Love the holidays. I love pretty much everything about them. I think the best parts of Christmas are just
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Holiday Montage
Love the holidays. I love pretty much everything about them. I think the best parts of Christmas are just
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Historic
We stayed at the historic Hay-Adams hotel with a dramatic view of the
White House as
a backdrop. The stands for VIP inauguration platforms were being
constructed for
President-Elect Obama. Wow.
When we were here for the Epicenter project, we just finished the
interview when the
Secret Service called from the White House saying they wanted us to
close our window.
Nice to know they were watching. This time, Daniel say a huge Marine
Helicopter lift off
from the White House Lawn. Good way to commute.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Taking my name in vain....
Of the multiple lame names games people play with 'Chip' (Potato etc) this explains one I haven't understood till now.
"Having a chip on one's shoulder" is a pretty weird way of saying that someone is spoiling for a fight or has, as we say these days, an attitude problem. I guess it's a tribute to the capacity of human beings to accept bizarre figures of speech in everyday conversation (Is there really "more than one way to skin a cat"?) that some of these phrases have lasted as long as they have.
And "having a chip on one's shoulder" has actually been around for quite a while.
The earliest printed instance of the phrase listed in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from the Long Island Telegraph newspaper in May, 1830. This citation also provides what is probably a good explanation of the origin of the phrase: "When two churlish boys were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one, and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril." (The "chip" was, in that age of wood stoves, most likely a chip of wood.) Evidently this belligerent ritual of childhood was sufficiently widespread at the time to become a grownup metaphor for combativeness, as it has been ever since.