Weekend buzzwords

It's the weekend, and for those who speak in business buzzwords Monday through Friday, days off can be difficult. No boss or officemates around for you to dazzle with the latest neologism—usually one that's ugly and conveys little. To keep you from suffering the verbal equivalent of the bends, here are some words you can use for weekends. They'll keep those buzzword muscles in shape until you can get back to full-scale training on Monday.

Getting up=Offbedding
Brushing teeth=Posthalitosisizing
Blowing nose=Outsnotting
Eating=Preplumping
Exercising=Upmuscling
Bathing=Disgriming
Washing windows=Streakifying
Cutting grass=Downshearing
Trimming trees=Delimbinating
Running errands=Merchant lapping
Napping=Incouchification

Please share your own. We can build a whole new dictionary of meaningless phrases. Oh, wait, American business has done that already.

Sometimes You Just Have to Laugh

It's giggle day around the office. I just read a wonderful description of a piece of real estate that's recently been offered for sale. The house features a private garden with a paver patio and a "coy pond." Well, that's refreshing. So many ponds these days are overbearing and pushy. Koi perhaps? As in carp?

Here's another amusing example of a proofreader's being asleep at the switch. According to an article in The Washington Post, the cholesterol drug Vytorin "didn't help slow the build-up of ... plaque in a long-awaited study." I didn't know the study was plagued by plaque. I think Vytorin is supposed to clean plaque out of arteries. A spokesman for the company says, "more favorable results" would have been preferable. Yeah.