, of course, you can just do something nice for some random, unknown person on Caitlin's behalf.

Speaking of the Oldest One, Friday is her birthday.  And, while I don't want to put her age out there on the interwebz, let me just say that, Ellie was 39 for as far back as I can remember.  And I'm not even joking.  I don't recall a time when, if asked her age, my Mom would reply with any answer other than "39 years old".  To the point that when my oldest nieces were younger, they couldn't understand how Gram was younger than their mother...

So, since I'm not going to put OO's actual age up on here, I will point out that she'll soon be older than Ellie.  Which, while making me chuckle a little also fills me with no small amount of dread since, you know, I'm her father and, by default, significantly older.

Insert wide eyed emoji >here<

Peace