Best Wishes in 2010!

A new year is, for many of us, somewhat of a new beginning. A time to reflect, take a look at where we've been, what we've done and accomplished and where we're going. As we face the choices and uncertainties ahead of us, to maintain a healthy mind, body, spirit and life - below are a few insights, inspirations and ways to manage stress.


Take breaks
Step back and observe
Review your purpose
Change your priorities
Leave five minutes earlier
Organize your space
Listen to your intuition
Visualize positive outcomes
Take care of your health
Don't forget, write it down
Simplify!
View problems as opportunities
Let go of "what ifs"
Go with your natural rhythms
Breathe deeply
Say no at times
Follow your passion
Stop the "shoulds"
Nurture good friendships
Respect your limits
Develop flexibility
Slow down and notice
Open your heart
Count your blessings

Will 2010 Be a New Decade?

Which Years Make Up a Decade?

Believe it or not, it's a contentious question. Most people think of the decade as the years ending '00 through '09 because we usually refer to a decade by those last two numbers--the nineties were 1990 through 1999, for example. The problem is that our calendar didn't start with year zero, and a decade is a 10-year period, so the first decade was years 1 through 10, and counting forward would make this decade 2001 through 2010.

The writers of the Chicago Manual of Style and Garner's Modern American Usage refuse to take a strong stand, but seem to lean toward starting decades with the year '00.

It's possible to make a strong argument that the decade is technically years '01 through '10. However, most people think of a decade as being the 10-year period that starts with the year ending in zero--so that is the best choice because it will convey what you mean to the largest percentage of your readers.







Sources: GG, CMS, GMAU

Christmas Blessings

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVE!





Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.
Norman Vincent Peale

Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance - a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.
Augusta E. Rundel

Peace on earth will come to stay, when we live Christmas every day.
Helen Steiner Rice

Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
Washington Irving

Christmas is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.
Agnes M. Pharo

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
Burton Hillis








~ Blessings To You And Yours This Holiday ~

The Spirit of Christmas

Today being Christmas Eve Eve Eve, I'd like to share a heartwarming story of the true spirit of Christmas. This was written by Laurie Pines and featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul.


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"A Very Belated Thank You"

When my son, Mark, was in the third grade he saved all his allowance for over two months to buy holiday presents for those he loved. He had saved twenty dollars. Third Saturday in December Mark announced that he had made his list and had his money in his pocket.

I drove him to a local drug store, the modern version of what we used to call the "Five and Dime." Mark picked up a hand basket and went off on his own while I waited patiently reading a book at the front of the store. It took Mark over 45 minutes to pick out his presents. The smile on his face as he approached the checkout counter was truly joyful. The clerk rang up his purchases as I politely looked the other way. Mark kept within his budget and reached into his pocket for his money. It was not there. There was a hole in his pocket, but no money. Mark stood in the middle of the store holding his basket, tears rolling down his cheeks. His whole body was shaking with his sobs. Then an amazing thing happened. A customer in the store came up to Mark. She knelt down to his level and took him in her arms and said, "You would do me the greatest favor if you let me replace your money. It would be the most wonderful present you could ever give me. I only ask that one day, you pass it on. One day, when you are grown, I would like you to find someone you can help. When you help this other person, I know you will feel as good about it as I do now." Mark took the money, tried to dry his tears and ran to the checkout counter as fast as he could go. I think we all enjoyed our gifts that year almost as much as Mark enjoyed giving them to us.

I would like to say "thank you" to that incredible woman. I would like to tell her that four years later Mark went house to house collecting blankets and coats for people...and he thought of her. I would like to tell her that every time I give food to a homeless family, I think of her. And I want to promise her that Mark will never forget to keep passing it on.

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Vocabulary

Weird Word gives you an opportunity to grow your vocabulary with not-very-common and/or not-frequently-used words.

Today's Weird Word is: NEBULAPHOBIA, and its pronounciation is: neb-u-la-fo-be-ah.


Nebulaphobia is noun, meaning: fear of fog.

His business trip to London caused him to be anxious, because he suffered from nebulaphobia.


Ask people if they suffer from nebulaphobia. You're bound to get a few confused looks!





Note: The source for most of the words featured can be found at Luciferous Logolepsy. They are so obscure, I was actually unable to find some of them at a couple of common online dictionary references, such as The Free Dictionary.com.

Prepositions

Prepositions are those little words that show us the relationship between nouns or noun substitutes. They come in two varieties, simple and complex, and they are always followed by a noun. The result is what's called a prepositional phrase.

- The ogre hid out under the bridge.
- Beneath the lily pad, the frog waited for a princess to kiss him.
- For richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health...


The most common simple prepositions are:

about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, during, except, for, from, in, inside, into, near, of, off, on, since, through, to, toward, under, until, up, upon, with, within, without.

Complex prepositions combine two or three words to act as one preposition: according to, insofar as, instead of, along with. All you have to remember is that they, too, require a subject.

- Many card games are played according to Holye.
- Instead of the typical response, Jeremy chose to answer in Spanish.
- Tonight's performance is cancelled due to illness.


While prepositions aren't one of the major migraines in English, they do present a few issues. For little words, they can be misused in a big way. A few of the most obvious victims are in/at, from/then, among/between, and in/into.


*In or at? Use in with spaces (in the universe, in the bath, in a row, in a field of study). Use at with places (at the resort, at the top of the page, at the back of the room). Therefore,

- Although I sat at the front of the classroom in college, I was still bad in math.


*From or than? This one is easy. It should always be different from. The commonly heard different than is incorrect, (than isn't a preposition, it's a conjunction). Therefore,

- Even more than I thought, rugby is different from baseball.


*Among or between? Usually, among is used when more than two parties or things are involved. Between is preferred when there are only two.

- Smaller prizes were divided among the participants, while the big money was split between the two winners.

However, from its earliest usage, between has been extended to more than two, for instance,

- There were varying positions on the treaty between Timbuktu, Tasmania and Turkey.

In common usage, either among or between is correct. Just listen for the sense of the sentence.


*In or into? In many instances, either one is correct, or the correct choice is obvious. Into implies an action, while in most often describes a condition. For instance,

- Lassie jumped in/into the lake to save Timmy from the alligator.
- While skiing in Switzerland, I fell into/in a snow bank.



Source: The Gremlins of Grammar

Thoroughness Challenge

Thorough Thursday is a post consisting of paragraphs that contain spelling and/or grammatical errors. The paragraphs with the errors corrected and highlighted in red can be found at the end of the post.

Note: The purpose of the Challenge is thoroughness. You're only looking for errors in spelling and/or grammar. Names and places will NOT be misspelled, nor will there by any changes to punctuation or sentence structure. In addition, if there is a word that may have more than one accepted spelling, those also will not be changed.


Your Challenge paragraphs concludes our look at the history of blogs and blogging with the creation of Blogger - and beyond. This week you're looking for 9 errors. Good Luck!

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BLOGGER and Beyond

In late Janaury of 2001, in the depths of the dot-com crash, a San Francisco startup called Pyra Labs ran out of money. Its staff departed. The co-founder of the company, a young Nebraskan named Evan Williams, decided to make a go of it alone. He scraped together $40,000 in new funding and moved Pyra's servers into his apartment. This permited the company's 100,000 registered customers (and counting) to keep using Pyra's service, Blogger, to publish their online journels, or blogs.

A year later, Blogger had 700,000 subscribers. Whether sharing cookie recipes or commenting on weapons reports from Iraq, those writers were constructing a significent new form of grassroots media. Blogging turned tradtional publishing on its head, allowing anyone with a computer and modem (or even a smartphone) to gain a global voice for free. By 2003, Williams was able to sell his business to Google for a lucritive pile of pre-IPO stock. Three years later he and his partners launched yet another tool for global publishing, the micro-blogging phenomonon, Twitter.

At this point it's hard for some to remember that even in the late '90s most people still regarded web pages as things to read, not places to post and publish. It's an important phenomenen, one that leads not only to YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia but also to the transfomation of corporate and government communications.

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Now, let's see how thorough you are!

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BLOGGER and Beyond

In late January of 2001, in the depths of the dot-com crash, a San Francisco startup called Pyra Labs ran out of money. Its staff departed. The co-founder of the company, a young Nebraskan named Evan Williams, decided to make a go of it alone. He scraped together $40,000 in new funding and moved Pyra's servers into his apartment. This permitted the company's 100,000 registered customers (and counting) to keep using Pyra's service, Blogger, to publish their online journals, or blogs.

A year later, Blogger had 700,000 subscribers. Whether sharing cookie recipes or commenting on weapons reports from Iraq, those writers were constructing a significant new form of grassroots media. Blogging turned traditional publishing on its head, allowing anyone with a computer and modem (or even a smartphone) to gain a global voice for free. By 2003, Williams was able to sell his business to Google for a lucrative pile of pre-IPO stock. Three years later he and his partners launched yet another tool for global publishing, the micro-blogging phenomenon, Twitter.

At this point it's hard for some to remember that even in the late '90s most people still regarded web pages as things to read, not places to post and publish. It's an important phenomenon, one that leads not only to YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia but also to the transformation of corporate and government communications.

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Writing Dates and Times

Writing dates and times is something that falls under the category I refer to as grammar slang. So many people are unsure of how to write them, it has become a gray area where you'll find dates and times written out in any number of ways. There are grammatical rules, which I've listed below, with examples of proper usage.

Rule: The following examples apply when using dates:

The book will be published on August 9.
The book will be published on the 9th of August.
April Fools' Day is April 1.
The 1st of April is April Fools' Day.


Rule: When expressing decades, they can be spelled out and lowercased.

Example: I have several books from the eighties and nineties.


Rule: Whether you express decades using incomplete or complete numerals, do not use an apostrophe between the year and the s. When using an incomplete numeral, use an apostrophe to replace the first two numbers.

Correct:
During the ’80s, I purchased several books.
During the 1980s, I purchased several books.

Incorrect:
During the ’80’s, I purchased several books.
During the 1980’s, I purchased several books.


Rule: Spell out the time of day in text even with half and quarter hours. With o’clock, the number is always spelled out.

Example: He left at four thirty to meet with his agent.
Example: His meeting with his agent was at five o’clock in the afternoon.


Rule: Use numerals with the time of day when exact times are being emphasized.

Example: She received the message at 9:22 a.m.
Example: The meeting is at 12:30 p.m. sharp.


Rule: Use noon and midnight rather than 12:00 a.m. or 12:00 p.m.

Note: In printed matter, many times you will see A.M. and P.M.

In much the same way that E-mail and e-mail has evolved into email, AM and PM are also widely used, though not officially grammatically correct.

Sources: Grammarbook, Gregg Reference Manual

Happy Monday!

I'm going to turn everything upside down today! As much as I know you will all miss me terribly (smile), beginning this week I will be posting on Tuesday and Thursday. The posts you've become familiar with will be alternated from week to week.

Every so often there may be an additional post, because I KNOW I'm going to miss *seeing* you all on a daily basis; but those two days you can count on!




I sure have missed everyone!
See you tomorrow!