Category: Uncategorized

My whiteboard, post Bring Your Child To Work Day.

Margie, Katherine, Kaylee

Mimi and the back door. A first for us.

Saw this out in the yard while riding the light rail, and thought I’d take a farewell picture.

Oodles and poodles.

Ate a donut or two myself. Just to be polite.

Slurp, slurp, slurp.

Filling most the lawn in front of the capitol building. Lots of "No We Can’t." More discussion anon. Time now for coffee.

I love Springtime.

Pet me! Scratch me! Love me!

Scott screeded (scrod?) a bit on Twitter about the term “out of pocket” (in its sense of being unavailable).  Which led me to look up some info about it.

There three meanings for the term.  The first refers to having to pay for things oneself, at a loss, rather than having some sort of expense account.  “That was an out-of-pocket expense.”  This meaning dates back to the 17th Century.

The second comes from African-American slang in the 1940s, referring to misbehavior or a bad situation.  It’s a variation on “out of the pocket,” a billiards reference.

The last one is the “absent” or “unable to be reached” version — “I’m on vacation nexst week, so I’ll be out of pocket — call Brad instead.”  This one dates back to the 1940s as well, per the OED, though it only became prevalent in the 70s/80s.

The derivation for this last meaning is unclear.  The suggestions are:

1. People who were traveling (and so unavailable) were costing a company money (from travel expenses and/or from unavailablility), so the first usage above spread into this meaning.  This seems like a reach to me.
2. Along the same lines as the above, when traveling (“out of pocket”) one is often paying for a lot of things “out of pocket.”
3. A quarterback “out of the pocket” is scrambling, unprotected by his blockers, and generally not in touch with others.
4. It’s probably a bad translation of some French phrase (!).

 I’m not particularly thrilled with any of these explanations.  My own “out of my hat” thought is that when something is in your pocket, you can reach out and grab it at any time.  If something (or someone) is “out of pocket,” they are out of your grasp, unavailable.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

• http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2007/05/out-of-pocket.html
• http://www.word-detective.com/012000.html
• http://www.word-detective.com/102603.html
• http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010522

Though I can’t complain about folks leaving excess sweets in the break room, as I do the same thing.

If I send a post in plaintext (which I would be most likely to do),
will it work? Will it post? Will it post looking okay? Can the ship
take much more, Captain?

And what if I do it in multiple paragraphs? Would I, could I, in a
blog? Could I, would I, with a frog?

Let’s stop rambling and try it.

We've replaced the post-by-email system that WP usually uses with Folge=
rs Crystals.=C2=A0 Let's see what happens.

Katherine got her brown belt (3rd kyu). Woot!

Mimi (inside) meets Indy (outside).

The old TV changeth …

Well, Margie seems to have no problems taking pictures of the new kitteh.

Assembling all of Katherine’s old puzzles to see which are complete (and can be given away) and which are missing pieces (and can be tossed).

From this morning, as Mimi and I kept each other company. .