Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Busy week! (and a grammar question)

This week is busy! Sunday was great - we went to the casino for brunch and played for a few minutes... to my dismay, there were no penny slots. So I did 5 cent slots for 15 or 20 minutes. I lost $1.05. Boo. (that is the worst I've ever done!) After that we went off-roading in Hart's Jeep - it was great! Super fun. We learned all about different types of cactui. Then we had dinner at a place called Oregano's - yum. Great food. Monday morning we both came back. I wasn't feeling well Monday afternoon / evening, so I didn't really get much done. Waste of a day, which is irritating. Tuesday afternoon I had my Remicade, and then went home and popped a cake in the oven, did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, emptied the dishwasher, unpacked, and tidied up my room. Geoff got home after about an hour and we had dinner at Hall Street Grill. We got home late and then went to bed. Well, actually I looked at cacti on the wiki first. It was fun. :)

Tonight I need to finish prepping for cake decorating class tomorrow (icing my cake, making a few more batches of icing, packing everything up, etc.) and then we're having dinner at Cheesecake Factory with Geoff's parents and his stepsister who is in town because she is on spring break! YAY, I love her. Tomorrow I have a class at the gym and then I have to rush over to Michaels for cake decorating. Geoff is taking Rebecca skiing tomorrow night... fun! Friday we're going to my friend Kendra's birthday BBQ, and Saturday we're going to Geoff's aunt and uncle's St. Patrick's Day party and then his friend Kyle's birthday party. Plus there is TONS to do around the house... it is a disaster. I was definitely feeling a little stressed about this last night, but there will be enough time. I need to update my Quicken... it is so behind and it makes me angry!

HUGE grammar drama! - Geoff wrote a note to one of our roommates asking him to make some time to talk to us tonight. He wrote "plaese make some time to talk to Kelly and me" and I said "no, it should be me and Kelly", so he corrected it. Then he wrote it again on a seperate white board and wrote it "Kelly and me" again... I corrected it again and he changed it to "me and Kelly". Not a huge deal... but then this morning his roommate had written back and responded and then wrote "P.S. it should say Kelly and me". Then I was like "OH NO - could I be WRONG?!" So I immediately emailed my mom, my personal grammar expert. She replied and said "I think me and geoff is correct. When you use "I" you say Geoff and I, but usually me goes first." That didn't sound like a very concrete answer, so I researched on the internet. I think I've concluded that it really doesn't matter - although for etiquette reasons, some consider "Kelly and me" to be more correct because it is more polite to put the other person before yourself. However, others argue that "me and Kelly" is more correct because "Kelly" could be replaced with "the most wonderful woman in the entire world" and it just sounds weird to put "and me" after that... "me and the most wonderful woman in the world" sounds better. Along those lines, I read in multiple places that it's not grammatically incorrect to say "I and Geoff went to the store"... again, it's a "politeness" issue. My mom has also sent an email to her sister (the other grammar expert in the family) to have her weigh in on the subject. I'd love to hear what you think too!

Here are a couple of my sources:
Source 1
Which is correct: 'my friend and me' or 'my friend and I'?

That depends on where you and your friend are in the sentence. In colloquial speech 'me' is often used where standard grammar requires 'I', especially when someone else is mentioned too. Sometimes people use 'I' instead of 'me', because they know 'me' is sometimes wrong, but have not understood the principle. (Others resort to 'myself', which can sound rather pompous.) I am the subject of the sentence, but the object of the sentence is me. If in doubt, take your friend out of the sentence.

Me and my friend went to a party last night. [Wrong]
I and my friend went to a party last night.
My friend and me went to a party last night. [Wrong]
My friend and I went to a party last night.

The mayor has invited me and my husband.
The mayor has invited I and my husband. [Wrong]
The mayor has invited my husband and me.
The mayor has invited my husband and I. [Wrong]

Incidentally, saying 'my friend and I' instead of 'I and my friend' is not better grammar, it's just being polite.

Source 2
I'm not saying that "me and Jane" is correct etiquette -- it just sounds better to most ears. There's no grammatical difference between "me and Jane" and "Jane and me", as far as I know. Grammar doesn't care about the order of the pair, but etiquette does.

Source 3
I hate to be technical on this point, but since it's the nature of our discussion, I believe it is proper to say "Pizza was delivered to me and Mike." You are correct with "Mike and I ordered pizza" wherein you allow Mike to be first, but since "me" is the direct object in the second, it should be first, so as to not run into the problem shown in this example: "Pizza was delivered to all of the little underground trolls that frolic in the woods and me." It gets somewhat confusing at that point.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

my two cents: i think you're right. i probably would have written it like geoff, but gramatically i think your way is better. but even in my deep love of grammar, i've so never been clear on the whole i/me issue.

by the way, you eat out so much, but all of your restaurants sound so tasty. i'd be a little jealous if i didn't get free lunch every day.

Anonymous said...

update?