Several strange things happened to me the other day. I got up early because the electrician came to fiddle around with the electrical outlet for our new stove. (It had been installed where it blocked the stove from being pushed all the way back.)
The first weird thing is that I went for a run at about 8 AM. I was amazed at the number of people who were out that early. I kept having to slow down or dodge around groups of school kids. It was also garbage / blue box day so I kept having to dodge around them on the sidewalk.
The second weird thing happened a few minutes into the run. I encountered a gaggle of school kids and a row of garbage cans while I was beside a large truck parked in the road. Because I couldn't pass I slowed down. As I did so, I glanced over at the blue box. Sitting on top of it was an Oxford English Dictionary.
I'm not talking about one of those largish books that you keep on your desk for essay writing. I'm talking about one of these (that's the best picture I could find). This is a two volume set that collects all the content from the full 20 volume OED. In order to accomplish this, each page has the contents of 9 pages from the full set. Because the print is so small, the box that holds the two volumes has a little drawer that holds a magnifying glass.
The magnifying glass was missing but then I guess no one would throw a magnifying glass in a blue box.
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2 comments:
Wow, nice find!
The current Compact OED is Second Edition; maybe they one you found was First, and the owners upgraded?
For geeky types, the Shorter Oxford (which I have as 2 volume hard-copy) and Concise Oxford (which I kept at the office) are both available for Android and that other iPlatform.
It was a nice find though I wonder if I should have knocked on the door and asked for the magnifying glass.
On a geeky note, remember when we were at Waterloo and it was a huge deal that UW had been chosen to computerise the OED? I wonder if any of that is in the cellphone versions.
(Also the date on the post seems to have gotten messed up somehow.)
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