Uber Confused ? ? ?

I had never heard of the word Uber before until Jody purchased a cross stitch pattern called Uber Pumpkin.   When we looked at the pattern I said:

What is Uber? 

I dunno. 

Is that the pumpkins name? 

I dunno. 

What does it stand for?

I dunno.

Is that the designer of the pattern?

I dunno.

Is it a type of pumpkin?

I dunno.

(those of you who know what it means…stop laughing and keep reading)

I don’t’ get it.  It’s got to mean something.

  

We kept looking at the pattern to see if it could tell us anything about Ms. Uber designer or Mr. Uber printer, or company Uber.  Of course, we found nothing.   We couldn’t use Jody’s internet to Wiki it so we decided to distract ourselves by eating the 11 pounds of candy that Jody displayed on the coffee table. 

When I got home, I could stand it no longer and I had to contact two of my trusted advisors Wiki & Webster to see what they had to say about Uber.

This is what Wiki told me:

 Über (sometimes spelled ueber, uber, the former being a correct form in German just like über; German pronunciation:  comes from the German language. It has one umlaut. It is a cognate of both Latin super and Greek ὑπέρ (hyper). It is also sometimes used as a hyphenated prefix in informal English, usually for emphasis.

Television

One of the first popular modern uses of the word as a synonym in English for super was a Saturday Night Live TV sketch in 1979. The sketch, What if?, pondered the notion of what if the comic book hero Superman had landed in Nazi Germany when he first came from Krypton. Rather than being called Superman, he took the name of Überman.^[3] In the kids' television show Animalia, Alex uses the word "uberly" a lot for emphasis.

 

This is what Webster told me:

über-prefix \ˈü-bər, ˈue-bər\

Definition of ÜBER-

1: being a superlative example of its kind or class : super- <übernerd>

2: to an extreme or excessive degree : super- <übercool

So, there you have it: emphasis; super; extreme.  I'm not sure why the pumpkin was an Uber; perhaps it was his super smile, or his extreme pattern?  Just in case you've never seen an Uber pumpkin before: see below for the example picture. (I haven't actually photographed Jody's completed project yet) 

From then on, as is the norm when you discover something new, we saw Uber everywhere. Tracey and I were on one of our adventures in Port Huron at Mary Maxim's and we found all kinds of Uber patterns we had never seen before.  Go figure. 

 Since we all have our own favourite style of patterns, if one of us happens to come across a pattern that we think the other will be interested in, we’ll forward the picture in an email.  Comments then start flying back and forth such as: Uber Simple, Uber Complicated, Uber Quick-Fix, Uber Gorgeous and once when a pattern didn’t quite suit our taste, we all agreed - Oh! Uber Scary face on that one !!  Uber was the new buzz word for us.

In December when southwestern Ontario was hit with the 'state-of-emergency' snowstorm of the decade, emails were flying around like crazy:  Bonnie where are you?  You aren't answering emails? Pleeeeeaaase tell me you are not stranded on that 402 Hwy !!!!  Bonnie, did you try to go into work today?? Bonnie ......answer !!!

Tracey's husband told me the night before, "Bonnie, You're not going in to work tomorrow by the looks of this weather forecast."  So in the morning, I had taken Paul's advice, watched the forecast, called my boss and went back to bed. By the time I got to the computer, that morning there were Uber emails.  I was touched by everyone's concern and I promptly replied that I was home safe and sound and exclaimed  "It's an Uber snowstorm out there!!!"   Thank goodness I didn't attempt to go into work because normally, I would have taken that exact route where people were stranded  for more than 24 hours.   I was Uber lucky. 

In April I hosted Cross Stitch Night and I decided to make an old family favourite dessert called Butterfly Tarts. When I was little, my mother would spend a great deal of time creating these tasty masterpieces.  She made her famous homemade pie crust and placed it in tart tins; added a heaping teaspoon of homemade strawberry jam; and filled the tart shell with white cake mix.  Bake as you would a cupcake; remove from oven and cool.  Once cooled  mom would carefully slice off the top part of the cake and set it aside; she then iced the top of the tart with butter icing.  Then she took the sliced off piece of cake and cut the circle in half; she took the flat edges and set them into the icing on an angle to represent butterfly wings.  Then she would sprinkle the wings with powdered icing sugar to look like a speckled butterfly.  

I have since learned that these delicious tarts are consumed far too rapidly to go to that much effort.  So my version consists of store bought shells and no wings. I simply put icing on the top of the tart once cooled.  They were an Uber hit at the cross stitch meeting and I think I'll have to rename them Uber Butterfly tarts.  I wish I had a picture of one of my mothers creations to show you.  Someday perhaps I'll make them the old fashioned way just so I can post a picture for you, but  I'm Uber busy right now....

Bonnie