Leadership training takes lots of asses

Polecat is at a leadership training exercise. It's an intense, multi-day event with almost all outside contact cut off. It's important to assess your progress during these events and to assess where you are professionally. It's also important not to pronounce 'assess' and 'asses' the same way.

Walk your lunch...

or, edible pets.

It can be quite a lot of work to bring lunch from one place to another. You have to hold it, your hands aren't free. If you have a drink too, how will you open doors? (You don't open doors for people?! You are a terrible person.) And yet, during lunch time, especially on a nice day, people are often out walking their pets. If only we had edible pets. They would be a sort of living, walking, tofu dog -- the pet would need to be edible without cooking, or you could only go for long walks on very hot days and that would mean that you'd need to live in Texas, which would mean that you'd never eat tofu, unless it was made of meat.

On a related note, I wonder how salamanders taste.

He has his way with animals

Special guest awk moment from 'the French'.

We have recently learned from the French (specifically from Frenchy McFrencherson -- who is, for the record, not at all Irish) that there is a drastic difference between the sentence:

"He has a way with animals." (Animals like him) and
"He has his way with animals." (He likes animals, a lot)

"So, you have genital herpes"

I think it's important to start by thinking about how to frame a topic of conversation. You may say something like: "I have a question about similar sounding terms that seem to be totally unrelated", or "I don't understand why it's called genital heart disease". The latter would quickly pinpoint the misunderstanding and therefore the question that should be posed and the issue to be elucidated. These are both much better ways to start a conversation than turning to the person sitting next to you and saying: "So, you have genital herpes [for the record, very not true]". This is, well, just not the right way to start a question about word meanings and origins.

This brings us to the next point; genital != congenital != genetic. Polecat obviously needs to watch more episodes of House, or ER (omg, that show is still on the air?!), or some other suitable medical drama (maybe Scrubs?).

Time to clarify. Genetic is something that is inherited, through one's genes. Congenital is something that is present at birth (there are Latin work origins and stuff), genital is where no one here has herpes.

Why isn't it 'the blood'?

So when it's on the floor, it's 'the blood is on the floor.' When you're talking about biting and it ends up making someone bleed, you 'draw blood', not 'draw the blood'.

Polecat, you're scaring me.

Swap meat?

I fail at understanding the meaning of "swap meet". Someone said it and I though it's "swap meat" ... a gathering where people exchange partners or something... that... partners... have.

Sauce pants

Polecat just cooked a large Polish dinner for teh other kittehs. While everyone was waiting in suspense for the food to be finished, Polecat spilled some food on his pants. Thus Polecat had sauce pants. Polecat didn't know this was different from what the waiting people felt. There was quite a build-up of sauce pants until the food was ready.