I had a conversation with the First Reader as I was cutting his hair. Getting him all spiffy and beautiful for the convention… anyway, we were talking about language drift, and how fast it can be at times. He'd read an old blog post of mine, about making jams, after my Sunday post on Jammin' the Blues. In it, I describe this: " came back with two grocery bags full of elderberries. Then on Sunday he went back to dig a couple of plants for establishing a grove here on the farm and brought back two more bags."
Now, what caused the conversation was our age difference. He's 18 years older than I, and to him a grocery bag is a big brown paper sack. I was talking about those handled plastic bags you get in wally world or most grocery stores. A brown paper grocery bag would hold a lot more berries than the little plastic ones do. While we were chatting, he reminisced that they never bought trash bags when he was a kid, they folded up and saved the paper sacks, then filled them with trash. Once full, they were taken out and burned.
I pointed out that at least in NH recently, it's illegal to burn your trash. In fact, if they see black smoke from a fire, they come take a look at what you are burning. Which led me to tell him about my Dad. Dad was trying to light a bonfire, put accelerant on it, failed to light. More go-juice, still no joy. Maybe more? Up it went with a POOMF!! and that rattled the neighbors windows (not close, that house) and when they looked out, they could see a small mushroom clound of black smoke. So they called the volunteer fire department. Dad was at the time still on the squad (as a medic) and his buddies responded, wondering if Sanderson had finally succeded in blowing himself up. I gather there was a lot of joking around for a long time on that call…
My first Reader pointed out that if we heard one of our friends from the Baen Barfly group had been involved in an explosion, even though logically it was likely caused by, say, a gas leak, we'd immediately jump to a certain conclusion. Well, Yeah… we do seem to have a lot of us who would be inclined to say 'hey, y'all, watch this!" or 'I wonder what this does?'
I love you guys (in a sisterly way!), and I'll see you at LibertyCon!
A Baen Barfly with books, beverage, and sidearm is on the off side… you can't quite see it. ;-)