Petting my Peeves

I feel like this week is specially scheduled for working my nerves. Besides the metro Red Line still sucking, FedEx Office costing me extra work on a newsletter I'm volunteering to copy plus mail for a local garden club, and the weather going unseasonably chilly overnight, I'm running into my old pet peeves at every corner, like:

The seed company (who shall remain nameless) that I'm ordered custom seed packs from who sent me a proof of the packet with "Washington Gardner" on it. That "typo" always irks me, but I restrained myself and sent a gentle correction letting them know Gardener has two E's in it. Comes back "Gardneer" - deep breath, DEEP breath.

Then I'm on Twitter. Starting to notice that some folks just do NOT get it. Your follow/following numbers should be in the ball-park of each other. Not saying you should follow everyone or they should follow you, but 380-400 is a pretty good ratio, while 5-700 or 360-6 is not. If your ratio is that far off, what is the point and WHY are you on Twitter?

Drivers who make U-turns directly in front of my house into oncoming traffic. Just watched ANOTHER speeding sports car go up and over the median and demolish the street signs. Then follows an hour of tow-truck drama and scraping noises plus hearing the driver whine on their cell phone to their one friend loudly outside my office window. Appointment not so urgent now, is it?

Posting all of an article that you did not write or publish to your discussion lists, blogs, direct emails, etc. I know all of us want to see our local newspapers and favorite publications live on, so in that shared goal could we not copy whole articles and forward them? Instead, please just pull a headline and excerpt a few lines then give the link back to them so they get "credit." This helps in several ways besides giving them ad-click revenue and readership numbers, it allows folks on receiving in to choose whether they want to read further. Most of all it shows to the publishers what articles are getting clicked-on the most and believe me they keep a careful count of that. The more we click on articles on subjects that we like, the more we will get.

Off to do some aromatherapy in my garden, the smell of lavender always sets my mood back to normal.

PS I'll have subscriber table there signing and renewing folks & have single issues for sale at Friends of Brookside Gardens PLANT SALE on Sat 9/12 10am-3pm(ish) - if raining, I'm inside the Visitors Center lobby.