Thanks to everyone who checked in with me. I'm ok, I promise. That was kind of the point -- that you can be sad and depressed and emotional while still functioning as a human being. But I appreciate the calls.

Right now Angie and I are arguing about how to pronounce my sister's name. She wants to say "Lora" when it's more like "Lawrrah." Except not. And it's definitely not "Lair-ah", which, as far as I'm concerned, is how you pronounce the name "Lara." Hmmm.

I normally don't obsess over weirdness like this -- ok, that's a lie, I obsess over all kinds of trivia until something else catches my eye -- oooh, shiny! -- but Dawn sent around a link to a survey/java applet that is trying to map out who says "soda" and who says "pop." The best is the list of "other" terms that are used. Jimmy Juice? Tonic? Babyarm? Code fuel? Who the hell are you people?

If you're a soda person, go vote -- Pop is outstripping us, and that's just wrong. If you're a pop person -- well, you're wrong. So there.

That page also contains a link to a long dialect survey some folks at Harvard are doing. Check it out -- I had no idea there were so many different ways to pronounce things. I entered my Delaware-centric pronunciation history. Someone probably needs to counteract that. They've had very few people from the Great Plains states (Wendy?) and no one from Nevada. So, um, someone go take care of that, ok?