Poetry and a bit of rambling

This needs to be said:

Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific,
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific.
Loftily poised in the ether capacious,
Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous.

The internet tells me this poem is by John Raymond Carson

I saw the word "fain" in my A.Word.A.Day daily vocabulary email and recalled this poem. I had to look it up to get all the words right. Then of course I had to share it with you.

If you'd like a word every weekday in your mailbox, and I recommend it, subscribe at https://wordsmith.org/awad/subscribe.html 

One of my favorite parts of the Word.A.Day email is the "thought for today" which is a quote, usually from someone famous, sometimes having to do with world events, most frequently from someone who was born on said day. From last Thursday: 

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. -Tzvetan Todorov, philosopher (b. 1 Mar 1939) 

My goodness I sound like a commercial. Don't mean to! Honestly! 

I spent most of last week in western Pennsylvania with Light and her fiance. I sewed the sample dress to take up there for the fitting. So glad I did, too, because it is all wrong. I learned a lot about how NOT to put together this dress. Useful information, though somewhat frustrating.  I have all the materials I need to make a third sample dress, and that's my project for this week. I've barely begun, and right now I'm extremely tired. 

My lungs started feeling tight yesterday. I've been using my inhaler, so yay me. I have a bit of a cough; it's rough and unproductive. And oh lordy I'm so tired. When I finish this post I plan to take a nap. 

And since anything else I can think to tell you is too complicated to jot down quickly, I believe I'm finished. 

nighty-night

Things I find interesting

I share "thoughts for today" with you occasionally. Many come from A.Word.A.Day. Today's Word.A.Day is honcho. Here, let me show you.

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg
honcho

PRONUNCIATION:

(HAWN-choh) 

MEANING:

noun: One who is in charge of a situation; leader; boss.
verb tr.: To organize, manage, or lead a project, event, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Japanese honcho, from hon (squad) + cho (chief). Earliest documented use: 1947.

USAGE:

“The three head honchos are the recipients of the Best CEO Award.”
Cool Heads and Calm Nerves at the Helm; The Business Times (Singapore); Aug 12, 2013.

Explore "honcho" in the Visual Thesaurus. 
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you. -Rwandan proverb
And I've included the thought for today which I find to be very true.
Honcho, it turns out, is a Japanese word. Huh, that surprises me. I thought it was Spanish.

I am home with Diva today. She's behaving herself well. Yesterday she acted like a mean bitch, but today she's doing well so far. I've had her doing some work, though not a lot. I don't have the gumption to drive her harder right now. She's reading Elie Wiesel's Night in her English class. I have a copy, and my plan is to read to her from the book later in the afternoon. She doesn't read very well. I could have her read the book herself, but she will bitch about it (probably) and either won't do it, or will pretend to do it and not get anything out of it.

I read some of my favorite blogs today. It's been a while since I read most of these blogs. I love reading what sort of things my blog buddies are up to. Why don't I do it more often? Maybe it's the depression thing. Or perhaps it just takes too much time. Yeah, I've been sitting here for a couple of hours reading blogs when I could have (should have) been doing other useful things. I have stuff to accomplish today. Sitting on my fat ass reading blogs isn't one of them.

Twitch moved out!! We (Superman and I) drove him to Charleston on Saturday, left him in a cute little apartment with a couple of other young guys, friends of his. Operative word is "left." Not French gauche left, but abandoned left. "Left without him." Oh, it's good to have one fewer character living in this house. One of the things I want to accomplish today (this week) is to move the rest of his stuff out of the room he's been staying in and move MY stuff into it, to reclaim it as my office. This is a glorious thing. Though I think I'll paint it before it gets crowded up with my junk. What color? Don't know yet. We have LOTS of extra paint hanging around the house, cans we've used for other things. We have a lot of ugly green paint, and I don't want that. We also have some pink, some dark purple, and a few yellows. I'm thinking yellow would look nice in there. Maybe pink, but probably not. Pink can be nice, but it's easy to overdo the pink.

Superman is coming home for lunch soon, so I'm gonna get this posted and heat up some of the left over chili that's taking up room in my refrigerator.

Filipedulous

filipendulous
Pronunciation: (fi-li-PEN-juh-luhs, -PEN-dyoo-)
Meaning: adjective: Hanging by a thread.
Etymology:  From Latin filum (thread) + pendere (to hang). Ultimately from the Indo-European root (s)pen- (to draw, to spin), which is also the source of pendulum, spider, pound, pansy, pendant, ponder, appendix, penthouse, depend, and spontaneous. Earliest documented use: 1864.

This is the A.Word.A.Day word in my inbox this morning. How very appropriate.

Perhaps I've been navel gazing a bit too much. Or perhaps my life is currently in the shitter. Or a combination of both. 

I'm not a fun person to be around these days. And I'm afraid I may have inadvertently insulted a friend. That hurts as much as anything else going wrong in my life right now. 

Never mind. Move along. Nothing to see here, folks.

Maybe I need some lolcats therapy. 

Today's word

expatiate

PRONUNCIATION:

(ek-SPAY-shee-ayt)

MEANING:

verb intr.
1. To speak or write at length.
2. To move about freely.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin exspatiatus, past participle of exspatiari (to wander or digress), from ex- (out) + spatiari (to walk about), from spatium (space).

Boy, does this describe me or what? Especially the first definition. I like the Latin exspatiari - to wander or digress. That is so me!

an interesting word to brighten your weekend

borborygmus

PRONUNCIATION:

(bor-buh-RIG-muhs) 

MEANING:

noun: A rumbling noise caused by the movement of gas through the intestines. 

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek borborygmos (intestinal rumbling), an onomatopoeiac word to describe the sound. 

NOTES:

Borborygmi are usually harmless, they are simply a result of gas movement around the stomach. And the rumbling sound doesn't mean one is hungry either. We can't really do anything about the sound of a stomach growling, but we can take comfort in the fact that at least we know a fancy word to describe it. 

And, as a bonus, a compelling thought

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE) 

George Santayana was on to something

Today's quote from A Word A Day is:

All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
-George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

My prayer is that the younger generations are ready to cope with homosexuality, that sexual orientation will soon be a non-issue. This quote provides one possible explanation for why homophobia exists in its current form today. From my study I find things aren't as bad now as they were in western culture a generation or two ago. But there is a long way to go before we are not judged by our sexual orientation.