Emiloo

2004-08-16

FYI, my ass

I had a lovely weekend. And it was about damned time. Granted, I still spent all of Sunday toiling away at my mom's house (which is really looking spiffy, if I do say so myself), but Saturday was a good, old-school, fun-timey day.

Seth and I slept in (well, I think I woke up at 8:30, but I'm a dork like that). We cleaned house a little bit, then we went to the Frist Center (Nashville's art museum) to see the Pre-Raphaelite exhibit before it left town. Nashville is the only North American city to get this exhibit, which was on loan from London's Tate Gallery. Perhaps the Tate messed up?

But I was excited, since I only know approximately 4 things about art, and three of them are about the Pre-Raphaelites. Of course, this led to my blathering on about pointless, random crap I dredged up from my murky memories of Victorian Lit class ("You can also tell this is the apartment of a kept woman because of the cheap, gaudy furniture!"), which I'm sure wasn't annoying or obnoxious at all. (Wouldn't it be amusing--or not--to work at a museum and listen to visitors try to extol their KNOWLEDGE about art all day?)

We also saw the Red Grooms exhibit, which was very fun and made me want to make 3-D cutouts of things. I'm sure they would be very impressive. Or sad.

We had lunch at the museum's caf�, and we ate outside in the courtyard. The weather was beautiful, downtown was very quiet, and I had a glass of wine. All of that equals a good day.

Later that night, we went to some friends' house to watch the very boring Titans preseason game and a smidgen of the Olympics (friend Sarah's astute commentary: "Where are all the Speedos? All the guys are in those bodysuits! Dammit!").

We checked out the new bar in our neighborhood, and much beer was consumed. I know I was pretty drunk, and I know that because I don't remember much of what happened except for commenting (rather loudly, which may or may not have embarrassed the husband), when two of our friends were talking about a girl at another table, "Why are you so interested in her? Because her ASS CRACK is showing? How ALLURING!" Ah, lowrise jeans. You've changed our world so much.

~~~~~Please disregard total lack of transition here.~~~~~

My husband and I find it highly amusing to communicate in annoying office lingo. We very much enjoy working the phrases like "champion that initiative" and "speak to that issue" into our conversation. This morning's email exchange, regarding whether I could go ahead with ordering our new dishwasher (EEEE! Praise the Baby Jesus. More about the blessed dishwasher later.):

Emily: Hey, are we go for the dishwasher roll-out?

Seth: We have groceries and gas in the cars, so I think that moving forward, the dishwasher initiative can go live ASAP.

We could really talk like that all day long, if it didn't mean that people would start to hate us. Of course, some people really do talk like that. And MEAN it. With all sincerity. Gross.

No offense to you if you happen to think memo speak is cool or whatever. But is "Shoot me an email" really any more effective than "Send me an email"? NO. It is not. And anything that you preface with "FYI" can probably be said without it. Why the hell else would you tell someone something if it weren't for the purpose of giving them information?

Of course, it never fails that people who speak this way are the same ones who refuse to use the word "me," believing that words like "I" and "myself" sound "more professional" or "formal." Hello, this is English, not Spanish. We don't have formal and informal pronouns. There are only correct and incorrect, and "Call Bill or I" is the latter, as is "Shoot myself an email." The hell?

Okay then. Dismounting from high horse now. Happy Monday, y'all.

emiloo at 11:53 a.m.