Between Sentences

The New York Public School System (specifically Traver Road Elementary School) never taught me to double-space between sentences. But then we moved to North Carolina and my parents put me in Catholic School and they had me doing all these insane things that I had never done before like diagramming sentences, some shit called “Wordly Wise” (If it’s so wise with the words, how come it doesn’t know that “wordly” isn’t actually a word?), and DOUBLE-SPACING BETWEEN SENTENCES.

(Also, there was even a girl in my class that INSISTED I use the mouse to highlight and delete my misspelled word rather than backspacing. It still annoys me to this day and when ever I realize, two words later, that I misspelled a word, I think about Jennifer Hendy. (I don’t mind calling her out on my blog because I ran into her in the GAP a couple years after 8^th grade and she called me Tiffany. She has no idea who I am.) It takes me more time to take my hands off the keyboard, grab the mouse, highlight (highlighting is a bitch – especially with those 1994 roller ball mouses/mice…that’s a debate for another post), put my hands back on the keyboard to delete and retype the word and then grab the mouse again to get back to the spot I was when I realized, “crap. I misspelled ‘orange’…AGAIN!” Jennifer Hendy was also quite the little tattletale about the double-spacing. Hrmph.)

Anyway – back to the point at hand – the double-spacing thing. I went to college and nobody there told me to stop double-spacing between sentences either – but believe me – I thought about it a lot. Remember? Every time I deleted a word to correct another word, I thought of Jennifer Hendy…and then also thought about the weird double-spacing thing.

After college I was working at an ad agency and I noticed that all the designers’ copy looked so pretty. What was it about their copy that looked so much better than my copy (aside from the fancy Mac typeface)? AH-HA! There were no double spaces between the sentences!!! I immediately marched myself down to the other end of the hall and inquired. “Blech! NO! We certainly DO NOT double-space between sentences!” It was said with all the disdain of someone who had just been spat upon. I freaking knew those nuns were wrong!

I started to investigate a little further. People started double-spacing between sentences because of TYPEWRITERS! Early typewriters were set with monospaced font – meaning that all letters took up the same amount of space. An “i" took up the same horizontal space as a “w.” This meant that some words looked kind of spaced out and it may or may not have made it a little more difficult to tell when one sentence ended and the next started.

By the 1950’s they had totally fixed this. Totally. They did it by using proportional typeface and…wait for it…computers! Ooooo! Aaaaah!

I’m just sayin’ – if you are still double-spacing between sentences, then you need to cancel your Twitter and Facebook accounts and let me know how your new job is going over at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

(Take that Jennifer Hendy!)

Rooster? Cow? ...Chihuahua???

The first week we had Leroy, he slept in his crate with no complaints...then he started to love us. Aaawe. Once he became attached he did not want to be crated at night.

After Leroy had been with us about a week, I came home from work one night to a tail-wagging pup. I was thrilled! That night, we heard terrible, unnatural noises coming from where our tiny little dog should be.

We thought we should ignore it...that did. not. work. Christopher and I were up all night. Finally around 4:00am or so, Christopher jumped out of bed, yelled, "NO!" at him and he was silent. Honestly, I was beside myself worried that the reason he was silent was because Christopher had, literally, scared him to death. Luckily that was not the case.

Night two, I got my phone out. After I got a little snippet of a recording, I firmly told Leroy, "NO!" He was silent. He is such a good dog!

Anyway - I just came across the recording. Here it is:

(there's no video; just sound. and it doesn't really start until :17 and it doesn't really get crazy until :35)

Doggie Paddle

Earlier this past week I was looking at Leroy and thinking how sad it is that he doesn't get more exercise. During the day when we are at work, he is in his crate. While we are sleeping, he is in his crate. If we are doing stuff around the house, he is on the couch sleeping. If we are on the couch watching TV, he is on the couch sleeping. He really enjoys being outside when it's nice out, but our yard isn't fenced in and he won't walk on a leash so he mostly just walks around the yard for a few minutes once or twice a day when we can walk around with him.

Leroy loves laying in the grass, but it's getting pretty hot outside - I don't want to let him sit out there too long and bake.

When we got Leroy, I was really curious about his past life - I tried to find out more about his owner, but I wasn't that successful. I did know his address...and google maps showed that he had a pool in the back yard! Maybe Leory likes to swim???

Well, he didn't hate it, but I'm not sure he loved it. When Christopher put him in, he acted like he was going to swim; his little legs just started moving! But of course the water wasn't deep enough to actually try swimming.

I guess that settles it - we are going to have to get an in-ground pool and see if he likes that any better. Christopher....?