My friend Matt likes to offer advice (usually related to romance or computers), so I jokingly told him I looked up to him as a father figure. He flinched at that, and for some reason didn’t like “older brother” much better. He offered a third option: “Think of me as an older neighbor.”

The sort of thing you don’t want to read when you’re leaning against your car at the gas station, waiting for your gas tank to fill: “Warning: Static Electricity Spark Hazard. Do not back into your car during the fueling process.”

I received an e-mail this afternoon from a graphic designer I’ve worked with on several projects. He wrote, “I’ll get the postcards to the printer today. Mike signed off on the proof.”

I drew a blank. Postcards? What printer? And who was Mike?

I wrote back, finding a polite way of letting him know I had no idea what he was talking about.

Now if he were a woman, his response would probably have been a longer-than-necessary note, explaining what had happened, how he’d manged to confuse my e-mail address with someone else’s, and how sorry he was for the confusion. And maybe the word “duh” thrown in for a charmingly self-deprecating effect.

But he simply wrote back, “Sorry. Wrong address. I hate e-mail.”

I don't find Scripture memorization terribly difficult, but I can't seem to retain the correct references. So, when I directed my friend and co-worker Chris to a beautiful verse that I thought was Hosea 3:3, he looked it up and started laughing. Apparently he wasn't especially moved by this particular passage, which reads, "Then I said to her, 'You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so will I also be toward you.'"

(The verse I really had in mind was Hosea 6:3: "So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.")

I was helping a neurosurgeon edit an article for a medical journal, and he asked if a particular sentence was punctuated correctly. Since it was a fairly simple grammatical matter, I wanted soooooooo badly to say, "Well, it's not brain surgery." I held back, though. I figure he gets that a lot.

John Bloom has written an amusing article for National Review Online about the snobbish tendencies of book reviews. Here's one part I liked in particular:
Over time I've learned the secret code of book reviewers who don't really want you to know what they're talking about. "Coming of age," for example, means "self-involved young person agonizes over sophomoric minutiae." "Internal odyssey" means nothing happens. "Introspective" means psychobabble...." "Echoes of history" means you should run screaming out of Starbucks because somebody's going to tell you about his ancestors.

Something I heard once, in a speech: "If you're like me, and I know I am...."

I used to think "erstwhile" meant the same as "meanwhile" (as in "Erstwhile, back at the ranch....") Worse (let me stress that this was a long time ago), I thought "taxidermy" was a financial term. Good thing I decided against that business major.

Last week I was putting the finishing touches on a 12-page, four-color newsletter, juggling my various duties as editor: writing, copy editing, selecting photos, designing pages. Yesterday my creative abilities were devoted to a 5-inch sign that reads "Stairs."

I think I've been demoted, and nobody's told me yet.

I’m wearing new shoes today - they’re black, professional, but trendy enough to enable me to hold my head high as a graphic designer. I know women are supposed to be into shoes, but I don’t like shopping for them, and I hate wearing them for the first time. I’m always afraid they won’t be comfortable (something that’s not always evident during the brief try-on period), and I’ll realize I wasted my money. It’s happened at least twice - once in college, when my minimum-wage earnings didn’t allow for shoes that would do nothing more than decorate my closet. But the new ones I’m wearing today are great. I could practically play basketball in these things. But I’ll save that for the athletic shoes I’ll buy a year or so from now, when I get in the mood to go shoe-shopping again.

I told a friend that one of my pet peeves is the public relations trend of shortening “publications” to “pubs.” Later he caught me referring to “Les Mis,” and took a swipe at my inconsistency. But I had good reason. I’m never quite sure what to do with the “l” in “Miserables.”

I went to a paper store yesterday afternoon and ran into a co-worker who works in the office next to mine. We rarely speak at the office, except for the obligatory greeting one gives to passersby in the hallway. But when he spotted me at Kelly Paper, he gave me an enthusiastic greeting, shook my hand, and told me about the project he was working on. Funny, because I’d just been talking with a friend about the phenomenon that makes acquaintances feel obligated to hold a conversation when they meet outside their usual shared environment.

Why is that?

I was pondering the menu in Chipotle the other day when my co-worker Lori announced that she’d found my “soulmate” at the front of the line. Wondering how she’d identified this kindred spirit within minutes of entering the restaurant, I glanced at the register and spotted an albino paying for his lunch. Har-dee-har.

I’ve gotten used to the voice messaging a lot of people have on their phones now - the kind that allows you to erase your message and re-record if you realize you’ve droned on and on in a nonsensical manner, leaving the listener to conclude that you have the approximate intelligence of a fly.

So while I used to practically write a script and hold a dress rehearsal before leaving a message, now I usually just plunge in, taking comfort in the fact that I can always erase and start over. This afternoon I left a message for my neighbor that ended up being the world’s longest run-on sentence. Rolling my eyes at my own barely comrehensible wordiness, I pressed the pound key and waited for the kind voice telling me to press 3 to erase and re-record. But I got nothing but silence. Which is precisely what my neighbor will be longing for after listening to my ramblings.

My friend Dawna was complaining about her "white" skin while we were working out together Monday night. When I gave her a close-up look at my own glow-in-the-dark epidermis, she changed her description: "I'm Navajo white."

Since today happens to be a Good Hair Day, I'm planning to drop by our Security Office this afternoon to have a new photo taken for my namebadge. The old one is so bad I usually wear the badge backwards, with name and photo hidden from view ... which kind of defeats the purpose of the namebadge. (I should explain that everyone in my organization has to get a new badge within the next few weeks. I'm not simply demanding a new picture. You know, just in case I come across as vain or anything....)