Hi, howareyou? Good.

I'm becoming ever more distressed with the use of "howareyou?" as a greeting. I feel the same way about "how's-it-goin'?" when approaching someone. When I pass a stranger on the street, it's no longer appropriate to say, "hello," or "good afternoon," but "how you doin'?" is getting ever more popular. For months after moving here (and is it a city thing?" I tried to spit out some kind of, "Fine, thanks, how are you?" without entirely derailing whatever business transaction or trajectory I was working on. I've managed to get the response down to, "Good. You?" which lets me respond politely without breaking stride, or "Fine, thanks," which actually means, "I have no interest in talking to you or having you try to sell me anything." It's amusing to me that the more polite one makes far less grammatical sense.

I actually had a colleague use this in a phone message yesterday. He was talking to my machine and said, "Hi, this is Principal XXX. How are you?" And then he paused for a minute, perhaps expecting me to speak back to the voicemail. He then explained that he was tossing my carefully calculated schedule to bits and replacing it with something else. Argh. I am perplexed by the schedule thing, but the Laws of Propriety would still have me declare that I am "fine, thanks".

We need a better greeting than this. Who's with me?

***
Easter and gratuitous WIP photos

Mr. Grobnik and I are quite fond of the Easter eggs.


The rhubarb is 400% taller, and no less miraculous. I bought pie crusts today--just in case the mood strikes me.


Here's the Garden Path shawl in progress; depressingly, I believe I am less than 1/3 done nowhere close to even thinking about finishing, though I am whaling on the chart pattern. The color here is fairly accurate; who'd of thought I'd be knitting in pink?


In real life, the eyelet detail is not nearly this clear without blocking. Then when I look through my camera viewfinder, poof! All is made clear. Ain't technology grand?