Surprise

Tree Patterns yesterday in Okanagan Falls Provincial Park

Busy as a Beaver. A freshly-felled Tree....

Hanne wondering where the snow is this year....

A Gaggle Of Geese, Okanagan River

There are quite a lot of ways of expressing surprise in English. Here are a few of them. " You could have knocked me down with a feather!"  " He knocked my socks off!"  "That boggles my mind!" "They stopped me dead in my tracks!" "Wonders will never cease!"  However these days we have to move faster and don't have spare time enough to enunciate long sentences so we need shorter ones, like "Wow!" "Really?" But the one that takes the prize for surprize nowadays is "OMG". This originated in chat rooms and I am told is used by young dumb blondes who can't write in long hand. However I don't think that applies any more as the expression is used now more in long-hand by almost everyone for the last twenty years at least. I think it stands for "Oh My God", and in the religion-non-offending form "Oh My Gosh" or "Oh my Goodness" which seem quite meaningless. There are other translations of OMG naturally. I am not offended by this prize-winning expression but must admit it is getting to be tiring hearing it all the time everywhere. As in eating porridge every day for breakfast. I wonder what the next one will be?