Bimonthly and biweekly are the two most useless words in the English language. Webster defines bimonthly as: “1) occurring every two months; 2) occurring twice a month.” I’m not kidding. Those are two completely different meanings for the exact same word. How stupid is that? Why in the world do we allow such nonsense to exist? In its definition of the prefix “bi,” Webster has this to say:

Many people are puzzled about bimonthly and biweekly, which are often ambiguous because they are formed from both senses 1b and 2b of bi-. This ambiguity has been in existence for nearly a century and a half and cannot be eliminated by the dictionary. The chief difficulty is that many users of these words assume that others know exactly what they mean, and they do not bother to make their context clear. So if you need bimonthly or biweekly, you should leave some clues in your context to the sense of bi- you mean. And if you need the meaning “twice a,” you can substitute semi- for bi-. Biannual and biennial are usually differentiated.

Like they said, semimonthly is defined as twice a month, so that answers my problem. But I vote for eliminating bimonthly and biweekly from the English language because they are useless.

Ambition

Originally uploaded by Brian and Julie.

My brother Brian had a nice touch-up of the last photo I posted.

American Laziness

Originally uploaded by kevinandbrea.

One of the things that bothers me more than anything else is carts in the Wal-Mart parking lot. These carts were right next to the cart return area. It’s less than ten feet away from being put back into the place it goes. It would take less than fifteen seconds to walk there and back. I guess that’s just asking too much of some people.

I think this reflects a lot about where we are as a country. First, it shows how lazy we are. People wonder why some countries in Asia are way ahead of us in technology and education. I think it has a lot to do with how lazy we’ve become. Another thing it shows is why there are so many kids with discipline problems. If kids see their parents not taking responsibility for their own actions, then why should they? It’s a common thing today (as it has been in many cultures) to pass responsibility on to someone else (“they have an employee whose job is to pick up the carts”) for our own actions.

Walk the extra few feet and put the carts away.

Here’s an image I created from a picture. I tried to make it look like a line art drawing.

There’s an empty feeling inside me today. After spending nearly eight weeks at our house, Abby and Carter’s three little puppies have all found new homes. I’m really happy about the people who ended up with them. They seem like good people who will take really good care of them. It’s just really hard when you’ve spent two months of your life raising the pups, just to let them go. It happened really quickly, too. I didn’t expect for any of them to sell on the first day we had them advertised in the paper, but that’s what happened. I don’t think I really was prepared to see them go so quickly. I thought I’d have a little more time with them. But the pictures were what sold them, just like Brea said they would.

We haven’t decided if we’re going to let Abby have any more. She did great and we had no problems with their health. It’s just really hard letting go . . .

I don’t know what my deal is, but I win stuff. I couldn’t be one of those people who win something on the radio and then say “this never happens to me.” It started early on in life. The first thing I remember winning was a case of beer at a White Sox game when I was about four years old (they gave me Coca-Cola instead). A couple years later I won a Plano tackle box at a pancake breakfast. I’ve won CDs from a Christian book store, concert tickets on the radio (more than once), and dinner with tickets to the Sound of Music sing-along from KLTY.

I was at the National Religious Broadcasters convention the other day and I mentioned to Rodney that I was used to winning stuff. In fact, I was surprised that it had been so long since I had won anything. Yesterday I got a phone call to let me know that I had won an NEC 17″ LCD monitor from Ford Audio. Very nice. Now if I could just win a jacket from the Mavericks game I’d be set.