I've been working long long hours lately, which makes me yearn for school, when professors didn't really care if I showed up and no one was concerned with how many hours I was billing. Also had a meeting that was full of words like core competencies and other early 1990s consultant-speak, which made me kind of turbid and confused, reminding me of how much older everyone else is. It kind of made me laugh, because I read about a book where Prahalad - one of the guys that came up with the term - was a minor character and explained how they did these huge, intense seminars on the stuff (which completely reminded me of the episode of The Simpsons where Wiggum says "over these next eight hours, you will be broken down to the level of infants, then rebuilt as functional members of society, then broken down again, then lunch, then, if there's time, rebuilt once more.")
On the George Stephanopoulos show the republican guy referred to a rise or drop in the consumer confidence index as being "percentage points." Which means he probably had a horrible time in math and doesn't do well tracking stock market returns. The only time an increase/decrease in the index will actually be the same as the percentage point increase/decrease is when the index's value in first period of the comparison is equal to 100. There's a further problem with referring to it in "percentage points" since the index is developed using a number of different percentages - how many are feeling good about this or that economic feature. Precision with language, people.
Grocery list, in the order I picked the things up while I meandered around the store, if only to amuse myself:
Orange juice, pulp free - .75 gallons
Milk, chocolate - .5 gallons
Mountain Dew - 2 liters
Ice cream
Broccoli - 3 crowns
Bananas - 7 or 8
Butter, salted, but only because they don't sell unsalted
