On Nov 27, 2005, at 16:31, Janice Blair wrote:
I know that Tamara has T N LACE on her car plate but I was wondering
if anyone can think of a good lacemaking personalized plate. I used
to have ALIEN when I first came to the U.S. because I had to carry an
Alien card around with me. I am now a citizen so that does not apply
but the only thing I can think of is LACE MKR and that has been taken
in Illinois. Do you have a personalized lacemaking plate in your
state or can you bright spiders think of anything related to Bobbin
Lace or Tatting that would make a good plate? Send them to the chat
list as it has been quiet in recent weeks, maybe we can come up with a
list of them for future reference. I believe if it includes a number
the plate is cheaper.
First off... Congratulaions on your citizenship - it's a heady feeling,
when you exchange that Visa card/drivers licence look-alike for a real
passport, no? <g>
I actually wanted T&LACE for my car (once I learnt to drive, that is
<g>) but, can you believe it? It was already "taken" in VA (I think by
Tamara Webb, near DC)... You probably should come to Ithaca one year -
the parking lot of the hotel is *full* of cars with personalized
licence plates related to lacemaking and all are imaginative - you
could maybe find one from another state that you could borrow for
yours.
I'm Bcc-ing this to two Virginians - both of whom have lace-related
plates and both of whom have loads of imagination, so might create more
plate suggestions. Also to some other US-Arachneans who are not on
lace-chat and of whose car plates I have no knowledge, but who tend to
have bright ideas. And, to my DS, who's a long-suffering lace-orphan,
with an unseemly liking for puns and other word-games... :)
As far as I know, in VA, it makes no difference whether it's all
letters/symbols or all numbers - the price for a personalized set of
plates is the same. But, if a number is likely to lower the price in
Illinois... How about:
LACE4ME
TAT4FUN
No numbers:
B-L-ACE (alternatively: BL ACE, but I like the first better)
BLDZINE
JANSBL
LACEBUG (best on the smallest Volksvagen, to keep 'em guessin' <g>)
I'd also talk to teenagers; what with their "cell texting", they're
real whizzes at scrunching words down to the absolute minimum :) I
don't know what the limit is in Illinois, but in VA it's (I think) 8
characters (letters, symbols, numbers, spaces) for most plates, but 7
for some others, so I stuck with 7 as the limit, to be on the safe
side.
For non-US Arachneans who, doubtless, are reading this and are
*appalled* at our frivolity... :) Unlike in many other countries,
personalized licence plates here are dirt cheap. The prices vary, from
state to state, but no state charges "enough to feed an African village
for a year" as one of my UK correspondents wrote once, fulminating...
In VA, they're probably cheaper than anywhere else - $50 on top of the
usual plate fee, but only the first time around. Afterwards, you pay -
once a year (a small discount if you pay for 2 yrs at a time <g>) -
only for the stickers, like everyone else. So, we play around with the
plates' messages a lot...
My first set was: NU2THIS - a fair warning, though only people who'd
seen me try to parallel park fully understood it :)
My second set was MBVLENT - I learnt to drive late and against my
better judgement.
The third set I wanted I never got; my DS still shared the car with me
at the time, and he objected to driving one which said FMK9 (a femme
canine = bitch). So I came up with TNLACE, and was asked: "why
Tennessee lace, if you're in Virginia?" (TN is short for Tennessee,
like VA is short for Virginia). The next - and last - set was T N LACE.
My DH is only on his second set of personalized plates; he resisted the
craze for quite a while :) The current one, which he acquired at
retirement, says: 2DLDDUV. Nobody can interpret it correctly, which
ticks him off, but he's too lazy to think up another one :) He *says*
that, when he was young, "toodleedee" meant "goodbye". So the whole
says "goodbye, Duv (all)". I'm too young and too foreign to either
confirm or disprove his claim :)
My favourite licence plates...
QT. Seen in Norfolk, VA, and the girl driving the car was really good
looking :)
PB4UGO. Spotted in Lexington. The man said they had 4 kids, all under
12, and that that was what his wife said every time they were planning
to go somewhere as a family.
TH8ER. Another local plate, on a car belonging to the Washington and
Lee U prof who teaches "dramatic arts".
There's one - also belonging to a W&L prof (but in the physics dept) -
which compresseses "quantum physics" down to the prescribed limit. I
can read it, but can't remember how it goes.
GO4AU. Reported as seen in Colorado. A friend of mine who loves
"message plates" as much as I do, followed the guy and asked. He was
training for the Olympics and, obviously, had been taught enough
chemistry to know the symbol for gold... :)
There's a series of mysteries - can't remember who wrote it - where
each chapter ends with a licence plate "message", and the author
welcomes contributions from all over US. Most, naturally, are truly
"vanity" (that's what the personalized plates are called in VA); you
get your "SARAH D" and "MOM2KATE", with a matching DAD2KATE Suv in the
same driveway... :) But there are some that are truly clever.
Today's Washington Post "Outlook" section had an article on texting,
giving us 8 "puzzles" to decode (nsrs on a separate page <g>).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/25/
AR2005112501541.html
I had little trouble understanding any of them though wasn't able to
identify *both* the source and the author of the quote in more than
half (yeah, well, at the U I took my shortcuts too, and read most of
the Brit Lit in Polish. Or skipped reading it altogether, and stuck to
summaries <g>) And I can't imagine myself *ever* sending a cell-text;
far too much trouble to try and bastardise English on purpose, when
typos pop in uninvited...
BUT... I am - eagerly - looking forward to the next generation of
personalized car licence plates in US, produced by kids who text :)
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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