Language usage, and mis-usage, concerns me, probably inordinately so. This is the legacy of having a mother who was an English major in college, and an assortment of domineering, but extremely effective, English teachers in high school. There are the traditional mistakes – less vs. fewer, its and it’s, affect vs. effect, etc. I’m sure I’ve made my share of errors (and will continue to end sentences with prepositions and use sentence fragments), mispronunciations, and other grammatical manglings. But today I was reading a business document and came across a statement to the effect that the situation was further “exasperated” due to some irksome circumstances. Now, I’m sure that the situation, if it indeed was a human being, would have been thoroughly exasperated, but in this case I believe that the situation was actually exacerbated.

My only female first cousin is 9 years younger than I am. I have a distinct memory of the first time I saw her, when she was only a few days old (probably on February 22nd, back when we celebrated Presidential birthdays on their original dates) and her eyes were still that distinct shade of baby gray. She turns 38 today. This makes me feel older than my own age does. I hate to think about the reaction I’ll have when she turns 40.