It's very unique

I read in the paper about a "blog" on "unnecessary" quotation marks -- ones that are grammatically incorrect but have been added for some strange reason. It's hilarious and oh so sadly true. I work with words all day in many languages and see way too many over used quotation marks.

I was thinking about grammatical things that bug me. One is the use of over, instead of more than. "The committee raised over $2 million." To me, the word "over" means a state of being, such as "the balloon hovered over the field." When we talk about something that can't physically be over something else, it should be "more than."

Another is the word unique. The definition means one-of-a-kind or unparalled. So when someone says "that's very unique," he or she is adding an unnecessary modifier. It's already one-of-a-kind, it can't get more unique than that.

And sometimes plans change

Thankfully our Hawaii trip is flexible (using miles and timeshare, etc) as we now have to postpone it to later. Plans have changed -- mostly for the good but will be better when I am not so sick!

Baby butter bean is what is making me so sick. She doesn't like anything I eat. I have a few more weeks of this and can't wait to be past it. Uhg! Why can't I have the pregnancy you see in movies? These people are hardly sick! Instead of morning sickness, I get 24-hour sickness.

Oh baby butter bean, you better be cute. I'll be reminding you how sick I was every year on your birthday (and probably will have a fun labor story too).