Let me just say to all the doubters and skeptics out there who told me and others that it's a bad idea: Living alone is wonderful. I have never lived alone until now and now I feel sadness for all those years spent living with people that I didn't even like and even the ones I do like. No more cleaning up after parties, no more wondering how much of my stuff was stolen while I was gone, (though I do wonder about my new landlord. Shifty looking fella) no more stress at all. I have found Nirvana (the peaceful one, not the one with annoying music and heroin) I wake up in the morning, watch my Sportscenter in peace while eating breakfast food that never gets poached, when I come home from work I don't have to worry about some strangers sitting around in my apartment and rifling through my belongings. If I want for social activity I have a phone, computer, and a car. Plus there's a bar across the street (I did not make this a pre-requisite when apartment hunting, but it didn't hurt) My apartment has been filled with the finest furnishings Salvation Army has to offer and by God it's comfortable. I sat in silence for an hour the first day I moved in just because I could. I've also found a new hobby: Lying to neighbors. I currently have one neighbor who thinks I'm a competitive lumberjack (long story) and another who thinks my name is Woodrow (short story) I learned this game froma friend of mine who moved to a different state and convinced the entire populace of a small town that his name was Paul, he was a lapsed hassidic jew, and that he spent a few years riding with the Sons of Silence. Also he pointed out another wonder of living alone: pants are optional. Silence is wonderful.
Nester, you have no idea how perfectly apropos that is to me right now. We have had a friend living on our couch for the last 2 and a half months, and we still have no idea when he'll be going. When I offered to put him up while he moved here from northern France, I thought he would be in a hurry to get a flat, find a job, any job and would be gone in a couple of weeks, maybe a month, but no, he's obviously very comfortable here, in our small 1 bedroom flat, and shows no signs of being in a hurry to leave. And Reg and I being total softies, we don't have the heart to do more than hint... **slaps self with large smelly haddock** Idiots.
Living alone was absolute bliss before, I remember that. But now I can't imagine not living with Garner. It would be weird and sad.
Absolutely, there is quite a difference between living with the person whom you chose to share your life with and living with someone that you chose (or not) to share the same space with... The more I see of other men's living habits, the more I appreciate that Reg is just the right person for me.
Most definately. Right now, I choose not to live in the same house as my darling brother. He is just refusing to cooperate. Nester, congratulations on achieving my dream!
Grace has the answer - at the risk of being accused of introducing "Pixel's sex life" into the thread, my view is that I would not want to share my home with someone I was not also sharing my bed with. Or since I have invoked Grace, in her incarnation as Grammar Goddess, maybe that last bit should be "without whom" I was not also sharing my bed. I wasn't sure whether to leave this and see if it started rumours - but I only spotted the potential double meaning after the first edit. And then I thought I had better make things clear - after all, I don't want to be beaten into the ground by a golem, who are traditionally made from what can be dug out from the earth, and who do we know who is called "Clay"?
It's actually quite proper to end a sentence with a preposition. The idea that you can't is a myth. As for the rest... No comment!
Also acceptable. A myth that sprang up at around the same time as the prepositions one, in the 19th Century, when previously illiterate people started being herded into schools and taught to read and write by those who knew little better.
Where else on the web would you get an assortment of grammatical considerations, star trek, Pixel's sex life and the 19th century all in 3 or 4 posts in a row ? Gotta love this board :biggrin:
I am trying to convince my girlfriend to move out with me, but after the benefits that Nester just listed it is tempting to make the move by myself. Well the family home is always home, it is refreshing to come back here and see that some things are constant.
The shenanigans with grammar came about from a misguided notion that Latin was a superior language to English, and therefore English should work more like Latin. One does not end sentences with prepositions, since one does not do so in Latin. One does not split infinitives because Latin infinitives cannot be split. They're much the same as the people who object to the use of "they" as a singular gender-neutral pronoun (despite its long history in English literature).
Could you give me a few examples for the dangling preposition, and the split infinitive (and what it has to do with Star Trek)? I noticed that a few critics got upset about the preposition in the title of the film "I want someone to eat cheese with", which struck me as odd because there seemed no right sounding alternative to form that particular sentence.
Returning to the subject, I am currently feeling more and more like an oyster. There's a grain of sand in my shell and no matter how much I try to coat it with spit (or rather try to convince myself it doesn't matter) it's still there, and it's gone from itching to aching...
Sentences ending in a preposition: "Do you think we should go in?" "That's what the door is for." "Are you sure this is where the free pie is at?" "Ba wouldn't lie about where they're going to." "But what are all the bear traps and tripwires at the door for?" In Latin, prepositions go in a particular place, with their object noun. For example, in vino veritas. In could not go anywhere else in that phrase. It has to go before vino. English does not have this rule. In can float about the sentence where it will, so long as the sentence can still be understood. Sentences with split infinitives: "To helpfully point out the problems with the orphanage's evacuation plans, Ba set the building on fire." "The chainsaw-wielding serial killer went to bloodily massacre the camp full of adolescents and horny teen counselors." "The assassin knew to quietly creep into the king's chambers to hopefully avoid detection." The Star Trek Example:"To boldly go where no man has gone before." In Latin, the infinitive is a single word. Accusare, for example. In English, it's "to accuse." One cannot split the Latin infinitive, but the English infinitive can be split quite handily.
The infinitive in English is in the form of "to verb." So, to kill, to murder, to destroy, to bake. A split infinitive is when a word goes between to and the verb. "Happily dancing among the gravestones" does not contain a split infinitive because dancing is not the infinitive form. "To happily dance among the gravestones" does contain a split infinitive, because to dance is the infinitive. Now, sometimes split infinitives don't sound quite right. On those occasions, one really should avoid them. But they've been in the English language since Middle English (and like so many things, they can be blamed on the French), and they're not going away anytime soon.
