Grammar Lesson of the Day

1. You cannot be sadden to hear of someone's passing. Sadden is a transitive verb infinitive meaning "to make sad." I sadden you, you sadden me, we sadden each other, it saddens us/me/you, they sadden us/me/you. If you insist on putting one of the forms of "to be" in front of it (am, is, are, was, were, etc) then you must change it to saddened. "I am saddened to hear of his passing." However, in the intransitive verb form of sadden, I can say "I sadden at the news of his passing." Note that I had to remove both the direct object and the "am" from the sentence.

2. "John, you really have picked my interest," OR, "John, you really have peaked my interest." In the first example, John has chosen your interest. That makes him quite a dictator. In the second example, the verb "peaked" is used in an unusual way because peaked is a verb that is commonly done by inanimate objects, like "the line on the charts peaked at 45." However, assuming that John really has peaked my interest, this means that he has caused my interest to reach its limit and now, it is waning. The correct word is piqued, from a French word meaning "to irritate, arouse, or stimulate."

3. I've said it before; I'll say it again. Your, you're, their, they're, there, to, too, and two all have specific times and places to be used. Your cat has wandered over to where you're sitting. Their cat has wandered over there, to where they're sitting. The two dogs have wandered to that place too.

4. Who and whom. Putting "whom" in a sentence does not automatically guarantee you will look smart. You have to put it in the right place or you just sound stupid and pretentious. "Who" is used as the subject of a sentence. A question is an interrogative sentence. So, "Who ate all the cake?" and "Whoever ate all the cake is in trouble" are both correct. "Whom" is used as an object of a verb or preposition. "I will award whomever finds the cake-eater," and "To whom shall I award this cake-eater-finder prize?" are correct. Just because you want to place who/whom in the latter part of a sentence does not mean it is correct to choose "whom." To say, "John discovered it was the dog whom ate the cake" is incorrect because "whom" is doing the action of the verb "ate." To make it simple, take "who" or "whom" out and replace it with "he" or "him." If "he" works, then use "who." If "him" works, then use "whom."

5. "Maybe" means "perhaps." "May be" means "might exist." "Apart" means "separated" and "a part" means "something incomplete that is joined to a whole." "A lot" means "much." "Alot" is a mythological creature that looks like a cross between a yak, a bear and a pug.

I think that's all for now.

Feeling brave

Normally, I write personal stuff here in my blog, because only my closest friends have access to it. But tonight I'm feeling a little braver and decided to open this up to my 300+ friends and acquaintances on Facebook, as well as blogger. I am interested to know what everyone thinks of this.

What is a soul mate? Wikipedia says a soulmate is "a person with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, love, intimacy, sexuality, spirituality, and/or compatibility." The article goes on to discuss the ancient Greek myth that all humans were once constructed of two faces, four arms, and four legs. When they became too powerful, the gods split them in half, becoming one face, two arms, and two legs each. These new creatures ran around, perpetually looking for their other half.

I recently read about an ancient Native American belief about soul mates, which is the inspiration for this post. It was believed that every person has a soul mate. However, not every person is destined to meet that soul mate. Sometimes, a person will meet their soul mate, but it will be at the wrong time. For instance, if a person meets their soul mate when the two are still children, they will not comprehend the significance of what has happened. Or, if a person meets their soul mate after they are married to another person. According to this belief, only a small amount of very lucky people will actually marry their soul mate.

Some say there is no such thing as luck, that things are God-ordained or predestined or dictated by karma. I read a study once that suggested that those who feel "lucky" were actually more acutely aware of their surroundings than those who would describe themselves as "unlucky." I think that in some ways this ties into the Native American belief about soul mates. If you are "lucky" you are more aware of your relationships and are more capable of correctly identifying a soul mate.

But it also raises questions. If you believe you've met your soul mate, but are not capable of spending your life with that person, what then? Do you wait for the right time? What if the right time has already passed? If only a small percentage of people ever end up marrying their soul mate, what is the purpose of a soul mate? Why do they exist if so many of them never find completion? Does this mean that the Native Americans were wrong and that perhaps not everyone has a soul mate?

I have so many questions about things like this these days.

Not all here...

When I was 17, a boy called me up on the phone to chat. We chatted for four hours and as it turns out, he was trying the entire time to work up the nerve to ask me out. I asked him for some time to sort out my feelings because (I didn't tell him this part) I honestly had not expected that anyone could possibly develop feelings for me. It had not occurred to me that any number of the guys in my life could have shared his feelings, but not worked up the courage to ask me out.

The next day, I was supposed to get some schoolwork done, but could not. My focus was on one thing the entire day, and as I went through my day, my stomach did flip flops with the intensity, excitement, and nervousness of the whole thing, specifically, the unknown of: what was I going to tell him?

With the exception of a few adrenaline-filled seconds here and there over the years (roller coasters, NJ drivers, cats appearing out of the dark in a place they don't belong), I have not felt that feeling in the eight years since that first boy asked me out.

Tonight, I was overwhelmed for more than an hour by that very butterfly flip-flop feeling. This was followed by an internal monologue that translated everything my mother said to me into, "She's calling you (fill in blank: fat, plain, ugly, tacky, slutty) and cutting you down."

This was followed by an extreme allergic reaction to who knows what which resulted in an actual commercial medicine (no herbals), which so far has not cleared me up, its only made me loopy enough to contemplate mixing meds by taking something stronger.

I am having a draining day-evening-early morning, I suppose. In deep ethereal thought, I wonder exactly what Rod Stewart meant when he sang, "If I gave you time to change my mind I´d try to leave all the past behind Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried Still I look to find a reason to believe // Someone like you makes it easy to live without somebody else Someone like you makes it hard to give never think about myself..." It seems it is a good thing the person lied. Odd.

Video Games

My brother's latest thing is Guitar Hero World Tour, which is compatible with all the other Guitar Heroes as well as Rock Band.

Dad's response to this was: "And I thought we got through the teenage years without bringing a drum set into the house."

Mom came into the room, looked at the screen, and made a comment about the video game characters' clothing and hairstyle. Dan replied, "All bands have to dress funny, its how they stand out. Name one major band that really made it without absurd costuming."

I was on the drums at the time, and without missing a beat, I said, "Kiss!"

Typo

On Monday, my family went out to eat at the Valley View Pub, a local favorite. It seems the menu was also made by locals. In the "Entree" section, we discovered we could get a Chicken Franchise for $13.99. We could not decide whether Chik-fil-A or KFC would be the better choice.

Locked out

A friend of mine posted a story on his blog about locking the keys in the car. It was well timed, because last Friday, I locked myself out of the car. I clipped my keys to my purse, got out, locked the door and swung it shut. As I turned and the door was moving I had this funny sensation that my keys were not actually clipped to my purse. It was a "Nooooooooo-slam!" moment and the keys were on the seat inside the car. So, I got a screwdriver from my uncle's workbench and took off the front license plate, but the spare key was not there. So I went to the back plate, thinking maybe someone had moved it to there but the screws were rusted on. After a phone call for some muscular assistance and a lot of WD-40, we finally pried the plate up enough to see that there was no key under it. Apparently, there is a spare key to my car on everybody else's keyring (Mom, Dad, and brother) but not under my license plate. Woohoo.