I got bad news this week.
It's the best kind of bad news to get, really. No one is sick or dead, and it's a problem I can handle. I just wasn't really expecting it to happen so soon, and it's going to take time and money I hadn't anticipated spending right now.
The bad news is that my beloved late 2014 iMac with its retina display and incredible graphics, is living out its last days. "Unfortunately your iMac has reached the point of obsolescence," said my Mac guy. We discussed the telltale signs of its impending demise, and he is encouraging me to back up and replace sooner rather than later, since this machine is a critical tool for my trade. I can't risk its failure in the middle of Grammar for Grown-Ups Two, for example, or the loss of files I hadn't backed up yet.
I bought this Mac in November of 2014, right in the middle of a messy and expensive divorce. I had replaced the fan myself in the moribund laptop I was using for everything then. Twice. I ended up replacing that laptop and buying the iMac together in some kind of bundle from Apple or from Best Buy, on credit, and taking two years to pay it off. When I moved across the country another year later, the iMac was driven door-to-door in my own car, and it was the first thing I set up in my new digs. It has served me well here for another eight years, but now, its time has come.
For the past couple of days, then, I've been organizing files and making sure everything is backed up, and I've come across a lot of work I'd kind of forgotten about. One was a document on English vowels that I prepared for an internship client a year or two, and it's really thorough!
Here's a taste:
And that's followed by a long inventory of such loanwords, organized by their etymology.
Here's another:
I wanted to be able to get 65 Weeks out before offering anything new, but now that that albatross is almost out of the nest, I'm happy to offer it to the public – and at a discount to Shameless Spelling subscribers – in order to help fund my ginormous unexpected purchase.
Here's a link to purchase this resource. The coupon code is behind the paywall. Please contact me for licensing on multiple downloads.