Have the rules changed?

I understand about regional accents which affect pronunciation but why can't the rules still be followed? I'm getting more and more annoyed by the pronunciation of "the"... specifically before a word starting with a vowel. You're supposed to pronounce it as "Thee" before one of those words, "thee egg", "thee evening" or "thee others" but in more and more commercials on television, it's been jumping at me, "the others" instead of "thee", over and over. I don't know if they think it's cute or down-home like but it's seriously irritating me! You might be a bit sloppy with your every day speech and say things like that but if you're trying to sell a product on the air, wouldn't it be prudent to pronounce things correctly? It's like the epidemic of misplaced apostrophes that seems to be running rife these days. Professional signs advertising "Pizza's" when they aren't talking about the something belonging to the pizza. Someone writing an email or article on a website with missing apostrophes or putting them where they don't belong. It looks unprofessional and it looks ignorant. I was in a pub in Toronto where the sign painted over the loos was "Ladie's" Sheesh!

Anyway.

Didn't go to the family party this afternoon because apparently the host isn't feeling too well either. An awful lot of people are suffering this flu this week! I thought i might be getting it back too, judging from the amount of time i spent in the loo this morning but all seems well at the moment (*knock on wood, er... porcelain?*) Tomorrow am supposed to hook up with my friend for a belated gift exchange and i *will* get out of this apartment even if the weather outside is frightful! (Well, cold, which it has been all week!)

My mailbox was filled with some quite diverse items today. In addition to a couple of bills (*paid with automatic debit*), there were a few christmas cards (Thanks kixie and naturalbornkaos), a newsletter from my MP (*bin*), and a packet of microwave popcorn! Cool!

I have lovely soft Ocean Salted and Lemony Fluttered (LUSH) hands and feet today. They feel and smell very nice! My dining room table is covered in stuff, two printers (one replaced with a new all-in-one) in various state of functionality, a cd burner (replaced by a dvd burner), a flat bed scanner (replaced with a new all-in-one), various cables and a battery charger. And ink for one of the printers. One printer needs a new print head cartridge and the other installs better with older Windows systems though it will go with XP as it was working on my puter ok. The scanner works very well. Have the software cd's for them all. What am i going to do with it all? (well, not the charger, that's new and it's not going anywhere). If anyone wants any of it, cheap, let me know.