Slightly Off Kilter

W, X, Y, Z

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

I thought I should finish in 2006. So, here are W, X, Y, and Z.

W is For...

• Weblog - I have such fun writing my weblogs. I wish I had known about this wonderful idea so much earlier!

• Weird - That's me, a little bit weird. I don't mind.

• Wikipedia - proof that people aren't just couch potatoes and a collaborative encyclopedia project can work.

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V is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

V is For...

• Values - What are your values? Some of mine are: Work/Life Balance, Stability, Independence, Quality, Choice, Control, Time, Truth, Trust, Structure, Organization, Creativity, and Competence.

• Vanilla - Vanilla bean. Vanilla extract. Vanilla ice cream. A splash of vanilla in hot chocolate.

• Vanilla steamed milk.

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U is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

U is For...

• Umbrella - When I was little, I loved a book about Davey and the Big Yellow Umbrella. The umbrella was so large that Davey's father cut square holes in it, inserted clear plastic, and taped up the sides, so Davey could see through.

• Unix - I was introduced to the Unix operating system shortly after meeting Richard (who had recently purchased a Sun Microsystems workstation). Unix is my preferred operating system for programming. I've been working with Unix since 1983.

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T is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

T is For...

• Tail - Maine Coon cats have the most incredible plumey tails!

• Tapioca pudding - One of my favorite deserts. I prefer "real" tapioca pudding, not the "a few beads of tapioca in vanilla pudding" mix you get at most restaurants.

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S is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

S is For...

• San Francisco - The City. San Francisco defines our local metropolitan area. We visit often but I wouldn't want to actually live in the City. My sister and I visited San Francisco the year I graduated from College and she graduated from High School. I knew I would come back (and, a little over three years later, I did).

• Science - I "majored" in science in High School. I took every science class that was offered. We were required to take one science class in three years. I took two a year.

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R is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

R is For...

• Raccoons - We get raccoons in our back yard at night. They come to the feeder and eat seed or just walk back and forth on the sunroom roof. They're very cute. Sometimes I go out on the deck and toss marshmallows for them to eat.

• Rain - The sound of rain on the roof is a sound I can't hear often enough. I love a rainy night.

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Q is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

Q is For...

• QALITY - When I was playing Quality Lead, I got a license plate that read QALITY (note the missing U; it's a joke). So many people failed to "get" the joke that I applied for a new plate less than a year later.

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P is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

P is For...

• Peaches - Fresh peaches are one of my favorite seasonal fruits. Our local grocery store buys the most incredible peaches - huge but juicy and delicious.

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O is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

O is For...

• Oatmeal - I like oatmeal. When I was growing up and we'd visit my grandmother for a weekend, we always had oatmeal, with maple sugar, and bacon sandwiches for breakfast on Saturday morning. I'm fond of oatmeal cookies too.

• Ocean - Growing up in Central Pennsylvania, I didn't see a lot of ocean. Now we live a few miles from the Pacific. I really like that.

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N is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

N is For...

• Nap - I love to take naps, particularly when joined by one or more cats. (To be honest, I don't sleep as well without a cat.)

• Nature - When we go for walks, I'm always on the lookout for lizards, bunnies, deer, interesting plants, birds, and such. Once, we saw a king snake; another time, a garter snake. Once we even saw a turtle.

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M is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

M is For...

• Macintosh - The world's best computer (especially since Mac OS X) Mac OS - Mac OS has been my favorite desktop system since I started working for Apple in 1986..

• Mac OS X - My current operating system. The Mac look plus Unix underpinnings. Mac OS X: It Just Works.

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L is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

L is For...

• Laboratory - I've spent quite a bit of time in science labs of one sort or another. I "majored" in Science in High School and beyond. I have degrees in Microbiology. But I'm much happier out of the lab and working on the computer.

• Labyrinth - One of my favorite movies. Many of the Labyrinth cast members are muppets.

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K is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

K is For...

• Kahlua - One of three ingredients in my favorite mixed drink, a Toasted Almond.

• Kaleidoscope - Rich and I both enjoy looking through the moire fanciful kaleidoscopes, the ones made with glass chips and oil, for example. We have a few, relatively inexpensive models, purchased over the years at craft fairs.

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J is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

J is For...

• Jabberwocky - I have memorized Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. It's one of my favorite poems. Did you know that Lewis Carroll invented the word "chortle" (among others, now in common use) for the poem.

  "And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
  O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
  He chortled in his joy.

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I is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

I is For...

• I - I am Me. I am Vicki. I am...

• Ice Cream - The Penn State Creamery is famous for its Bittersweet Mint ice cream. They also made a heavenly Peach ice cream in the summer. My parent's church holds a Strawberry festival every June, at which the church ladies serve ice cream, strawberries, and your choice of cake. My Dad's favorite ice cream is chocolate marshmallow; my Mom's favorite is butter pecan. Although I love chocolate in many forms, I prefer vanilla ice cream.

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H is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

H is For...

• Hacker - Being a hacker is a good thing. In recent times, the word has been misused by the media, but it originally had only positive connotations. The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

• Hair - My hair is a medium auburn color and wavy (not curly). I like my hair. It kinks up in humid weather, which we had a lot of when I was living in Pennsylvania and Maryland. However, the weather in Northern California, where I live now, is perfect. My mother used to occasionally suggest I "do something about my hair". I don't think she had in mind my moving to California, but it worked.

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G is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

G is For...

• Gargoyle - I enjoy Gargoyles (sometimes called "grotesques". I visited the Yale campus once; there are lots of gargoyles. We have a small flying gargoyle protecting the front of our house.

• Garnet - My birthstone is garnet. I'm very fond of garnets because they are also my favorite color.

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F is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

F is For...

• Fantasy - One of my favorite fiction genres for reading.

• Feet - Specifically, feline feet. I love cat paws. Ooooh. Feline foot fetish!

• Felines - Cats cats, and all things feline from domestic puddy tats to siberian tigers. Prrrrrrrrrr.

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E is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

E is For...

• Eccentric - Blessed are the Cracked, for They Shall let in the Light.

• Eggs - What an amazing thing is an egg. The eggshell "breathes" (lets air in and out). An egg can turn into a chicken... or an omelet. Egg whites whip into fluffy mounds. Add sugar and bake, et voila! - meringue. My family used to gather around the kitchen table every year to decorate Easter Eggs. Scrambled, poached, fried, sunny side up (aka "dippy eggs") or over easy. Eggs are an equally fine choice for breakfast or a late-night snack. Egg salad makes a wonderful quick sandwich (especially, served warm on freshly toasted sourdough).

• Eggnog - Don't forget the eggnog during the winter holidays, with a sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg.

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D is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

D is For...

• Daffodils - Daffodils are one of my favorite flowers. I love the scent.

• Dates - Nature's candy. Medjool dates are the best!

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C is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

C is For...

• California - Where we live; it's a great place to live.

• Cardinals - Cardinals are one of my favorite types of bird. We had cardinals in Pennsylvania but we don't have any in California. They're one of the things I miss.

• Carnations - Carnations are my favorite "winter" flower. They smell like cinnamon.

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B is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

B is For...

• Bacon - Yummmm. I like my bacon extra crispy. Bacon and tomato (leave out the lettuce) on toasted sourdough or bacon and apple butter on toasted whole wheat with a bowl of oatmeal.

• BBEdit - my favorite text editor (for Mac OS)

• Bebop - Our majordomo and Cat-in-charge.

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A is For...

WordPlay: The Personal Dictionary Meme

(See the game description for further details.)

A is For...

• Aardvark - You can't have an alphabet without an Aardvark!

• Alert - one of my favorite punny jokes: Be alert. California needs more lerts. We're short of loofs too. How about fluents? (Two fs, dummy!)

• Alliteration - In writing, I work in ways to weave my words (alliteratively).

• Alphabet - Playing the game.

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More fun with Sp*m

You may have noticed that a typical spammer trick is to use a completely unrelated word or words in the subject and/or body of the message.

One of today's "quickie mortgage"junk mails had this

Subject: RE: overtakable VICKI BROWN bunolophodont

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WOTD: bombinate

bombinate \BOM-buh-nayt\, intransitive verb:
To buzz; to hum; to drone.

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Fun With Words

Fun-with-words.com, the Wordplay Web Site

Oooh. I've got to check this out. It's my kind of place! For people who love words as much as I do: Fun-with-words.com is dedicated to amusing quirks, peculiarities, and oddities of the English language: wordplay. Playing with words and language is both entertaining and educational. Here you can have plenty of fun with words with over 500 pages of word puzzles, games, amazing lists, and fun facts. Not to mention a book store, a gallery of funny signs, a wordplay articles index, puzzles, games, tongue twisters, and So Much More.

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Dropping the Pink Elephant

15 Ways to Say What You Mean...and Mean What You Say

Close your eyes and don't think of a Pink Elephant

According to author Bill McFarlan, the mind instantly ignores the "don't" and concentrates on the rest of the sentence. He's named these unnecessary (and futile) negatives in speech "pink elephants". When we add "pink elephants" to our conversations, we are often denying something we haven't been accused of! Yet, as a result, we receive the reaction we were trying so hard to avoid. ...
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Wordsaver

Rhaptopetalaceae			alegar
	abaft			dikaryon
undersaturation		cunctipotent
unavouched		foistiness		engulf
	nipperkin		skuddick
befumble		clockmutch		earwort

I found a new screensaver (for Mac OS X). It shows random words, lines, or paragraphs from text files. By default, it pulls words from /usr/share/dict/web2. They're great words.

The distribution also comes with a few files you might enjoy, including an (editable) set of quotes. Configuration options include the ability to choose random colors and fonts.

Cool!

Word Beads on Sentence Strings

When I was in Junior High, or thereabouts, a wonderful store opened downtown. It was called The Knothole and it sold jewelry findings - clasps, links, chains, pinbacks, ... and beads, hundreds of choices of beads. There were large beads, tiny beads, and every size in between. There were beads made of metal, glass, wood, plastic, and ceramic. There were plain beads and colored beads on every shade and hue: painted, glazed, or dyed. My sister and spent a lot of time there, choosing beads. We bought a lot of beads and strung them into necklaces for ourselves, our friends, and our family. It's a good memory.

Words in a sentence are like beads on a string. You can choose large ones, tiny ones, and any size in between. As with beads, you have a choice of many types, in this case nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and more. Your words can be plain or colorful.

Recently I ran across a journalling prompt idea in a writing list group I've joined. I thought it would make a good recurring weblog meme which I've called Word Beads on Sentence Strings. The idea is simple: ...
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Catch a Phrase

[ Today's meme is courtesy of Past, Present, Future Round 51 ]

PAST: Pick a memorable catchprase or classic utterance from your youth. And, of course, share it with the class.

PRESENT: What's a catchphrase that you probably use just a bit too often nowadays?

FUTURE: Give us a bit of something for the ages. Give us a saying, catchphrase or silly bit of verbage that you'd love to see enter the cultural lexicon.

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Words, Words, Words

[ Today's meme is courtesy of Past, Present, Future Round 49 ]

PAST: The quality of our thoughts can only be as good as the quality of our language, for words are the very core of thought. How diligent were you at building your vocabulary, when you were a youngster?

PRESENT:What's the most recent addition to your vocabulary?

FUTURE:What word would you like to see added to the general lexicon... and what word would you like to see removed?

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...in other words.... We Have a Player!

As I mentioned back on January 6, I decided to start my own meme about quotes, called ...in other words.... It's been added to the Memes List and today I have my first (official) player (she signed the guest book and left her link with a nicely phrased, well thought-out discussion of the quote:

There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who come in and say, 'Ah, there you are.'

-- Frederick L Collins

(I was woefully late posting today's quote; with yesterday a holiday, it slipped my mind that today was Tuesday!)

A pottle of milk

One of the great unknown words in English (one of our favorites, at least) is pottle. A pottle is a liquid measure equal to 2.0 quarts - that is, half a gallon. So when you buy a half-gallon of milk, you've actually bought a pottle of milk. I like the sound of that.

Time to go to the store; we need a pottle of 1% milk.