I finna be postin' this entry, G.
2007-02-04 - 3:24 p.m.

Last night was the Groundhog Day party at P's place. We had a good time, except that we were frickin FREEZING the whole time. B told me ahead of time that they probably had their place colder than ours, even though we've turned our thermostat down and use space heaters, but I was still cold even so.

B was even colder than me, for a change. I brought a little bottle of champagne for myself (I'm not a beer drinker) and alcohol always makes me warm, so that helped for a while. After that I had some coffee and that helped, too, but after that was gone I started getting really cold, especially my feet. And I had two pairs of socks on!

We watched Groundhog Day and then played some games. First we played Taboo, then we played this game with Scrabble tiles they called Take Two. That was a tough game for me. I thought I'd be better at, given what I do for a living and having been an English major, but it was a struggle. It was fun anyway, but by about 10:30 B was so cold that he couldn't stand it anymore and we had to leave. B blasted the heat on us in the car on the way home and we finally got warm. If we go over there again, I'm definitely wearing more clothing and taking more booze.

I got an email today from someone I haven't heard from in about 5 years. It was from a woman who I used to go to church with when I lived in Ohio. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I used to be very heavily involved in this church. I sang in the choir, sang with a quartet (which included this particular woman), sang as a soloist, worked in the nursery, worked with the youth group and did the weekly bulletin for a while. The more stuff I did, the more resentful I felt about it because I didn't enjoy any of it, except maybe working with the youth group sometimes. My mom made me go to this church with her when I was younger, and then pushed me to be more involved as I got older. After moving away to be with B, I've not been to any church since. I've had enough of church for a while.

Anyway, this woman emailed me to ask about the work that I do as a transcriptionist. Her husband died last year and she's been struggling to take care of her two daughters, 14 and 6, and she heard from my mom about my job and the flexible hours and working from home stuff and wondered if she might be good at this kind of job. I wrote her back a very long email, explaining my job, what kind of skills are necessary, how I got started and what she can do to get started. I really don't know if she would like or be good at this kind of job or not. It can be tedious at times, but for me the benefits outway any tedium I may experience. But of course, not everyone may feel the way I do.

So I'll be curious to see what happens with her. Right after I moved away, B got a scathing email from someone, reprimanding him for "taking me away from my family and everyone I know." It was anonymous, but I had a feeling it was from this woman. It sounded like something she would say. What she didn't realize was that I moved away of my own accord; B didn't steal me away and hold me hostage, and I think now that we've been together for 5 years, she realizes that. Even so, I think she was a little afraid to contact me.

I was goofing around online today and was curious to see what I could find about Eb0nics. There's an entry at Wikipedia about it and it's very interesting stuff. Being the kind of language nerd that I am, I'm very interested in stuff like this. What's fascinating to me is that there are rules to this dialect; it's not random, like most people probably think. I heard a lot of Eb0nics growing up because black kids were bussed into the public schools in the city where I grew up, but B isn't as familiar with it.

For example, he'd not heard the word "finna" until I mentioned it one day. I heard the black kids say this all the time growing up, but I never knew until recently that it's a contraction of "fixing to," in the same way that "gonna" is a contraction of "going to" and "wanna" is a contraction of "want to." Interesting, huh?

I used to watch Jerry Spr1nger years ago and just be fascinated by the Eb0nics I was hearing. It's wild to hear someone speak so differently from you, but still be able to understand it more or less. The evolution of languages and dialects is something I could go on and on about, but I'm sure I've bored you long enough. ^_^

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