Wonderful Wacky Words

February 8, 2011

Those of you who have read from the beginning know that I have a deep affection for words. My homepage on the computer is Google and I have customized it to include many features, one of my favorites being Dictionary.com's Word of the Day. You get one word a day to ponder and some of them are beauts. I make a game out of making up definitions for the words I don't know then I head to Dictionary.com to see how close I was. Here are some of my favorites:

Lickerish –  the accepted phonetic spelling for licorice

Creolize  –  adding okra

Prink - A prank pulled while wearing pink

Homograph – a chart by which one ranks one’s gayness ranging from Manly Man firmly in Closet to Flaming Nelly

Jobbery – a factory that makes jobs

Mansuetude – an adjective which describes one’s manliness or possibly a noun for really pronounced beer bellies

Chatoyant – someone who knows what you are going to say before you do

Concupiscible – a garden area dedicated to peeing cupid statues or an ancient vessel in which concubines peed

Nympholepsy – (I admit this is my favorite and started this whole game I play with words.) a condition in which a nymphomaniac often unexpectedly falls asleep ( narcolepsy ) during the sex act… (maybe that’s why she can never get enough)

Now go look them up.

Winter Whine 2011

February 2, 2011

Ok...you all knew it was just a matter of time. Winter has reduced me to a whining wimp yet again. I have to share some pictures with you in an attempt to gain a modicum of sympathy. This first is the view from the windows in my computer room (the room where I commune with my blog Muse) and really says it all (but that's not going to stop me from getting my full whine's worth).

  The ice build up from the outside looked a bit like this  (a pic from great winters of the past) only worse,

and created an ice dam which ended up causing water to back up on the roof and seep into my attic in large quantities.This was discovered by the giant icicle which formed overnight from my garage ceiling to a corner of my daughter's car and greeted me at 6am as I was heading off to work. (The water finds pipes and things to run along thus making the journey from my roof to attic down two stories along a pipe to leak out and refreeze in my garage.) First call went to my plumber... I was thinking water from pipe equals plumbing problem you see. He called me back a bit later and explained the whole ice dam on roof scenario. This precipitated (hoho) a call to a wonderful handyman who tries to keep my house in order for me and $400 later the ice dam and all the snow on my roof was gone. For another $400 he is going to remove all the disgusting soaked stuff in my attic. My heating bill for the month of January was over $2000... I hope I am gaining a little sympathy from you all at this point.

What this has finally made me see is I can no longer afford to live up here in Winter's Wonderland... I wonder how I'll pay for my heating, I wonder if my pipes will freeze and burst, I wonder if we will have a lovely multiple day power outage, I wonder if my roof will collapse under all that snow etc. etc.... you get the drift (hoho). So I have come up with a 5 year plan and it is titled "Moving to the Virgin Islands" at the moment. Most of us wait until we have the money or feel all the circumstances are right before we make that final lovely move of our dreams, wherever that might be. I have had the startling revelation that I don't need to wait until I can afford it. I am struggling here so why should I care if I would be struggling there... at least I will be struggling in paradise! Yes, some pieces do have to fall into place, but not all that many so I am very hopeful that five years will see me far from winter's grasp.

Here's what I think. Every now and then we should all look at our goals and see if we are throwing up any unnecessary road blocks. Look for any viable shortcuts to fulfillment. And oh yes... winter sucks!!