Tuesday, August 05, 2008

I hate carpeting

Not the actual material, mind you, because it dampens sounds, is soft under foot, and gives off that cozy sensation. Carpeting: v. the act of laying or placing carpet in a room or space.

In the last week the crew I have managed has turned one of the experimental galleries at Arlington Arts Center into a giant black box. Today we took one step closer to completion by laying black carpet. It looks gorgeous, for the most part, and it will look better once vacuumed. Too bad we'll just heap a ton of dirt on top of it on Wednesday or Thursday (literally... one ton of fresh top soil).

In other news, the final touches have been put on the series of 64 homophones and 64 homonyms. For a time, I had a few of my homophones and homonyms mixed up. Granted, most homonyms are homophones by their/there very/vary nature.

Homonyms - words that are spelled alike but have different meanings.
Think pike: It is either a pole with a pointy end, or a fish up in Canada

Homophones - words that sound alike but may be spelled differently.
read and reed. Or read and red.

Until I started working on this project there were some words I was not aware existed, let alone knew they were homonyms or homophones. For instance... I think I was unaware of the word mete. I may have heard someone say "meted out," which would simply be "dividing," but I don't say it; it is not in my lexicon. Outta sight, outta mind... or something like that. For the sake of argument, let's say I didn't know it.

Mete: v. to allot.
Mete: n. boundary.

Where I may or may not have known the first definition (archaic, according to Websters), I certainly didn't know the second. Or, maybe I didn't think I knew it. For all I know, I thought it was meet, which is a verb. If fishing in The Boundary Waters, are they located where Ontario meets (joins) Minnesota, or where Ontario metes Minnesota? Granted, if I am in that situation I'm thinking about catching meat to pair with wild rice.

Seldom is it that this stuff keeps me up at nights (post will be around 1:00 am; this is an exception). But, occasionally I get that student paper where their/there is confused, and I'm haunted into the wee hours/ours wishing I had the hair/hare to pull out.

I'm a dork.

1 comment:

Pave the Whales said...

I too am a dork. Which is why I will tell you at 1:43 in the morning that "read" and "read" are heteronyms.