Category Archives: La Splenda Vita

Apr 15 2010
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La Splenda Vita

Me Fail English? That’s Unpossible!

I’m at the computer all day. Then, I go home and more often than not, at some point of the evening, I find my fingers curling downward yet again, furiously typing away on the keyboard of my laptop.

I’m always typing.

I wish I could say that the sheer amount of hours that I’m on a computer has helped make me a more skilled and accurate typist, but I’m sad to report that though my speed has increased, I’m still quite typo-prone.

This isn’t a big deal nowadays, thanks to Spellcheck which runs on everything from Gchat, to my Blackberry, to even my WordPress postings. (There is even a redline underneath “Spellcheck” right now. How ironic. Also, I also had to re-type “nowadays” twice.)

Then I had a thought. Yes, just one.

Think about slang. Sometimes, words just exist out of convenience or habit, even if they aren’t proper English. Used again and again, as parasites that cling to the context of universally accepted words, we will ultimately find words like “staycation” inducted into the Webster’s Dictionary. Obvi.

But–when will this happen with typos? There are millions of words that I misspell on a daily basis, due to my poor skills of utilizing the Home Row keys.

As a writer, and the proud owner of a Bachelor’s degree of English Literature, I am in no way condoning that typos be elected into our language. But, I have found that some of my typos would make badass adjectives with tricked-out suffixes and prefixes.

Faced with the reality that every time I re-type my typo, my relationship with these “wordz” has only gotten deeper, I am now officially swearing in these words into my typing vocabulary:

“that” is now “taht”

“what” is not “waht”

“office” is now “offie”

“but it’s” is now “butt tit’s”

“today” is now “toady”

“Brian” is now “Brain”

“The” is now “Teh” (to be pronounced a la Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber when he’s trying to read the newspaper…T–Heh)

“me” instead of “my” (I’m now British!)

Official red line count: 3

Hmmm.

Spell check is apparently set to “incompetent” toady.

Apr 07 2010
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La Splenda Vita

A Choo.

It’s official. It’s not Spring for me until I feel my first pangs of itchiness in the corners of my eyes. Hayfever season is upon us, with my pockets full of Zyrtec.

I suppose it bodes well that I’ve always loved the Stay Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters, since I’m pretty much the spitting image of him after my eyes blow up. Ah. Such is life. It’s not going to stop be from being outside to enjoy the nice weather.

But, before I wax poetic about my desire to frolic, I will vent one more little rant, since for me, springtime is not only the time for itchy eyes, but also, the season of the sneeze.

The season of the sneeze. Big deal, you must think. It’s a natural response. It’s like breathing. You do it when you have to. Or do you??

You see, in a perfect world, the cycle would be easy: trees make pollen, pollen makes me sneeze, I sneeze, I blow my nose and then feel better until the whole lather, rinse, repeat cycle starts over.

But for me, I like to pick my battles, and as ridiculous as it sounds, I’ve picked a battle with the institution of sneezing.

I do NOT like to sneeze, or blow my nose in public, and I refuse to do so.

This may sound odd. I’ve been told by CP that he wasn’t aware that you could even take a stance on sneezing. Oh, but you can. Ladies and gentlemen, just like Jerry Seinfeld admitted “I haven’t thrown up since June 29th, 1980!” I too have a confession: I have been blocking my sneezes for as long as I can remember.

How can I stop a natural response to a stimulus to my respiratory system? It’s quite simple, really. I’ve just learned to somehow shut off (or close, I’m not really quite sure what I do) my nose and throat at the same time.

I think I’ve always hated to sneeze. It’s just messy, and your eyes water, and your nose drips. AND–more than anything, I can’t stand when others sneeze. It’s not even so much the germ thing as it is the noise thing. Some people can really hit high decibels when they sneeze. The worst offenders are those who don’t have a warning inhale. “CHOOOOOOOOOO!!!” While they are left feeling better, I’m the one with the quickened heart beat.

And so, I decided to make the world a better place by taking myself out of the sneezing game. I thought of it as helping to defeat noise pollution. I became a martyr.

But, just like Jerry, today was the day I lost my streak. As he said, “Fourteen years down the drain!” I’m not quite sure how long it’s been, but today, while watching the Today show and drinking coffee, I sneezed, and I let it all hang out. Everything–from the little inhales in when you feel a tickle, to the release in which you feel your throat clench was not blocked. It made CP happy, and I suppose it made me happy for my health, since a Googling session yielded Yahoo answers that when you hold in a sneeze, you run the risk of rupturing blood vessels or ear drums, which I doubt are true. Well, I may blow out an ear drum…but this sneeze was to see if I could do it; if I still knew how to sneeze correctly.

Verdict: it’s like getting back on a bike. I still don’t like it, but perhaps it is good to not reckon with the force.

Happy Zyrtec season!

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Mar 01 2010
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La Splenda Vita, My Life in Hoboken

The Queen of Stretching Food

From the March 5, 2010 edition of Hoboken’s Progress:

For someone like me, who sees the grocery store as the bane of my existence, you would think that Fresh Direct would be my saving grace. No more having to pass on the 10 for $5 deal. No groceries falling out of plastic bags torn open by the metal buckles on my boots. I thought this was it. So did my roommates.

Apparently, I just have a problem with the whole concept of buying food unless I’m completely out. While my roommates loaded their online carts on the Fresh Direct site with goodies, when it was my turn, my cart carried two boxes of granola bars, and then my desire to buy diminished immediately.

Missing an entry in the Merck Manual, my roommates and I have affectionately labeled me as the queen of  “stretching” food, ie: if my food acquiring habits were to be tracked on a graph—my trends are extremely predictable. No matter what, I will always find a way to dodge buying groceries.

I present to you exhibit A. This morning, I awoke to find that I was out of oatmeal. My box of America’s Choice was such a tease. Digging around my pantry, I found that I was actually out of a lot of things that are staples in my diet–namely, any source of protein other than peanut butter and two eggs. I decided to keep the eggs for a dinner scramble, so I succumbed to a breakfast of slathering peanut butter and jelly on pretzels. To my delight, I was quite satiated.

Exhibit B was last week: I arrived home, starving, with the suspicion that I didn’t have much in my cupboard. Upon opening my refrigerator, I find a leftover half of a cold sandwich from Luca Brasi’s. Huzzah! I got to work.

It is also quite fortunate that I have a somewhat small stomach and so I fill up very easily. Using that to my advantage, I dissect the turkey, mozzarella, roasted peppers, and arugula of the Big Petey as if I had just hunted it in the wild, deciding what to eat and what to spare for another time. Instinctual survival skills were definitely kicking in.

What I’m about to tell you I find half impressive, half sad. I took the mound of turkey and wrapped it up to use as lunch meat for a sandwich, and then demolished the rest of the sandwich for dinner. One sandwich supplied me with three meals.

My family still talks about the Chef Salad I ordered at a diner whose leftovers fed me lunch for the rest of the week. In my own defense, there was about a pound of turkey and ham atop another pound of lettuce. Or maybe, I’m just resourceful.

Sometimes, I think I just like the challenge of splicing together random ingredients on an empty stomach. Other times, I think maybe I’m just lazy. But I like to think it that whatever does not kill me only makes me stronger.

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Feb 05 2010
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La Splenda Vita

It’s Always Sunny In NYC

While I may be a timid driver, I am by no means a timid pedestrian.

I know what you must be thinking—a timid pedestrian? But, it’s a fact. They do exist.

Such creatures are those who commit the following acts while walking in the city: wait out each red light at an intersection even though there aren’t any cars passing through; run to the other side of the street when the “walk” sign is still blinking (the light hasn’t turned red yet, people); and those who start to cross against a light, but then hesitate—while you walk smack into them.

I used to feel a bit insecure that I don’t like to drive much, but ever since my status as a confident NYC walker has recently been compromised, I’ve decided that being considered as a timid or (gasp) slow walker is so much worse.

I blame this ugly rumor on the weather. Due to a weather pattern I have come to discover that hovers above the Hudson River during the winter season, my reputation as an urbanite is now under fire.

For some reason—and I really cannot fathom the science behind this—in Manhattan, unless there’s a blizzard, by the time that I step one foot out of the 33rd Street PATH station, any snow that I mustered through in Hoboken has already become an after thought in the city. Random puddles are the only evidence that some precipitation had fallen.

Can someone please explain this phenomenon to me, since not only am I baffled by this, but also, it makes me look like I’m a slow walker in inclement weather, since I have a tendency to be a little late on “snow days.”

I’m the only employee that treks into work from Hoboken, and without fail, I always seem to be the only one held up from getting a late start due to snow. Coworkers who do not have to cross a river to get to work do not believe when I explain that Hoboken looked like it had magically moved a dozen latitude degrees north when I awoke.

During my first winter working in NYC with a “real” job, during the first snowstorm of that season, I actually questioned if I had to go to work. I decided to call my co-worker and fellow Hobokenite to discuss. She was in the same boat as me—first real job, first snow day in the real world. We decided it was best to talk about this in person, over mugs of oatmeal and coffee in my kitchen. Before we knew it, by the time we finally made it into work, at was around 11 AM—and of course, there was no snow to be found on the streets on NYC.

As a consequence of this mysterious weather pattern, I appear as a timid city walker. But, I’m telling you, it’s real, and it’s out there.  I may have been naïve my first snowstorm, but I know for sure now. It’s not me. It’s the Bermuda Triangle of snow over the Hudson.

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