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It's all a plot, really

My musing on the Reesey cup issue did not end with the last post. Oh, no, Reader. All language comes from somewhere and inquiring minds want to know exactly where that is.

So I bought a bag of mini Reesey cups and put them up by the white board at work. On the board I drew a little table of different pronunciations and started filling it in with my sample set. I got a few more data points, but everyone was too weirded out to fill in their data (though that didn't stop them getting into the candy). At some point during the day our trainer erased the chart and that was it for my linguistics survey.

The non-statistically significant results have the "Reesey cup" pronunciation in the southeast and the "Reese's" pronunciation in Michigan and the northeast.

Today our trainer asked, "Who brought in the Reese's?" We explained the nature of the experiment. He just looked at me and said, "Reesey cups, of course. What else would you call them?" But then, he's from Virginia.

One of the infants (about a third of the people in my group are fresh out of college) prairie-dogged up from his cubicle and made an interesting point. "But what about Reese's Pieces? Going by that, then you'd assume the other candy is called 'Reese's cups'."

The trainer and I both said, "Ugh. Reese's Pieces are nasty."

Then I realized, all these bright young things have never known a world without Reese's Pieces. No one born before 1980 would ever regard Reese's Pieces as the starting point. Perhaps there is an age divide as well as a geographical divide.

I need more data.

Naturally and artificially flavored

I got some new Chucks for spring. So cute! So red! Oz said, "Maybe too red for work." But if I'm going to violate the No Sneakers rule, I might as well do it in style. My work also has a No Pajamas rule. I love that they had to make a rule for that, because it means that people were actually wearing pajamas at work. I haven't violated that rule. Yet.

We're having a nippy Easter, but yesterday was lovely as you can see. Warm enough to drive around with the windows down, anyway. I picked up some Reese's fudge peanut butter eggs when we were out on our errands and ended up licking one off the wrapper as I sat on the back porch and surveyed my winter-ravaged garden. I would have thought the artificial ingredients and stabilizers were more than capable of standing up to the weak March sunshine, but I guess not.

If I were motivated, I'd install a polling plug-in and run a poll to find out what proportion of people say "Reesey cup" verses "Reese's cup". Not that I'd get a statistically significant result, but it would probably be better than just asking around or pouncing on people to extract information. (How do you say it? Where are you from? Where are your parents from? Do you think there's a regional variation? Would you ever say "Reesey Pieces"?)

Oz has driven me out of the kitchen, where he's Doing Things to peppers, tomatoes, and beans. I suppose I should go out and Do Things with my camera, or maybe Clean Things around the house, but I've only got a couple hours of weekend left before I have to get on the train back to Alexandria.

"D" is for doughnut

Way back at the rehearsal dinner for the Princess's wedding, we met the Goddess, a friend of hers from high school. The Princess and the Goddess used to work at a bakery together in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Goddess had been at the bakery for some time before the Princess came to work there. The Princess was mystified at how all these people would come into the bakery and ask for the Goddess specifically to handle their order. When the Minnesota Twins placed their doughnut orders, they would request that the Goddess, and only the Goddess, pack the doughnuts.

The Princess was like, "It's not rocket science. It's doughnuts. You put them in a box. Gah!"

The Goddess said, "Well, the Princess didn't really like that job so much."

We sort of agreed with the Princess. Then yesterday we got doughnuts from our regular place, but the regular lady didn't pack them. And when I opened the box and saw how the non-frosted doughnuts were stuck to the frosted doughnuts, I said, "Man! The regular lady is a much better doughnut packer!"

In other news, "O" is for orchid

Oz came up to Northern Virginia a couple weeks ago and we went to the orchid show at the US Botanical Gardens: An Alphabet Garden of Orchids. Lots of pretty orchids! Lots of color! Like a preview of spring and summer, so delightful to eyes accustomed to bare trees and gray skies.

Will it ever get warm?

March is so cruel. How much longer till I can turn off the furnace and fling aside the heavy overcoat?