Friday, July 16, 2010

The Ish Clause and PainterMan

I enjoy the Ish Clause. For those who may not know, when someone adds “ish” to the end of a word, most frequently regarding a time, they’re giving you a guesstimate or loose estimate (side note: somehow guesstimate is a real word according to Microsoft – you learn something new every day).

I don’t like to overuse the Ish Clause, and I certainly don’t like when others overuse it… that’s just outright abuse. And I don’t stand for abuse… in most cases at least.

Anyway, utilizing the Ish Clause allows for a window of opportunity, which I think is still pretty firm. In regard to time, when someone says “ish”, I don’t think that goes beyond 20 minutes in either direction; there’s definite boundaries for the Ish Clause.

Last week, a coworker told me he would have his PowerPoint slides to me around Wednesday-ish. It is currently Friday. I haven’t encountered a day-“ish” before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. The jury is still out, but I would say that in day-ish terms, there is a one-day window there; certainly, 20 minutes wouldn’t be appropriate, and 20 days is entirely too ridiculous a timeframe.


In other news, I got home after work yesterday to find painters hanging on the side of my house. Apparently the HOA had contracted them to repaint all the units in my area. I knew about this ahead of time, but they didn’t give a specific date they’d start painting.

So I walked inside, let the dog out, walked back into the living room and saw this, which doesn’t seem too safe to me:

















I was expecting PainterMan to come crashing through the window after I took his picture and really didn’t want to deal with that.

Fortunately he didn't.

_

3 comments:

  1. How crazy would it be if someone told you two weeks-ish and it turned out they passed away within that two week period?! It would likely then turn into a lifetime-ish wait! Ponder that for a short time-ish!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Jrm,
    Was told by robert (poets united) that he has a vacancy in group 7 and just added me into it so here I am, for the first time.. feel free to drop by my blog anytime and leave a comment so that i know you have been there... thanks and see ya!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi, Weasel here. I just noticed, we're in the same poetry group (group 7) on Poets United. Thought I'd drop by and introduce myself. Some interesting thoughts here. It amazes me how people say when they'll have something ready, but then never do. Also, microsoft word has added a lot of new words to the system it seems. For example, LOL is now a word according the word processor. Well, glad to here that no one broke your window or was hurt.

    -Weasel

    ReplyDelete