Also, it's Random Tuesday Facts once again and I have a couple for you.
1) For those in the U.S.: Unless it's high travel season and you're on a tight schedule with no wiggle space, don't book a hotel in advance. Pick up one of those Travel Coupon booklets, such as this one
and save yourself a ton of money. A nice young man at the Comfort Inn in Fruita, CO, told us that it's way better than the AAA discount of 10%. He said that our coupon saved us $30 for that particular motel.2) A friend remarked about something being "ironic" and it reminded me that many people misuse the word "irony" when they mean "coincidence". Irony is defined as (and I'll use the Dictionary.com definitions since they're very similar to the ones in my American Heritage Dictionary definitions): 1) the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, "How nice!" when I said I had to work all weekend; 2) an outcome of events contrary [emphasis mine] to what was, or might have been, expected, as well as the incongruity of this.
Coincidence, on the other hand, is defined as: 1) a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance: Our meeting in Venice was pure coincidence; 2) the condition or fact of coinciding.
My favorite memory of learning the meaning of irony was in grade 8: the English teacher showed us a cartoon with the headline, "Olympic swimmer drowns in bathtub" - morbid but a great way to demonstrate irony!
"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~ Johann von Goethe
