Today is National Word Nerd day. This might not prompt the same reason for celebration as National Ice Cream Day or National Take Your Pet to Work Day for most folks. But for people like me, National Word Nerd Day is a chance to get your word freak on. In anticipation of today's celebration, I was reading back through some of my previous posts about my pride in being a "wordie" (I think I like that description better than word nerd) - describing pet grammar peeves , writing poetry about my love of a purple pen or describing the joy of receiving a hand-written note . Who else but a dedicated wordie could write about the relationship between smoking a pork butt and writing ? A quick glance around my home and office illustrates it’s clear I qualify as a world class word nerd. Just a few examples: · Your choice of clothes illustrates your word nerdiness. My “grammar police” t-shirt is always on the top of my t-shirt pile when I op...
Our sweet, gentle Flossie left us on Friday after bringing us six years of joy and the most uncomplicated and consistent love that only a dog can offer. Flossie came to us from PetsInc during the September 2018 Hurricane Florence. I had gone to PetsInc to walk dogs that had been evacuated from the coast. Bringing home a dog was the last thing on my mind that afternoon. As I was leaving my shift, I spotted her in a small pen in the office where she enthusiastically greeted visitors as they came into the building. Our eyes met, and I was drawn to her for a few belly scratches and ear rubs. I asked if I could take her for a spin around the property. Long story short (read the full "gotcha" story here ), she came home with me. She was named after the hurricane that took me to PetsInc that muggy, wet September afternoon. The sassy nickname Flossie seemed to fit her better than the stodgier sounding Florence. We didn’t know exactly how old she was, but the vet said her teeth indi...
Like many people, I decided to do no more reading about, listening to or watching anything about the Murdaugh case once the trial ended in March 2022. I had no interest in what podcasters, movies, tv series, books, blogs or news hounds had to say once the sentencing was over. That was until I saw that Valerie Bauerlein had written a book about the trial. I’d crossed work paths with Valerie back in her early career when she worked at The State newspaper in Columbia. I continued to follow her writing through her Wall Street Journal work. I knew this book would not be the sensational, rumor-ridden, speculative narrative that so many writers, podcasters, movie producers and news people had resorted to post-trial. I wasn’t disappointed. Valerie’s direct news writing style intersecting with the narrative skill of an empathetic storyteller makes this book engaging, interesting, easy to follow, and a pleasure to read. One of my favorite sentences of the book comes on page 23 with the descr...
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