We got a hanukah card in the mail from Rebecca’s grandmother today. It was a standard pre-printed hanukah card with cure little graphics and room inside for a handwritten message. The front had a rhyming poem about hanukah. The inside had the following message:

may this be a season unlike any other
with one little miracle after another.

yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh……..

Okay, before someone thinks I’m insinuating something about Rebecca’s grandmother, I just want to state that I’m sure it’s just a coincidence (it is, after all, a preprinted message on a card), but it is a funny one.

I had a meeting with management yesterday about a report I wrote. One of their “corrections” was the fact that I used the word ubiquitous. They felt it was too complex a word, and I should replace it with something simpler. I was reminded that our audience is both congress and our own front office (the higher ups who don’t even know who I am), so I should imagine I’m writing for an eight grader. This is actually the advice I’ve been given on multiple occasions, and I continue to find it pompous. I also believe that since most members of congress have graduated from law school, and the head of the division (the “front office”) is also a lawyer by trade, that this advice is simply a way for our new manager to cover for the fact that she probably didn’t know what the word ubiquitous meant.

Update: Thought of this one a little late. When the boss was telling the word ubiquitous was too tough a word, I should have commented that the word ubiquitous is omnipresent.