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It’s time to finishing packing and GO HOME. Only another twenty hours til I get to see Snookums at the arrivals gate…

Man. I feel fairly certain that I actually owned this Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox. I wish I still did!

10 Mispronunciations That Make You Sound Stupid. I’m totally with them on all of those except for the “suppose to” and “use to.” If I’m just talking casually to someone, I’m not going to go to the effort of enunciating an extra “D” in there. And #9… I’m totally guilty of that one. I actually just had to look it up to make sure that “reoccuring” wasn’t a word, so strong was my conviction that I hadn’t been saying it wrong all along. But it looks like I have been.

Also, I have a few of my own that I’d like to add: “exspecially” (NO) and “respite” (it’s pronounced as “respit”). Those drive me up the wall.

Superbugs. Scary stuff. Which reminds me, there’s another hygiene-related oddity I’ve noticed over here (in addition to the antibacterial wipes at the grocery store). Every time I’ve been in the ladies’ room here at the office and another woman has come in, she’s used a toilet seat cover. (I can hear it being pulled out of the box.) Isn’t that weird? Is it just me? I can’t remember the last time I used one, if in fact I ever have. I probably would if it were some really grotty public toilet, but we’re talking about a new, modern restroom in a private office building with maybe 25 businesswomen using it. It gets cleaned every night. What are they protecting themselves from? The occasional drop of wee on the seat? How do these women function when they’re forced to use a bathroom without a box of seat covers mounted on the wall??

The 100 Most Common English Words. How many can you guess in five minutes? I got 52. Judging by the Metafilter thread where I found the link, that’s a pretty good score!By the end there I was, like, reciting Shakespeare and the Gettysburg Address and stuff in my head trying to come up with common words I had forgotten.

Barack Obama held a Town Hall meeting at Concord High School this morning. I heard about it on the news at my Mom’s house last weekend. To my surprise, a couple people in my family mentioned their interest in going. (I don’t think anybody did though; it sounds like there was a lot of demand for tickets.) Looking at the coverage today, the media seemed to be mostly interested in Evan Bayh’s presence and whether a VP decision was imminent. Personally, I want to know more about what Obama said and how the locals reacted to it. Several members of my family work in the RV industry – hell, I myself worked at Coachmen throughout college – and I know that their companies have been hit really hard this year. Gas prices and the economy were a constant subject over the weekend. When I left the US nine years ago, gas in Indiana was well under $2/gallon. Now it’s more than twice that. The only way to get around is by car (unless you’re Amish). My grandpa went out Saturday morning to get a bag of sweetcorn from one of the local farmers, and he came back indignant at being charged 50c an ear. (I was surprised too, until I remembered that tractors need gas too.) So yeah, this is an area that has really been hurting lately, and I was glad to see that Obama was making a point of stopping there. People think of Indiana as such a Republican stronghold that it would be easy for the Democrats to not bother. Things are changing though, and I think Hoosiers are a lot smarter than the GOP gives them credit for. The fact that Obama wants to understand their problems and listen to their issues… that’s gotta count for a lot.

But man, the whole tire gauge thing is really ridiculous. I agree, it’s like McCain’s supporters really are “proud of being ignorant”.

Hm. Like Max, the Snook and I were also intrigued by Jamie Oliver’s “flavour shaker.” (It’s this plastic thing with a ball inside he uses to bash up spices.) Max found a pretty negative review though, which kills it for me. Back to the mortar and pestle…

See you at the Debates, bitches! Oh man. For two minutes there, I actually LIKED Paris Hilton. That is too, too funny. For those who don’t get it, John McCain released a campaign ad recently which compared Obama to Paris Hilton, trying to show that he’s all celebrity with no substance. So she put out her own ad in response, which features her making an honest-to-god policy suggestion. Whichever of her handlers convinced her to do that is a genius. (Link courtesy of Max, which is where I sent you.)

How a Google query works. That’s pretty neat. I had no idea so many individual machines were involved in performing just a simple search.