Grammarvelous #2: The Apostrophe Catastophe

I know what you're thinking: it's the end of April and last month I said I was going to write a monthly grammar blog. Glad we both remembered in the nick of time.

It's finally feeling like spring and in the mid-Atlantic that means two things: allergies and baseball. Assuming we're all properly dosed up on Zyrtec, let's get right to baseball (and grammar).

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Our beloved home team the Baltimore Orioles is ubiquitously known as "the O's". At least to the locals. If you haven't once, in your best Baltimorean accent, uttered "How 'bout dem O's, hon?" you probably didn't eat fries'n gravy down de ocean to celebrate the nuptials of the Utz girl and Natty Boh guy. But that's ok because not speaking in or understanding the Hon dialect is forgivable (and arguably preferable), but improperly using punctuation is whole different bird (black and orange in this case). 

Let's get back to the O's and the purpose of this blog. I offer up for discussion a grammatical conundrum and something that has been gnawing at me for years: is it correct to have the apostrophe in O's? To argue it's grammatically incorrect, we must first agree that O's is a nickname for Orioles. Given that, Orioles in its stand alone form is plural not possessive and would require no apostrophe until the time is becomes a plural possessive. Have I lost you? Look at these examples and then it should all make sense.

• The Os are going to crush the Yankees this year. plural
• The Os' fans were voted best looking in the MLB. plural possessive
• The Orioles play at the beautiful Camden Yards. plural
• The Orioles' Manny Machado is working hard to come back from surgery and rejoin the big leagues. plural possessive

Still with me? 

However, a case can be made if you think O's is not a nickname, but a shortened version of the word Orioles. Is the apostrophe simply acting as a place holder for the remaining letters -- riole? Similarly, we use an apostrophe as a place holder in contractions such is don't, can't, won't, and so forth.  

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When I sat down to write this blog I was planning on venting years of annoyance about the misuse of the possessive apostrophe. But after careful thought and research, and mostly to move forward with my life, I'm going with the second theory: the apostrophe acts a place holder. I feel so much better. Have you been struggling with this too? I didn't think so.

Now that we've got that cleared up, I have a little bomb to drop. And I realize once I detonate it, you might go AWOL. Brace yourself: on pretty much all merchandise sporting the O's logo, the apostrophe is upside down and backwards. I know. I couldn't believe it either, but just look for yourself!

How did this pass through the Orioles' marketing gurus, MLB proofreaders and god knows how many other muckety mucks? After all these years I'm finally willing to accept the apostrophe belongs at all and now this? 

Who wants to start a petition?

Hey Gringos! 10 Thoughts on Our Mexican Vacay

Buenos tardes de Cancun, Mexico!

I chose this view for the day. Can you blame me?

Today my family is out on an excursion to Chichen Itza to see some Mayan ruins. Eddie and I went in 1992 and I'm still trying to recover. It's a long story, but let's just say the lowlight was having my hair yanked by little Yucatanian girls through the open sides of our rented Suzuki Samarai, and the other lowlight was trying to recover from heat stroke (did I mention there was no roof on said Samarai either?) upon our eventual arrival. Moral of the story: don't rent your own transportation in a foreign country, with foreign maps before GPS is invented particularly when you don't share the same definition of "air conditioning" on a 110 degree day. Anyway, I'm sure the rest of the Virdens are whooping it up on the giant, luxurious tour bus, but I passed on a re-do. Instead I'm roughing it poolside, banging out a blog on my phone. 

Mi diez observaciones de Mexico (still with me?):

1. Explaining to the hotel operator at midnight that you need more towels and a giant plastic bag because your daughter has uncontrollable food poisoning isn't as uncomfortable as you might think. Explaining to your other daughter who slept through whole thing why she woke up splattered with her sister's vomit is. 
2. Plagued by a Napoleon complex? Come here where no one grows past 5'5".  
3. Turns out that someone, somewhere is still selling Crocs and fanny packs.
4. The hotel staff, taxi drivers and waiters are the friendliest people ever. I don't know if they genuinely love their jobs, but if not they could be in Hollywood collecting Oscars. 
5. My hair and tropical weather are like Kidman & Cruise, Holmes & Cruise; and why not, let's go really old school and throw in Rogers & Cruise. They seemed ok for a hot minute, but then you realized it was a marriage (or 3) made in hell. 
   
   
   
   
   
6. You really reacquaint yourselves with your family when you share one bathroom for a week. Do that in Mexico and you re-up the bonds of the circle of trust. 
7. Even a large, bulbous zit can't deter one poolside vacationer from donning her thong. If she walks by one more time I might go all baboon on her ass and pick it. 
8. Apparently every woman on the Yucatan Peninsula wears a bikini except me and #7 isn't helping lose my inhibitions.
9. Zip lining 12 stories high really helps you face your fears. Seeing your 9-yr old come to a complete stop and dangle over a canyon because she's too light to zip all the way to the other platform makes you realize you have a new list of untapped fears. 
   
   
   
   
   
10. Turns out giving your severely ear-infected daughter Mexican antibiotics from a doctor who makes house calls with a fishing tackle box full of meds is a surprisingly easy decision.

My day alone was really nice, but when they got home I hugged them liked they'd been at sleep away camp. They had a great time and on this trip to Chichen Itza the only hair pulling was between sisters. 

They don't let you climb up these pyramids anymore.
Tour guide said too many people were peeing at the top.

How was your spring break? Anything remarkable happy to you?

Product Review! Nerium AD Skin Care

To date, I have published 32 blog posts. They've been all over the map topic-wise, but there's one category I've wanted to explore and now is my chance: a product review. If I'm going to weigh-in on something out there, it's probably going to be something I think can enhance my life and/or the lives of my friends. So imagine my excitement when a new blog opportunity arose and it's something that might even make me look better. Here'a little background.

I love skin care products. I started using eye cream when I was 29 and incorporated sunscreen into my daily routine about 5 years later (I now know that was about 30 years too late). I've used everything from basic drugstore stuff to a high end doctor-dispensed 5-step line. Once, in a very low moment, I even put a gel version of a acai drink on my face because I'd heard the antioxidant properties could pause the clock. I should've warned my family because one of my daughters burst into hysterics thinking I'd been attacked by Lizzie Borden's axe-wielding ghost.

The product I'm reviewing is called Nerium AD. They have a day cream and a night cream and I was given a one month supply of each.

According to the Nerium International website, these products are designed to improve the appearance of: fine lines and wrinkles, hyper pigmentation, discoloration, uneven skin texture, aging or sun-damaged skin, enlarged pores and loose skin. The product is a patented formula derived from the Nerium Oleander plant.

I can't wait to find out if any of these amazing results are going to come my way. To make this more official, I pledge to use the products as directed, day and night, for 30 straight days.

A few things to note:

• I am almost 47.
• I have no Botox, filler or the like.
• I am not using a separate eye cream during this experiment because Nerium says I don't need to.
• I am using a separate sunscreen during the day because the Nerium Day Cream does not contain any.
• I took make-up free "before" pictures 

Day 1

Daytime: The instructions say 4 pumps, but 3 more than covered my entire face, neck and décolletage. I realize I might not get optimum results using a little less, but my face is really small and I have nowhere to put the extra product. Due to the extremely cold weather, I applied a little of my own moisturizer (mixed with tinted moisturizer) on top for added emollience. Nerium says this is fine.
Nighttime: The product has a nice heavy, almost sticky feel (it contains no water) and must be applied to damp skin which seems strange, but I guess that's to help spread it around. The smell is different -- earthy and and grassy. Not unpleasant, but certainly not flowery. As it dries, my skin feels tight. A little odd, but not uncomfortable. I can see getting used to that feeling in a few days. I am applying to same body parts as daytime, but also including the backs of hands -- I have some ugly dark spots. I found that I only had room on myself for 3 pumps of the night cream as well.

Day 14

I have been a perfect student and am using the product exactly as indicated. My favorite thing is probably how easy it is. I love that both the morning and night are only one step -- especially when I'm feeling lazy. My skin does feel softer and smoother and I like how my make up looks. I think I'm needing less to cover, but without makeup I cannot see a significant difference. I plan to rephotograph at the end of the month so maybe I'll see something then.

Day 30

Ok, so my 30 days is over and I really wasn't expecting to see much of a change based on the first 2 weeks. But surprisingly, I actually do see improvement, particularly in the overall evenness of my complexion. My pores are definitely smaller and without make up my skin is more even looking -- including the dark circles under my eyes which bother me more than anything. I still have broken capillaries around my nose (I think a laser is the only thing that can fix these) and I didn't see any noticeable changes in the dark spots on my chest or hands. I have come to enjoy the ease of these products and now find the smell delightful. The company's slogan is "Give us a year and we'll give you back 10". I'm curious whether I'd see even more improvement over a longer time, but this review was a one month experiment.

Other thoughts

• Sorry, but I'm not publishing any photos because it turns out, I'm too vain; and I took them on an iPhone in my bedroom with crappy lighting and frankly, they don't show what I see in the mirror. 
• The night cream is $80 and the day cream is $40 for a one month supply, but I think the company occasionally runs specials to get better pricing. Nerium is not the most expensive product around, but it's certainly not the most affordable either. 
• I think it's worth a try if you want your overall complexion improved and don't mind spending a little more. I was considering a peel of some sort, but now think I can put that off for a while. 

I'm just a tester, but if you want to know more, email me: evirden@me.com