I am such a language snob. I could hardly keep a grimace off my face today when a co-worker voiced the thought that "we don't hardly need to" do something or other. And tonight while listening to NPR news, I was aghast as one of the news readers told us that a certain troop movement in Iraq was "eminent".

I am very conscious of women in my company watching me, taking note of how I do my job, seeing how I react to various situations. I'm not entirely comfortable with this level of scrutiny, having always been happier in the observer role. It makes me aware of every move - the management methods I use (more common sense than anything else), the comments I make (whether on business topics or not). It always stuns me when someone comes up to me and tells me they remember some throw-away line I used once a long time ago, something that even I do not recall. If I could make the same kind of money being a programmer, I'd gladly go back to that role again. Although, come to think of it, I wasn't very good at that and thought maybe there was more hope for me in a management role.

Books: What Was She Thinking [Notes on a Scandal], by Zoe Heller. A forty-two year old teacher has an affair with her fifteen year old student. The real story is about the narrator, a fellow teacher, and her decidedly odd obsession with the woman in question. I don't usually pay much attention to the cover art on books, but this one is particularly evocative: a bruised cherry sitting on top of a green apple.