The Skiers Are Ecstatic

This morning I attended my Rotary Club meeting, as I normally do on a Tuesday morning. I was amazed at how many of our club members were decked out in their ski wear, planning to drive to Whitewater right after the meeting to set "first tracks" into the 14 cm. of fresh snow that fell there overnight. Here in the downtown area we got enough snow that I had to shovel this morning (after breakfast), but not so much as other areas around us. It is very peaceful, but then I don't have to drive any distance for at least a couple of days.

Now that I have mentioned Rotary, I want to promote a project that our club has taken on, in support of Rotary's world-wide effort to eliminate polio once and for all. Many people may have forgotten about polio, now that it is gone from this part of the world, but it was not so many years ago that it was everywhere. Now it remains in only 4 countries of the world, and one of those countries (India) has just celebrated one year without a new case being reported! If this holds for 2 more years, then India will be declared polio-free, and there will be only 3 countries where the wild polio virus remains.

What is our club doing, and how can you help? We call the Program PEEC (Polio Eradication Exercise Challenge) and it involves a small contribution (we suggest $2) every time you exercise (we hope you are doing that 3 times a week). If you participate in this, by the end of April, you will have raised $100 for the cause. It's tax deductible, and you can find out more about it Here.

We Are This Close To Ending Polio

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Mastering The English Language

The English Plural

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England.

We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing,
Grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?
If you have a bunch of "odds and ends" and get rid of all but one of them,
What do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speakingEnglish

Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?

We ship by truck but send cargo by ship...
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway..
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down,
In which you fill in a form by filling it out,
And in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And in closing..........

If Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop.????

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Memory Clinic
1. Two elderly couples were enjoying friendly conversation when one of the men asked the other, "Fred, how was the memory clinic you went to last month?"
"Outstanding," Fred replied. "They taught us all the latest psychological techniques: visualization, association, etc. It was great."
"That's great! And what was the name of the clinic?"
Fred went blank. He thought and thought, but couldn't remember. Then a smile broke across his face and he asked, "What do you call that flower with the long stem and thorns?"
"You mean a rose?"
"Yes, that's it!"
Fred turned to his wife.
"Rose, what was the name of that memory clinic?"
*Thanks to Pastor Tim for this joke!*

So, that's it for another month, and so the year begins. If you're looking for more real estate related news, please check out my Business Blog. Recent posts there have included statistics for MLS (r) sales during 2011 and also some information about your recent property tax assessment.

Thanks for reading.

Lorne & Drew