Shopping with friends this weekend, trying to find a gift for my secretary for Administrative Professionals’ Day. As she is truly an incredible woman who has saved my bacon on more than one occasion, I wanted to find a great gift for her. This is, of course, impossible, because I am not generally a creative person.
But in a certain store, I found some things I thought she might like. As he rang them up, the clerk said that they had a sale on a certain clock, which he pointed out. It happened to be a clock that my secretary had bought for me for my birthday last year. Not only does it tell time, it has a thermometer as well. In fact, during the winter, when the heat broke in my office, that clock was Exhibit A in my discussions with the building’s maintenance personnel. (“See? It’s now 3:00 in the afternoon and the temperature has finally risen to a balmy sixty point two degrees!”)
So as the clerk extolled the virtues of the clock (which he would sell to us for only twelve dollars!), I turned to my friend and said, “It really is an excellent clock.”
But of course, because I am an idiot, I didn’t actually say “clock.” I left out one critical letter. Then turned bright red and could not met anyone’s eyes until after we left the shop.
Yeah, he was hot. For a kid half my age. Who it would be all Mary Kay LeTourneau of me to go for. So if by “made his day” you mean “gave him nightmares about old ladies chasing him talking about cllllocks,” you’re probably right.
At work we were discussing what we would do if we won the Lotto, and my co-worker happily declared “I would open a cathouse!”. It took her a few tries to collect herself and explain “A feline-animal shelter”
Genesis 15:17 describes a vision to Abram in which a smoking “oven” appears. The King James Version identifies it as a furnace while the New International Version translates the word as firepot. Jeremiah 36: 22 - 23 describes a scene in which a fire is burning near the throne. The place where the fire is burning is translated as hearth in the King James Version and as firepot in the New International Version. Again, in Zechariah, 12:6, the KJV identifies a hearth while the NIV mentions a firepot. However, the New American Bible from which Catholic readings are selected in the U.S., the word is translated in each of those passages as brazier. Whenever an inexperienced reader is assigned that passage, we try to be sure that they know the meaning and pronunciation of the word before they proclaim the reading.
(We don’t always succeed in being sure they get it right.)
My mother thoughtfully bought me this book for Christmas after I announced I finally finished the LOTR trilogy for the first time. She made the book clerk blush when she gave him the title of the book she was looking for.
