Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Hey, how you doin'? Did you get through yesterday's storm alright? For non-UK readers, we had one heck of a storm here yesterday. Oh it was cold! It was windy-windy-windy! It rained! One thing I don't get about the the very windy + rain combination is that people use umbrellas when they go out. I just don't get it. If it's really windy, the umbrella is hardly going to keep you terribly dry and more importantly, the wind is likely to blow your umbrella out of shape and then it's definitely no use to you. The amount of discarded umbrellas I saw yesterday was.. well, lots!

Speaking of umbrellas, isn't it weird that it's called an umbrella? Because wouldn't that mean something like 'little shade'? So it's raining and, logically,you think to yourself I think I will get out my umbrella so I can get in the shade. Right? In Danish it's called 'paraply' which I do believe comes from French 'para pluie', 'against rain', which, as metaphors go, is a much better description. Of course, thinking about the oddity of umbrella, I had to look it up and it turns out that the word doesn't, as such, have anything to do with shade. It comes from the Latin word 'umbel' and is simply influenced by 'ombra', also from latin. I'm sorry if this is getting very strange and boring, but I love this sort of stuff. If you do too, I really (REALLY) ecommend reading the book The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher. It's awesome and very enlightening.

I've been looking on eBay for some stuff for our invitations and earlier I came across a couple of listings where I wouldn't buy from the seller even if I really needed the item. The first one is not too bad, I guess, it's just rather silly. The picture is not very good and in the description it says "If you want a clearer picture please e-mail me and I shall see what I can do". Isn't that bizarre? The picture is people's only proper way to judge a product online, so why not make it clear to begin with? So lazy!

The second one must be written by someone who doesn't know how to switch off Caps Lock because it's all caps and THAT'S JUST LIKE SHOUTING AT PEOPLE, especially when you use the largest available font size. But the weirdest thing about is the returns policy which says: IF YOU AINT HAPPY YOU GET YOUR MONEY BACK. Wow, that sounds really rather aggressive, doesn't it?

Ok, I hope you were somewhat entertained by this post. I'm sorry I haven't got anything crafty to post, but you know how it is, right? However, tomorrow I'm hoping I can be arsed to show you pictures of some more crochet brooches, a blanket I'm making for Tony, some new earrings I got and maybe some other stuff. So tomorrow will be jam-packed, I hope you're up for it! ;-)

Oh, btw, I almost forgot, on Saturday morning I did something I've only done once before here in England: I drove the car! That's a big thing for me, because I really hate not being able to drive here, I don't want to always be a passenger! But it's baby steps before I'll be driving alone, I think. Getting used to the car and roads being opposite is one thing, but there's also a lot more traffic here than in Denmark. Still, I'm proud of myself.

Finally, would you like to test something for me? Tony and I are making a website thing with information for the English guests to our wedding, and it would be great if someone would give us some input about it before we send off our invitations. So you must be able to pretend like you are English (if you are something else, naturally. If you are English, please don't imagine that you are Italian, for example!) and going to our wedding in Denmark. Email me if you want to be our guinea pig! Thank you.

The End.

Labels: books, geeky, just stuff