I was thinking about my grandparents this morning. In particular, I was thinking about how both of my grandmothers had some interesting idiosyncrasies in their respective vocabularies: things I heard each of them say all the time, but have never heard anyone else say, ever.

I was fortunate as a kid to live in the same town as both sets of my grandparents. I got to see them a lot. My dad’s parents watched me daily while my parents were at work, from the time I was a baby until I entered sixth grade. And we saw my mom’s parents at least weekly.

As many kids probably do, I identified my grandparents not by name, but by a distinguishing characteristic that resonated with my developing brain. In this case, the colors of their houses. So my dad’s parents (the Andersons) were “green grandma and grandpa” and my mom’s parents (the Madsons) were “white grandma and grandpa.” I realize now that a stranger hearing me talk about “white grandma” out of context would probably interpret the meaning in an entirely different way.

I lost all four of my grandparents within a decade, from 1991 (when I was a senior in high school) to 2001. But their memories live on in all of the experiences I shared with them, and especially in the quirky ways that my grandmothers used to speak. Here are some of my favorites. (I’ll probably revisit this post over time and add more as I remember them.)

Bourgeois — a euphemism for “bullshit.” My grandma’s father was French, which is probably where she picked up the term. I had no idea what she was actually saying, but whenever someone needed to be called on their BS, she’d give them a nice friendly “bushwa.” (Grandma Madson)

Breakfast food — cereal. All cereal is breakfast food, but not all breakfast food is cereal. Except to my grandma. (Grandma Anderson)

Davenport — a couch or sofa. I know my grandma was not unique in using this term, but “davenport” is definitely the “RC Cola” of names for this particular piece of furniture. (Grandma Anderson)

Forth and back — back and forth. I have to admit, my grandma actually had a pretty compelling argument for this one: “You have to go forth before you can go back.” Indeed. (Grandma Anderson)

Frigidaire — a refrigerator. There are plenty of brand names that become synonymous with what they are (Kleenex, for instance), but my grandma was one of the few people who did this with kitchen appliances. (Grandma Anderson)

House slippers — umm… as if you’d wear them anywhere else? Strangely, both of my grandmothers used this phrase, so maybe it was a generational thing.

Parasol — an umbrella. Once upon a time people used parasols on a regular basis, and they actually did differ from umbrellas in construction, if not so much in design. But as the parasol has fallen out of favor, I would guess that most people now use “umbrella” as an (excuse me for this) umbrella term for both. But for my grandma it was the other way around. (Grandma Anderson)

Warsh your head — again, I know my grandma was far from the only person to say “warsh” instead of “wash,” but I don’t know anyone else who would say “head” instead of “hair.” She also said “warsh your teeth” but considering she wore dentures it probably made a little more sense. (Grandma Anderson)

Wrath of God — unsightly physical appearance. As in, “I look like the wrath of God,” said when my grandma did not feel that she was properly made up to leave the house. (Grandma Madson)

Before I was even in elementary school, I learned from Mr. Rogers to “take my time and do it right.” In short, it’s better to take a bit longer to do something, and do it well, than to rush through just to get it done.

And yet, based on this Washington Post article, MnDOT seems not to have learned a similar lesson.

Teams of designers and builders are racing to meet a dawn Wednesday deadline for showing they are qualified to bid on the bridge replacement project, which the state has put on a fast track.

I can understand putting the project on the “fast track,” but to me that simply means giving it priority over other projects, not adding undue haste to the project itself.

State transportation officials hope to award contracts next month, with the goal of having a new bridge standing at the end of 2008….

Erecting such a bridge would ordinarily take about three years, even if the design and building phases were overlapped to save time, said Bill Cox, owner of Corman Construction Inc. in Annapolis Junction, Md., a road and bridge construction firm.

So not only are we moving so fast as to have a “dawn” deadline, less than a week after the collapse, to get initial proposals in, but we plan to have the bridge up and operational in less than half the time an accelerated schedule would normally require. (Oh, and correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t overlapping the design and build phases necessarily mean that they’d start building it before it was completely designed?)

I hate to say it, but I’m already reluctant to drive on that new bridge.

Considering that I just finished recording a new CD whose centerpiece is a suite on the theme of the human experience entitled “Nothing New Under the Sun,” I should not continually find myself surprised that my seemingly oh-so-original ideas are, in fact… well, not. Especially when they come to me as a stroke of pure genius in the wee hours.

Case in point: I’m toying with some new ideas for a major overhaul of my personal website (far more than lazily “porting” it over to prefab blog software), and in the midst of setting up my “MAMP” (Mac OS X, Apache, MySQL, PHP — OK, so it’s not as elegant as “LAMP” but I am not yet on the “Linux is a legitimate desktop OS” bandwagon) development environment on my new iBook, the name for this new site hit me. It was sheer brilliance.

The Cortex Vortex

It was too good to pass up. And this on the same day when I had hit upon the idea of naming different-sex fraternal twins Franklin and Eleanor and nearly driven off the road in tears of hysterical laughter when SLP suggested the name “Fonzworth” (maybe you just had to be there… but truth is stranger than both fiction and SLP’s sense of humor).

So good, in fact, that naturally there were others in the world who had already found it that good, as well. Granted, there wasn’t really anything out there with the name that was like what I intended to do, but why compete with the villain from Crash Bandicoot 2… not to mention some guy in Quebec? (Do a whois, if you must.)

OK, back to Square One. Hey, maybe that would be a good name! Do you think anyone else is doing anything with it?

Postscript
Not quite the event of the century, but I ran into and spoke briefly with Scott Savol at the Mall of America Apple Store last night.