Pete's Ancient and rarely updated
D-land Journal

Goodbye, David

Journal Entry entered: 2004-06-08 - 2:24 p.m.

Well, some sad news today. Dad told me David had been in at-home hospice care since late last week, so I knew it was coming, but now it's here and I feel low.

David was a friend of the family, dad told me that he had always considered David like something of an older brother. Dad does have an older brother, but they never had any form of relationship and still don't (my aunt passed away three years ago and dad just found out at Christmas of this past year, by accident... Uncle Jerry never thought to let dad know).

Anyway, dad worked at the bookstore on 5th and Wisconsin when I was a kid. It was a family business and David made most of his employees and their familys feel like family. David's mother, Reva, was sweet and she loved when mom would bring us to pick up dad at the end of the work day cause she thought we were great kids. Little did she know...

Reva is still alive today, still full of energy and enthusiasm, despite having lost most of her sight through age. Audio books are a gods send for avid readers whose eyes give out.

My very first, under-the-table job as a kid was cleaning the bookstore shelves (remove books, pledge, wipe, replace books) for $3/hour. Woo! Big money for a 14 year old!

I recall going out to David's land, when he bought some rural property, and helping clear and build and generally getting out and doing stuff outside on weekends sometimes.

I remember David's wedding to Carol, who had worked at the store for a while if memory serves. Lovely wedding. And Carol is a sweet woman, always friendly and pleasant.

David was always happy to see me when I'd bump into him at one of the stores. We'd chat, family friends, catching up.

Hmm... there appears to be something in my eye, it's watering. How odd.

I hadn't seen him much over the last few years, but I'll miss him.

One amusing little anecdote: when i first moved back to WI I needed to find work and so I applied with Schwartz Booksellers, figuring I had a good chance of getting in. The chain of stores is bigger, with many administrative people, so the guy I was to interview with, name of Brian, I think, didn't know me from a stranger on the street. But as we walked back for the interview we bumped into David, who chatted with me a bit. "So! Looking for work, huh? At the Brookfield store? Excellent! I hope you bust your buns better than your dad! He'd sit for hours in a window to get it 'Just perfect, aesthetically'! You're not an art major like him, are you? No? Fine, you'll do fine!"

Then David headed off and Brian continued toward his office asking how I knew David... ("Oh, since I was so small that I can't remember not knowing...") when we bumped into Reva Schwartz. She hauled me off to her office and chatted with me for ten minutes about this and that. Then: "Oh! I see Brian needs to interview you before you can be hired. Well, I'll see you whenever I'm at Brookfield!"

We finally got to Brian's office. He sat down, looked at me... "There's really no point to interviewing you at this point, is there? Welcome to Schwartz'!"

Sometimes connections are a nice thing to have! :-D

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Warren's list of words that monkeys use to annoy him by misspelling, misusing, or mispronouncing them (the list will most assuredly grow)

Misspellings

COMING (typically mispelled "comming")
TONGUE (typically mispelled "tounge")

Confused spellings

HERE vs. HEAR (the former is a place word; the latter is what you do when a sound hits your ear)
IT'S vs. ITS (the former is a contracted form of IT IS; the latter is a possessive form of the impersonal pronoun IT)
LOSING vs. LOOSING (the former is what you are doing if you are not winning; the latter is what you are doing when you let the lions out of the lion pen at the zoo, you are "loosing them" or "setting them loose").
POUR vs. PORE vs. POOR (the first is what you do to get milk from the carton into the glass; the second is a small opening in a surface, such as those in your skin that sweat comes out of (... don't write poetry if you don't know your English, you just look sad). The third, a state of having little or no money, is rarely confused with the other two).
ROGUE vs. ROUGE (The former is a person who might also be described as a rascal, scoundrel or cad; the latter is make-up that one uses to add a bit of a blush to one's cheeks.)
THEY'RE vs. THEIR vs. THERE (the first is a contraction of THEY ARE; the next is a possessive form of THEY; the last denotes place or location)
TO vs. TOO vs. TWO (the first is a function word indicating movement, direction, proximity, intention, addition: "I'm going to the store" or "Add this to the pile" or "How close is the house to the road"; the second one sort of adds quantity, often of the excessive sort, to a concept: "Too many reptiles" or "I'm coming, too"; the last represents the number 2.)
WHERE vs. WEAR vs. -WARE vs. WERE- (the first references place or location; the second is either a verb, noun, or suffix relating to clothing or other adornments [example: wearing footwear] OR a noun or verb relating to the effect of exposure or useage or corrosion [wear and tear]; the third is a suffix that indicates that something is a class of some sort [hardware, software, flatware, wetware]; the fourth is a prefix used to attach the disease of Lycanthropy to a person or animal, i.e: werewolf, wererat, weretiger. Finally, although pronounced differently, "WERE" is also a past tense of are or to be.)
YOU'RE vs. YOUR vs. YORE (the former is a contraction of YOU ARE, the middle is a possessive form of YOU, and the latter is a reference to another, undefined era in the past: "Days of yore.)

Mispronunciations

ASK [ask'] ("axe" is something used for chopping wood or the action of chopping something with an axe).
CAN [kahn] (it should not be pronounced as [kehn]). Thanks, Ken.
CAVALRY [kah'-val-ree] ("Calvary" is a mountain that is prominant {pun intended} in the Bible, not a military unit that rides on horses... or these days on tanks and Hum-Vees).
DONDER [don'-der] ("Donner" was the name of a party of travellers that got stuck in the mountains and ate each other, not the name of one of Santa's eight little reindeer).
ESCAPE [es-kayp'] ("excape" simply sounds dumb).
ESPRESSO [es-pres'-oh] (it is NOT "eXpresso," pinheads. Thanks, Mischief.
HUNDRED [hun'-dred] (it's not "hun'-erd" nor "hun'-red"). Thanks, Rachel.
INSURANCE [in-sure'-ense] (it is NOT "in'-sure-ense"! In English, the second to last syllable is the one that gets the emphasis except when asking a question, when the LAST syllable is accented... never the third to last!!!)
JEWELRY [jew'-el-ree] (it's not "joo-lah-ree" or "joo-luh-ree", stoner!) Thanks, again Rachel.
LIBRARY [lie-brayr'-ee] (there's no such thing as a "lie-berry", people!)
NUCLEAR [new-klee'-er] ("nuke-yuh-ler" is incorrect, Homer! Same goes for you, Dubya!!!)
OFTEN [aw'-fen] (the pretentious will insist on saying "awf'-Ten" but that is an archaic form and no more appropriate than saying "thee" and "thou" in colloquial English)
RIPON [rih'-pin] (so very many people pronounce this "rih-pon' " or "ripe'-on" that it gets on the nerves of anyone who has ever lived or gone to school there! Thanks Rachel K.
VIOLA [vi-o'-la] (the musical instrument is pronounced "vee-ola" but the flower and the woman's name is pronounced with an "eye", not an "ee")Thanks, Viola.

Pete's Ancient and rarely updatedD-land Journal

Pete's Ancient and rarely updated
D-land Journal