Just right

That title means nothing with regard to this post. The "Title" field auto-fills old post titles when I enter a letter (like lots of online forms do when you start to enter your name or address) so I decided to start from the beginning of the alphabet and keep trying letters until I got to the first one that didn't bring up any old titles. That means that you are reading the first ever An Expensive Habit post whose title begins with 'J'.

Hurray!!! Balloons!!! Champagne!!!

I don't have to work until Saturday night and boy does that feel great. (Disclaimer: I understand that it will hurt me financially). I felt so clear-headed today; I spent extra time learning material that will be next year's extension to what we learned in calc today and I think I may have even been more productive with my time. I like to know that I can dig more deeply than the minimum necessary to get an assignment done.

So I started to post the following to facebook as part of my impromptu sociolinguistic rant and, though I still may do so, I thought it only fair that I post first to this blog.

I had a brief exchange with a class member today in which I said "ambiguous" a few times when describing something related to the lesson. Specifically, I told him that the request to find a certain point in polar coordinates seemed ambiguous because there are two angles that have the same cosine (and two that have the same sine, of course). I must have had to say it a few times because he suggested that we use a different word: he wanted to say "inconsistent." The problem, I told him, is that there is no inconsistency. The mix-up that I called "ambiguous" happens every time for the same reason. That is not inconsistent. The point is that words have meanings.

In my next installment, I remind someone, casually and without malice, that punctuation also has meaning. Then I quickly add that I am no punctuating pro myself.

Does anyone want to start a campaign to reinstate the adverb? Maybe I should start with a facebook group.