Pet Peeves 

I live in Wisconsin. You can't live in Wisconsin without being completely inundated with news about the Green Bay Packers. It's just the way it is, especially if you like football as I do. Now then, I'm not a Packer fan (not that I have anything against them), I'm actually a Kansas City Chiefs fan, but that's not the point of this particular post.

Anyone familiar with the Green Bay Packers (or NFL football for that matter) knows of the "Frozen Tundra", which is the nickname for Lambeau Field (the Green Bay Packer's stadium). This name has always bothered me. Its redundant. Here is the definition from dictionary.com

tun·dra (tŭn´drə)
n.
A treeless area between the icecap and the tree line of Arctic regions, having a permanently frozen subsoil and supporting low-growing vegetation such as lichens, mosses, and stunted shrubs.

So calling it Frozen Tundra is really calling it Frozen Frozen Ground (it's really really frozen, not just frozen). Ironically, there are heating coils under the grass now, so it hasn't been frozen in a really long time anyway (although the stadium itself gets damned cold). Someone who didn't know better would probably infer from this use that tundra was really just another word for ground, field, or turf or something. Of course I had thought that most people probably do know what tundra actually means so no worries... until yesterday when I heard a radio commercial for a local spa advertising gift certificates for Father's Day. They talked about how you should get the gift certificates instead of say, a round of golf where he can be frustrated on the green tundra. Green tundra? Its summer, the golf course is no longer frozen, and even during the winter its really not tundra. Tundra is not just ground folks.

Oh well. Just one of those little things I tend to pick up on.