Seventy-one: Weekend in Las Vegas
Mark:Hi, Mark Kaufmann here for the EnglishLingQ Podcast.
Again, I'm here today with Jill. How's it going Jill?
Jill: Good thanks. How are you?
Mark: I'm good. How was your weekend?
Jill: Oh, it was fine; it was good. It was not very nice weather here, yesterday in particular, but actually just spent a lot of time with Chris' family one day and then with my family the next day, so yeah, it was nice. Mark: That's a good thing to do on a rainy weekend.
Jill: Eat a lot. I baked some cookies and then hung out, you know, with my nieces and nephews, so.
Mark: Well yeah, because it's cool and like really raining.
Jill: Yeah, when we say it's raining, it was really raining hard.
Mark: Some real Vancouver weather. I was able to miss a fair bit of it, although I was here last night. I mean it just poured last night. Yeah, no, I was fortunate enough to be in Las Vegas from Friday night until Sunday morning. Well, it's nice and sunny there anyway. A bit windy one day, but I can see why those southern cities in the states are growing so quickly. Like the Sun Belt, there's just a lot of migration I think from the cooler northern parts of the states to the southern parts.
Jill: I think even places like Las Vegas, I've been there before in January and cooler months and it's certainly cool. It's not pool weather. You're wearing a jacket and pants, but it's still sunny most of the time and it's not usually really cold. It's still maybe, you know, 15 degrees and sunny the majority of the time and dry, so the winters are quite mild even though they sort of get a winter.
Mark: Right.
Jill: I mean, I think in some ways it's nicer to go then than it is in the middle of their summer when it's, you know, 40 degrees Celsius there.
Mark: When you don't want to go outside.
Jill: Exactly.
Mark: I think I've been there maybe in May.
Jill: Scorching.
Mark: It was hot and that's not even, you know, the real summer. I can only imagine July and August. You just can't go outside probably.
Jill: I've been there in April and May before as well and had 100 degree or 35-40 degree weather and I don't think it gets too much hotter in the middle of the summer. I think, basically, from about April through September it's pretty much between 30 and 40 degrees every day. I'd want to leave I think for a few of those months. It would be hard to take.
Mark: Yeah, I guess where in a lot of northern climates you end up spending a lot of the winter indoors because it's not nice outside, in the heat in the southern places you spend a fair bit of the summer indoors with the air conditioning on. Anyway, it was a bit of a tiring weekend for me.
Jill: It's rough. Vegas is rough.
Mark: Vegas is a tough town. Yeah, no, it was sort of a reunion of my college hockey teammates. Actually, there didn't end up being that many of us that made it unfortunately. Three guys I guess backed out at the last minute, which was too bad, but we still had fun.
Jill: How many were there?
Mark: There were only five of us.
Jill: Five of you.
Mark: Actually, there was a sixth guy. One of the guys brought a friend with him, so that was good, so we had six of us. One of the guys I hadn't seen in, I don't know, 15 years, something like that.
Jill: Oh wow.
Mark: Like he was there in my first year.
Jill: The first year that you started going?
Mark: No, when I went to university. When I was a first-year guy on the team he was in his final year. He was a senior, so he was, whatever, four years ahead of me. I think I probably haven't seen him since the end of that year, so that was a long time. It was kind of fun. He lives in Los Angeles. He, I don't know, writes movies, I guess. He writes and he is trying to produce movies and so. I don't know how successful he is. I think it's…
Jill: …a struggle.
Mark: I think he's making progress, but it's a long, hard road. There are a lot of people that want to make movies. Yeah, anyway, it was good to see him. It was fun. Most of the guys were guys from my year, so it's always good to see those guys. I mean, when we were at school we spent a lot of time together.
Jill: Yeah.
Mark: Now we all live in different parts of North America.
Jill: That's great; a reunion.
Mark: It would have been better with everybody there, but it's still fun.
Jill: Yeah, I guess people have their busy lives and kids and
Mark: …it gets tough.
Jill: …different things going on and they can't always get away.
Mark: Exactly, yeah. So yeah, other than that, here we are, Monday, ready for our regular feature. Since we launched our new Forum on LingQ last week, we're now able to start grabbing questions from our new Forum, which is great. You've got a couple there lined up, but why don't you get us started.
Jill: Okay. From the Ask Your Tutor Forum we have a few I guess phrases that people have been asking about and one is “burning a hole; burning a hole.” Really, it's “burning a hole in my pocket” or “in your pocket.”
Mark: Right, as opposed to, yeah, I mean, just burning a hole is…
Jill: It literally means to, yeah, burn a hole through your sweater or, you know, whatever, using heat to make a hole in something. But, in this case, if we say burning a hole in our pocket or in my pocket or I think we said, in this case, it was burning a hole in my account.
Mark: Right.
Jill: It was to do with a…
Mark: Or points in my account; burning a hole in my pocket or whatever. A good example would be if you were in Las Vegas and you had money in your pocket that you want to spend or you want to gamble with or you want to do something with, basically, that money is burning a hole in my pocket.
Jill: You really want to spend it. You want to get rid of it.
Mark: That's right.
Jill: We talk about that with people who can never save any money, too. We say, you know, money burns a hole in their pocket. It just seems like those people always want to spend every cent that they have, so you don't necessarily have to have money in your pocket to be using that expression, but just people who want to spend money very badly.
Mark: Right.
Yeah, exactly, when you are in a situation where you want to spend money now. I guess if you kind of picture it in your minds eye, maybe you've got this money in your pocket, it's burning a hole in your pocket, so you want to get it out of your pocket and spend it fast
Jill: Exactly.
Mark: …before it burns a hole in your pocket.
Jill: Exactly.
And then another one was “long haul.” We often talk about something being a long haul, meaning being a long process; a difficult process; something that is maybe time consuming or just very emotionally taxing or physically stressful or demanding.
Mark: I mean, I guess it's like long term, long haul, kind of means the same thing. Short term versus long term and long haul essentially means long term. Over the long haul is a very common expression that you hear.
Jill: They are two different meanings, really. Over the long haul is sort of in the long term, but long haul can also mean…if something is a long haul…it was a really long haul to finish that race or something, meaning it was a struggle. It was very difficult for you, so it can be used I think in a couple of different senses.
Mark: Right.
Jill: And then the other one was “get me very far” or “get very far.” I think you actually answered that question on the Forum.
Mark: On the Forum? I did, I did. Yeah, I mean, get very far…I can't remember what the example was now, but you talk about, you know, in the case of going back to Las Vegas, if I show up in Las Vegas with $5.00 in my pocket it's not going to get me very far because you need money in Las Vegas to do things and so, basically, yeah, it means essentially not very much, in a way.
Jill: Yeah, you're not going to get very…
Mark: You just don't have much. You don't have much money; it's not going to get you very far. In this case, actually, it was talking about vocabulary. If you study beginner content and you learn all the words in the beginner content, I think in the example they said well, that's not going to get you very far because relative to the amount of vocabulary that you need to speak well, the beginner vocabulary that you've managed to learn and even if you've learned it well, is such a small amount relative to what you need to learn that it's not going to get you very far.
Jill: You're still not going to be able to communicate very well in the language because you still don't know enough vocabulary.
Mark: Exactly.
Jill: Those were the three questions.
Mark: Well, that's good. I think we're kind of done for the day.
Jill: We'll be back Wednesday.
Mark: We'll be back Wednesday with another Ask Your Tutor segment or Ask the Linguist segment. Make sure to get your questions in for Steve into the Forum, you know, either in the Ask Your Tutor Forum or in any of the other Forums. Any of you listening that are not Plus or Premium members, your questions are still more than welcome. Please just submit them in any of the other Forums.
Jill: The EnglishLingQ.
Mark: The EnglishLingQ Forum, actually…good point Jill…and we'll try to answer them.
Jill: Exactly, alright.
Mark: Okay, see you Wednesday.
Jill: Thanks.
