Super long day at work...so of course the oven blows, the CO2 Alarm goes off and the kids are in a state.
It's time for a hobo beer!
It's time for a hobo beer!
Do Diablo ones count?
Several appliance sales people possibly if my shopping goes poorly this afternoon 
CO alarm sorry. My mum corrected me.
Cajungal
Staff member
The Language Arts teacher in me has cringed a lot this week.
1) I was working at a cafe and heard two women just having a nice bitching session. They were talking about people leaving their public schools for charter schools. The way they chose to describe the situation? "They're leaving the schools in drones." Surely, Seej, you meant to type droves. No. Drones.
2) The ladies who use my classroom for daycare after school do not know how to read a story. They read Goodnight Moon like a flight attendant reads the safety instructions. It's so depressing, considering most of them want to be elementary school teachers. Please don't keep being boring.
1) I was working at a cafe and heard two women just having a nice bitching session. They were talking about people leaving their public schools for charter schools. The way they chose to describe the situation? "They're leaving the schools in drones." Surely, Seej, you meant to type droves. No. Drones.
2) The ladies who use my classroom for daycare after school do not know how to read a story. They read Goodnight Moon like a flight attendant reads the safety instructions. It's so depressing, considering most of them want to be elementary school teachers. Please don't keep being boring.
They made me read the text off my service award at work when it was presented to me (5yrs service, nothing amazing). Someone asked me if I was making up what I was saying as I went along, and I had to explain that no, I'm reading it off this piece of paper, just like everyone else. Except, apparently not like everyone else.
--Patrick
1) My best friend teaches preschool. Her grammar is hideous. She uses "I seen..." on a regular basis. It makes me wonder how she got a degree in early childhood education.
2) I've learned a lot of people don't know how to read with feeling. They drone on and on in an almost monotone or sound like they just want to get through it as quickly as possible. I'm animated when I speak anyway, so when I read to my kids out loud I'm pretty damn entertaining. I even do voices for some the characters (I'm always Poquito Tito, the smallest of the small ones, in any Skippyjon Jones book that's being read - even if I'm not the one reading it!).
I really hate when I forget to take my medicine. I have such a headache with neck and TMJ pain right now that I want to forget I exist until tomorrow morning.
I am dreadful at sight-reading. If I've prepared a speech, I can go through and glance at it to refresh myself while giving it with inflection, but if I'm just handed a book or something to read, there's a lot of stammering and monotone.
It's a skill that takes practice. When I read silently, I have a rhythm and speed that I prefer, which I find to be the most efficient for processing and absorbing information. When I have to read aloud, that rhythm is lost. So I can't process what I'm reading as efficiently, which means I can't put the pauses and inflections where they should go.
What I tend to do now is read out loud in sentences. I'll read a sentence, process it, absorb it, and then recite it from memory. Or, if the sentence is too long, then I read in clauses or short snippets of text. While I'm reciting one sentence, I'm also reading, processing, and absorbing the next one. This seems to work better for more natural reading, though it also requires my brain to do some multitasking.
This "buffering" does make it easier to keep the flow natural.
Another thing that helps (for me at least) is to read as though I was describing a story to someone else, because really that's exactly what I'm doing. Maybe it's all that choral/phrasing training? Dunno. Just remember that the words are all black and white, it's the style/character/inflection you add, the how you read that does the coloring between the lines.
--Patrick
I'm exactly the opposite. I'm so nervous when I have to give a speech that I can't remember my own name. I sound out of breath, get tongue-tied, and rush through it. It sounds awful. If I'm given something to read off the cuff my delivery is a million times better.
Four hours in the emergency room yesterday ended with, "Welp, you're not having a heart attack."
"So, what is wrong with me then?"
"We don't know. You'll need to go see you're doctor."
I get that this is the extent of their job, it's just hard knowing I wasted half a day and glob knows how much money for essentially no real information beyond "probably won't die in the next 24 hours, but of course we can never be sure".
"So, what is wrong with me then?"
"We don't know. You'll need to go see you're doctor."
I get that this is the extent of their job, it's just hard knowing I wasted half a day and glob knows how much money for essentially no real information beyond "probably won't die in the next 24 hours, but of course we can never be sure".
I can't do this; try as I might, I get confused -saying one thing while preparing/reading the next thing makes me muddle the sentences together. I have no problem reading things with cadence and inflection, I read all the time, and 'hear' sarcasm, glee, rage... But the moment I'm trying to speak while reading it directly and it all goes out the window. I read books I'm going to give to my niece first, so when I read them with her, I can be ready to give them their due (and undoubtedly make listening to me less unbearable).
I wonder if that's a brain thing. For instance, I can do the speech jammer thing without too much trouble, where I repeat exactly what's being said (such as by a news anchor) almost immediately after it's being said (it's a gift*(?)). However, when I do this, I have no real comprehension about what I'm saying, and I wonder if it's this mental insulation/isolation that allows me to do this feat without tripping up.
--Patrick
*It's really handy when I'm the only one that has an earphone/telephone, for instance...I can (re)broadcast what's being said so everyone can hear what's going on with the other side of the conversation.
Oh, I enjoy it, as long as it's something I've prepared.
GasBandit
Staff member
I've been reading novels out loud to someone else, "doing the voices" for all the different characters on the fly, with accents, for about 15 years for at least 2 hours a day. More on weekends.
Well, I had been. Not so much any more.
Have you ever downloaded one of those speech jamming apps? It plays what you're saying at a delay (say half a second to a second), supposedly making it very difficult to talk, but I find this doesn't impact my ability to speak. It's the opposite of what you're talking about, though, in this case you're generating speech and having it repeated back to you, vs repeating speech from another source. Interesting.
Cajungal
Staff member
Sister in law, you chose this. You were the one who insisted on another kid. I'm not going to drop everything at 5 in the morning or during my lunch break to talk to you about how hard it is to be a mom. I have my own problems and responsibilities, even if they didn't come out of my vagina.
I wish I had a vagina just so I could say this.
That's how you tell us you're steinman's alt?
I'm going to hell, I realise, but I had the mental image of you trying to stuff a child into a vagina.
In many ways, not far from the truth. Just very small, tadpole shaped children - by the millions.
I mean, I understood, it's just.. I envisioned you, exasperated with a crying toddler, just... shoving him back up there. "BET YOU WANT TO EAT YOUR PEAS NOW, DON'T YOU?!"
Oh I got it, I'm trying to save you from hell, that's all.