OK, now -- When you want to know something, go to them what knows : Called my American Automobile Association (AAA) and got this answer: "The mileage between Montreal and Hampton, NH, is 321 miles and it will take approximately 5.8 hours to travel going 55 mph. We just thought you would like to know that on our internet site (www.aaanne.com) you are able to look up mileage. It is a relatively new option."
So off I went to that site and when I asked it said : "Mileage from Montreal, PQ to New York City, NY:366 miles (589 km.)" Just 45 miles difference! I give up! {cross eyed emoticon} Madness! wow
Well, Sweetie, at least we know you aren't dead! Oh, I needed a good laugh! Oh my goodness, wow, that's one for the books! If she spake truly, bel, I guess I'll have to join you--I've been known to cover nearly 200 miles in 2½ hours. I LOVE to drive fast, and one of my dreams is to get out on the salt flats in a vehicle that can take the speed. What I'm driving now won't--I kind of pushed it too hard once, trying to get from my beloved friend's memorial service to my daughter's competition. The Check Engine light came on, and ever since then I get a valve rattle when I go above 75 mph. Phooey.
I just love this Board, I really do. Mass invitations to visit transmogrified into the girls trying to prove who the biggest hoon on the road is!
Thanks ladies, it reconfirms my faith in the total inability of the Board to have a thread start in one place, travel steadily through it and end at the logical conclusion. And, from the sound of it, at a reasonable speed...
I also have to say that I'm overwhelmed at the number of you who believe that meeting me in the flesh will somehow enrich your existences. Thank you one and all, and we'll do our best to do your invitations some justice. We are both very gratified.
And while I don't want a dead BelM, I'd live with a dead BelAire! (Just dragging the conversation back to Chevvies)
Jackie-- go to a racing school! I am planning a weekend in the early summer at Limerock CT-- where there is a car racing school. You get to race in their cars-- and you are also trained on how to steer out of skid-- most places have a skid pad-- a patch of road that is so slippy you are forced into a skid-- and the area is surround by bales of hay-- to make for an "easy crash zone". But because you do learn how to handle skids-- the race driving schools actually qualify you for a discount on your auto insurance!
Limerock CT is not convenient to Kentucky-- but i bet there is an other school offering the same type course-- Auto companies have offered them for years in the Detroit area-- and surprizingly, women are usually more interested in them then men (theory is most men are firmly convinced that they are good lover and good drivers and don't have to go to no stinkin' school to learn anything about doing either!)
I speed too, and i figure i should go to school and learn how to do it right! and if i get an insurance discount to do so, well all the better!
Dear, dear, *dear* BelM, No hex intended ... but I went back and edited it out ... so others will now be totally bumfoozeled if they try to figure out this exchange. I think it was brain slippage because I was thinking that "Speed Kills" and I was worried that something might happen to you. Then I wrote the ing post about your coming thru NH -- the "joke" implied being I'd stay off the road on those days. So if there was any hoodoo voodoo it was a *Protective* one for you when you are on the road.
As a reporter I went to a lot of accident scenes -- most the result of excess speed -- and it has made me a more careful driver. I drive a Saab and keep speeds to a max of 70 when passing on Interstates with a 65 mph speed limit. Here's a hint for all of you on US Interstates around New England: you will be ticketed if your speed exceeds 71 mph. My source is excellent! And in NH, the police used fixed wing aircraft to monitor highways ... not helicopters! Happy and safe travellin', wow
There was a story that made me chuckle recently on the BBC. A sargeant and a constable were pointing a speed-gun (radar) up the hill on a long stright road on the Scottish borders. Suddenly, as a car came over the brow of the hill the radar started going mad - "Christ, Sarge, it's clocking two hundred....!" The recorded speed shot up and up to over 360, then the machine had the electronic equivalent of a massive heart attack as a plane roared overhead.
When making enquiries later, the police contacted the local RAF base, from which NATO craft were on maneouvres. Yes, said a frosty voice, they could help unscramble the radar gun, but they wern't going to: "You locked onto one of our planes, and were only seconds away from an automated air-to-ground missile response. Go away and play with your toy somewhere else!"
This low brow (not to be confused with Löwenbrau), would use "top" most often, but has used "brow" and could do so without artifice. I don't think I have ever used, or would ever use, "crest".
Not a brand that I have ever seen. I know what it is, thanks to US cultural/commercial hegemony, but to the best of my knowledge, Crest toothpaste is not sold in NZ.
CapK enthuses: I just love this Board, I really do. Mass invitations to visit transmogrified into the girls * trying to prove who the biggest hoon on the road is!
Glad I didn't participate beyond the initial invite - since I'm not a "girl." And what is a "hoon"? [the-ol'-hands-on-hips e]
To INSELPETER & MAX >Where's tsuwm .. should ask highbrow< If you asked Winnie-the-Poohbah I , he might refer you to a recent WWFTD - "Mezzo-brow" (q.v.)-, although, in my judgement, an upper-mezzo-brow should suffice for your purposes. Perhaps this matter has crested and we should return to the earlier thread-theme, whatever it was.
Anna Strova/Kournikova (or Catastrophic, but I repeat myself) asked: And what is a "hoon"?
Well, finally, a word which appears to be Zild slang and Zild slang only. A hoon, my friends, is someone who does things with no thought for the consequences of his/her actions on those around them. To "hoon around" is to act as if you own wherever you are (and not much care what happens to where you are, either). Then you have "drunken hoons" which are hoons cubed.
It's not in the COD or in any dictionary referenced by dictionary.com.
Yippeeeeeee!
and the same non-pareil asked: * should that be girls' ?
Not unless they were possessing more than I intended in that sentence! [poignant-smirk-e]
I found two references to "Hoon" via onelookup.com. The first is an Indian (Asia) term for a gold coin. The second is in the "Aussie" slang dictionary at http://"www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/9740/slang2.html#H" listed as: Hoon- Loudmouth, to drive recklessly!
I didn't mean to burst the bubble but thought the references to the sources might help others in future.
Uh oh, Rod--if I were you, I'd be digging a hole as fast as I could! This would seem to be the ultimate insult to a New Zealander, from what I've gathered. "His" very own word appropriated by the---er, others.
And, for the record: I drive very fast, but NOT recklessly. I judge speeding safety based on road and traffic conditions, the latter including the presence of visible cops. And I am never a loudmouth--I am a Southern lady, born unshocked.
So am I the only one who crests hills? I often define my house as "being on the crest of the hill"-- You drive up my block (the hill is steep enough, that you down shift to 2nd or 3rd to get the car up) and just as you come to the top, where the hill levels off-- the crest--Why there is my house!
I have heard brow of the hill-- and understood the meaning immediately, but would not use that expression-- any more than i would keeps stuff in the "boot" of the car, or have stuff delivered by a "lorry" -- i don't know if brow is "english" --so much as it is just not common in NY-- (America?)
I wouldn't use crest for a small rise-- NE roads all have crowns-- not crests-- they are definately Humped so that snow melt runs off to the side of the road.
brow vs. crest of a hill Helen dear, I''m not sure you do understand "brow" -- in the definition given in earlier posting, it refers to a projection. The brow of a hill is slightly below the crest, which is the top indeed. When you're at the brow of a hill, you are under the projecting part and below the crest.
Rod-who? wrote: I found two references to "Hoon" via onelookup.com. The first is an Indian (Asia) term for a gold coin. The second is in the "Aussie" slang dictionary at http://"www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/9740/slang2.html#H" listed as: Hoon- Loudmouth, to drive recklessly!
I didn't mean to burst the bubble but thought the references to the sources might help others in future.
No, not much you didn't. Typical - the Ozzies pinch it (as they do everything which isn't nailed down) and then only half define it and then others perpetuate the myth. Instead of posting, I'm going to go postal, I can tell ... is dropping copies of Webster's on people's heads a crime in the US/UK?
Then Jackie, in a fit of faustian self-justification, uttered: And, for the record: I drive very fast, but NOT recklessly. I judge speeding safety based on road and traffic conditions, the latter including the presence of visible cops.
Yeah, yeah, that's what they allus say. Hoons tend to be great at self-justification for their actions ...
Rod, you can't say I didn't warn you: I didn't mean to burst the bubble but thought the references to the sources might help others in future.
No, not much you didn't. Typical - the Ozzies pinch it (as they do everything which isn't nailed down) and then only half define it and then others perpetuate the myth. Instead of posting, I'm going to go postal, I can tell ... is dropping copies of Webster's on people's heads a crime in the US/UK?
And, C.K., as to my self-justification--it is entirely justified! [so there emoticon](Watch it, Bub, or I'll call you an a-er, as in jafa...)
Yeah, OK - public apology to CK. Hoon is a great word and thank you for sharing it with us. It has absolutely the right kind of sound to express the intended contempt. I promise to use it each day this week, and when anyone asks me, I will tell them it is ZILD!
And Jackie, warning me after the event is no use. Warn me beforehand next time, please.
In my defence your honour, I thought that references to resources such as http://www.yourdictionary.com/ and http://www.onelook.com/ might be useful to those who didn't know of them.
I always drive at the posted speed limit (of course that's often 70mph here in UK, plus VAT (US=sales tax), plus tip.
Oh and that's per occupant of course!
Off subject: does NZ have the equivalent of sales tax or Value Added Tax? I know a certain small island somewhere to the West of NZ changed last year to a type of VAT.
: does NZ have the equivalent of sales tax or Value Added Tax? I know a certain small island somewhere to the West of NZ changed last year to a type of VAT.
NZ has had a universal Goods and Services Tax since around 1985. Australia's bizarrely complicated version has caused much amusement on this side of the Tasman. The only way the Oz GST could get passed was by making all sorts of exemptions. A friend of mine who was working in an accountants' office in Queensland was told to brush up her NZ accent prior to the introduction of GST, as they planned to advertise that they had on their staff a NZer with 15 years experience of GST. (She was about 5 when it was introduced here)
RIGHT YOU LOT! I'm away for two - count 'em - (2) days, and you guys are fighting over the carcass! Reminds me of the old joke about the two vultures on a branch looking v-e-r-r-r-r-y hungry, with one saying to the other "Patience, my ass, I'm gunna kill something!"
For those of you poor benighted ayleurs out there who lack awareness of what's been going on, "Hutt" is a reference to the city I live in (Lower Hutt). It's about nine miles from Wellington (which is where I work). "Jafa" is an acronym for "Just Another F***ing Aucklander". Auckland is where I've been. It has a population of just over 1 million, and they promise faithfully that they'll either have electricity next time I'm there or the whole place will have been blown off the face of the earth by the volcanic activity which the geologists and vulcanologists have been promising. You can tell I like the place.
And Oz's GST system looks amazingly like the VAT system. And will generate thousands of jobs as the Government struggles to make it work.
Is it as archane as NY Sales tax? In NY Food is not taxable-- unless it is prepared food, ready to eat immediatley-- and cost more than $1.
So a $1 hot dog can (and should) be taxed-- but a frozen TV dinner-- any price no tax. but a ready cooked BBQ chicken at the deli counter -- Taxed! but slice meat at the deli counter? not taxed (since it is presumed that the meat will be put into sandwiches-- so its food, but not in a ready to eat form (even though you could just eat a slice of cheese or salami!)
More interesting is Candy is taxed (not food) but peanuts and raisens-- not taxed-- food items so chocolate covered peanuts (goobers) and chocolate covered raisens (raisenettes?) Chocolate covered peanuts are taxed as candy, but chocolate covered raisens are not! (why? who knows!)
Disclaimer: Wordsmith.org is not responsible for views expressed on this site.
Use of this forum is at your own risk and liability - you agree to
hold Wordsmith.org and its associates harmless as a condition of using it.