I had someone tell me yesterday that there was another
mistake in CDDD.
The first one was discovered last weekend by my father-in-law,
who found a tiny but nonetheless unacceptable error in one line, where the word
‘as’ had been accidentally written as ‘at’. It was more than likely the product
of my brain reading ahead of itself and filling in the letters of words before
my eyes scanned the word for spelling issues. It is a common problem for people
who go over the same piece of writing twenty or thirty times.
But it was that K missed it which was more kerfuffling
(spellchecker does not accept the gerund of kerfuffle. Go figure). I can
understand that she would be personally a tad miffed at this, because she takes
great pride in her title as Guarantor of the Goodness of Grammar. She is a
sharp cookie (where does that phrase come from? Did someone bake a cookie with
glass or razor blades to give it an edge?) who takes great pride in knowing her
prefixes from suffixes.
So to be told that there was a SECOND mistake was, well, a
whole miffing kerfuffle of hubbubing proportions.
I may be embellishing this a tad.
The proportions were not ‘hubbubing.’
But the kerfuffle was definitely miffing.
In any case, it all had boiled down to the proper usage of
the word ‘aflutter.’
Those of you expecting me to put the pages of text in
question better go accidentally defrost a Baked Alaska.
Or better yet, purchase a copy of The Cicada and the Deep,Deep Dark written by yours truly and illustrated by the lovely Colette Lilley
from your favourite Amazon website. Or if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you
can borrow a copy.
See, always looking to enthusiastically promote my book to
the three people who read this blog (and one of them is K, so that makes it two
readers…possibly).
Back to the flutter.
The reader in question, Alisha*
‘Who is Alisha?!’ asked K with a hint of indignation only
slightly less noticeable than lavender essence on meringue. (How many Great
British Bake-off references can I cram into one blog entry?)
She is a gaming cognoscenti-in-training and friend who
attends board game sessions at the Scythe and Teacup on some evenings.
A girl?!
In a geeky gaming café?!
Was she blind?!
I am again, perhaps going a bit over the top.
While they are not as prominent as the delightful teenage lads
who yell YU-GI-OOOOOOH! From the top of their lungs, there is a small but fiercely dedicated cadre of gaming ladies at the Scythe.
And thank goodness for that.
But I digress.
I seem to have gone somewhat off tangent there.
It may have had something to do with the fact that one of my
co-workers is wearing what I can only describe as a ‘see through chain mail styled shirt’. I don’t
know why, for the sake of me, a grown adult would wear something like that in
the northern latitudes (or to work in a library, as opposed to, say, clubbing). If he thinks it looks macho, um, well, it kind of looks
like he is trying very hard to imitate Vernon Wells in Commando or Weird Science
…but not quiet cutting the 1980's bad guy grade. Lets just say I am thankful there are two large computer screens separating my view from his desk.
And that is why I do not wear see through shirts. ;-P
At least my co-worker is thankfully not wearing Vernon's 'Arse-less Chaps' from Mad Max 2:
Goodness me!
Anyways, back to the issue of the flutter…for the second
time.
The Online Dictionary defines Aflutter as such:
Clearly there is room for interpretation, but the first
definition is the one I am holding firmly by. So I shall stick to my literary
guns and say it is not a misuse of the word. ;-)
It is ridiculously warm in the office right now. I so
dislike the fact that the English do not believe in Air Conditioning.
Perhaps Global Warming may provide the incentive to install
these beauties in offices so they do not feel like saunas…
Right, off to edit the work K and I talked about early in
the week while listening to the Billboard Top 30 for last month!
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