Wednesday randoms.

Well, I’m back in England, where there is significantly less sunshine. Here are a few Wednesday randoms:

 

The highs here have been around 45 (7ish degrees C), and I’ve been wearing tights and scarves for about two months now. But when I got off the plane in Dallas, there was sunshine galore, and at 85 degrees (30ish degrees C) I instantly realized I was wearing too many clothes for Texas.  

 

The UK changes their clocks back a week earlier than the US. And since I was in the US a week after the time changed, I got to fall back twice this year. Which is fine with me – I can use all the extra time/sleep I can get.

 

With the time change, the sun sets earlier these days. Pretty standard, right? Except here, because we’re so far north, that means that by 4:30pm, the sun is gone. It’s really sad having so little daylight.

I missed out on being in the States for the presidential election by one day. Not that I was particularly heartbroken by this (I’d already voted absentee). Watching even an hour of election coverage at the airport was enough to make me want to run away from all things political.

 

You know how we say “what’s-her-name” when we can’t remember a name? Well here, a lot of people just say “thingy.” As in, “I was just talking to thingy.” It’s not my favorite bit of terminology.

 

Great news! I went to Asda the other day in search of tea, and guess what I found. Cocoa. HERSHEY’S cocoa. I haven’t seen it anywhere else in this country, so that made my day.

  

Squiggly red lines.

As what some may call an overly grammar-conscious individual, I pride myself on my proofreading skills. I'm the kind of person who uses punctuation in text messages, and I never send an email without rereading it. So imagine my horror when I realiz(s)ed that, upon arriving in Britain, pretty much everything I'd ever written instantly became littered with spelling errors.

And it's all because British people spell things wrong weird. 

It really does make a difference.

 Consider, for example, the following words I had to change in a document, simply because it was drafted in our DC office, and we needed a UK version. The American spelling is listed first:

program v. programme

center v. centre

analyze v. analyse

color v. colour

revitalizing v. revitalising

pediatric v. paediatric

counseling v. counselling

mobilized v. mobilised

dispatched v. despatched

maximizes v. maximises

organizational v. organisational

You may have noticed that Brits don't really care for the letter 'z', but they are quite happy to add extra letters and move others around, often in blatant disregard of phonetics.

After a year here, most of which has been spent writing academic papers, I've grown accustomed to these silly spellings. Perhaps too accustomed, as I'll occasionally accidentally use a British spelling when writing to an American friend. (Incidentally, this always makes me feel like a bit of a traitor.) But I typically try to adjust my spelling based on who will be reading it. Kind of like how I talk football with my housemates, but soccer with my friends from home.

Anyway, many of these American spellings are widely accepted, even if they're not preferred. As I'm writing this with a UK spellcheck, the words center,  analyze, color, pediatric, and counseling all have squiggly red lines below them. However, the others aren't flagged as incorrect. 

This can be problematic, because sometimes when I'm editing things for work, I won't catch them -- either out of habit or ignorance (my untrained American eyes refuse to believe that 'program' is missing some letters.) -- and neither will spell check. 

And then I get made fun of.

But not anywhere near as much as the first time my coworkers heard me say the word, "y'all." That was a whole nother level of hilarity, my friends.

Happy Monday, and may your computer's spell check be ever more zealous than mine.

 

I haven't been sick, I've been ill. (And why that distinction matters.)

I've got a cold.

This is pretty unusual, as my immune system is typically pretty rockin. (Thanks for sending me to preschool and exposing me to germs at a young age, mom!) But alas, it's failed me this week.

"I'm sniffling and I’m not really awake…and I'm taking Echinacea and vitamin C, and sleeping practically twenty-four hours a day.

And I have a temperature. And I think I’m contagious..."

Which brings me to an important point: Here in the UK, there's a difference between "sick" and "ill."

Back home, they're pretty much interchangeable. Actually, I'd say we use the term "sick" more often than "ill." It doesn't matter if you had the flu, bronchitis, or a sinus infection. When someone asks why you missed work or practice or that birthday party, you respond with, "I was sick."

But you don't want to to do that here. Because here, to be sick means to throw up. So if you say you were sick yesterday, people will interpret that as something a little more dramatic than just a case of the sniffles. What you want to say is "ill." 

So don't worry, the past few days I haven't been sick. I've just been ill.

But I'm making the most of it. Since I don't exactly feel like going anywhere at the moment, I've gotten some writing done, watched a couple of feel good movies, and have busted out my crayons and gotten my craft on (one of the perks of working with kids).

Plus, I'm pretty sure I've perfected the art of shooting crumpled tissues from my bed to the bin.

Silver lining.