Wordnerdiness Squared

I know, I know, I know, the ‘Fifteen’ post has been up for way too long. But guys? The work? It kills. Yesterday was horrific, and today only looks to be slightly less so. But in culling my e-mails (for something work-related that I was supposed to have received days ago), I saw this little gem sent to me by a friend.

Aaaaaaaaannnnd…because I’m such a wordnerd, I loved it. Because way back in the day, when I first adopted the ‘wordnerd’ moniker, I did it NOT because I’m a grammar snob but because I love words. I love what they do. Simplistic? Yes. But it’s da troof. Complex interplays of words with different meanings? I cannot imagine life without ‘em.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnndddd…agaaaaaaaaiiin…it IS Wordplay Wednesday in some parts of the blogosphere, so what better way to recognize it?

So…if you’re here, you at least love to read, if not to write. Enjoy!

• The bandage was wound around the wound.
• The farm was used to produce produce.
• The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
• We must polish the Polish furniture.
• He could lead if he would get the lead out.
• The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
• Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
• A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum
• When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
• I did not object to the object.
• The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
• There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
• They were too close to the door to close it
• The buck does funny things when the does are present.
• A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
• To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
• The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
• Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
• I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
• How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

And for those of you for whom English is a second language? No wonder you think we are nuts!!!

 

Snopes B*tch

I’ve become the Snopes b*tch.

 

I’m sorry, y’all. I just can’t stand when I receive e-mail after e-mail after e-mail filled with pure, unadulterated crap. And yes, I could leave it all alone, delete the message (my rule of thumb is the more “FW:’s” I have to go through, the quicker the thing gets deleted), and move on.

 

But I can’t stop at that. I take the fifteen seconds it takes to go to Snopes, or Truth or Fiction, or whatever, determine the veracity of the message, and shoot a link to the offending e-mailer.

 

I’m now THAT person. The one that shoots down grandiose rumors and dire warnings with a couple of keystrokes.

 

Somebody’s gotta be the bad guy.

 

Wordnerdiness Squared

Thanks to Trinamick over in Hickville for posting this list. The list I promptly stole. Because

 

(a) my name just SCREAMS wordnerdiness

 

(b) I’ll do anything for an easy post

 

(c) I steal.

 

And I steal without guilt. Because, like Creed from “The Office,” I “stopped caring a long time ago.” (God, I love that guy.)

 

Anyhoo, and seriously, this is THE list. The list to end all lists. This is the list of 100 words that every high school graduate should be familiar with.

 

 

This May Well Be the Best Idea Ever…

NOTE: Recipe, as originally posted, was incorrect. I’ve corrected it, so if you copied it earlier, use this one! OOPS!!!

Ok — you guys familiar with “progressive dinner parties”? You know, where you start at one person’s house for drinks and appetizers, move on to the next for the salad course, the next for the entree, etc.? Well, that’s what we are doing here. Except, of course, it’s a virtual dinner party. So the menu develops here. And then you get to steal the recipes.

And I get to start, because it’s my game. And because I promised y’all the recipe for my famous Hot Onion Souffle Dip.

Here’s how this will work. I started this menu with an appetizer. First person that visits here (and chooses to participate) will leave, in the comments, a recipe for the next course. And so on.* For clarification purposes, here’s what the menu should contain:

1. One or more appetizers.
2. A salad.
3. An entree.
4. A side dish.
5. A dessert.

If we are still going strong after dessert, start over with a new appetizer. At the end of all of this, we either will have a bunch of great recipes or the collective opinion that I’ve turned into the worst kind of nerd there is. BUT a nerd that makes a hella good onion dip.

Easy enough? Let’s get started, then!

HOT ONION SOUFFLE DIP

3 8-oz. packages cream cheese
1 bag frozen chopped onions (12-16 oz.)
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 cups grated Parmesan cheese

Bring cream cheese to room temperature. In a large mixing bowl, blend cream cheese with mayo until smooth. Add in Parmesan cheese, followed by onions. Mix well. Spoon into 9 x 13 greased baking pan. Bake at 425 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until brown and bubbly. Serve with Frito’s Scoops or Triscuit crackers.

(Note: DO NOT TRY TO MAKE THIS DIP HEALTHY. DO NOT use lo-fat cream cheese or mayo. DO NOT use nasty-ass Parmesan cheese in a can. DO NOT use fresh onions. DO trust me. This is worth the fat grams and calories. You can go back to lo-fat tomorrow.)

*There is a very good possibility that we could end up with more than one recipe for each course due to concurrent postings. Anyone have a problem with that? I don’t.

 

3.14

Happy Pi Day! Celebrate in any way you see fit. Or don’t celebrate at all. Me? I’m busy, so this is all I got. But days like this are what trivia contests, archives, and blogrolls are for. Stay a bit, look around, and give me the love in the comments section.

See ya!

 

Wordplay Wednesday

I was actually going to leave the book post up for another day, because I am totally enjoying your comments (and have now decided that “The Life of Pi” is next on my list), but brianf tagged me this morning. And since it’s day-specific, I’ll go ahead and post it today.

A word that describes me is:
Sassy

My favorite word is:
Sanction. Because it is a perfect example of how complicated the English language can really be. And during college, when I was trying to conjugate verbs in Spanish, it was nice to know that, very possibly, someone on the other side was saying “what the hell????”

My least favorite word is:
All. Because of its overuse/misuse by tweens and teens. As in, “So he was all ‘you wanna go to out?’ and I was all ‘well, duh, not in this lifetime, loser…’”

(Close cousin to ‘like’, which Brianf covers in his W.W. post.)

Use these two words in a sentence:
Ha! This should be fun. “In other news, the United Nations was all ‘oh, so they don’t want to cooperate with us? I move that we impose sanctions on them. Do I hear a second? Don’t make me snap my fingers in a Z-formation…’”

A word I have to think twice about pronouncing is:
Route. I actually don’t think twice, I just pronounce it differently depending on how I’m using it. As in “Route 66″ (root) and “take an alternate route” (rout).

Dictionaries. Printed or online?
Both. There’s nothing like cracking open the old, worn dictionary, but I confess to using online dictionaries when I’m in a hurry.

A word whose meaning I cannot seem to retain no matter how many times I look it up is …
Proscribe. It’s kinda like ‘tonsorial.’ They should mean something else.

Open a dictionary to a random page and find a word you don’t know. Post the word and its meaning.
Greave: armor for the leg below the knee

Use the word above and the word you can never remember in a sentence.
The use of a greave is hereby proscribed. (So please commence to knocking the hell out of your shins?)

One of the most overused words in my area of work/study is
Quash

Now, moving forward, let’s see who I can tag with this. How about EVERYONE?

Yeah!

 

Because, Apparently, I Get REALLY Bored Sometimes*

***If you’re back for a return visit, I edited my favorites below. C’mon, you knew I would.

*Confused? Read yesterday’s post.

As long as we’re on the subject, here’s a fun, literary-themed meme, which I grabbed from Cagey:

In the list of books below:
- blue the ones you’ve read
- purple the ones that are your personal favorites
- italicize the ones you want to read
- red the ones you won’t touch with a ten-foot pole (I didn’t do do this – you just never know)
- and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of.

If you decide to join the fun and play along, let me know in the comments!

And NO, I don’t know who came up with this particular list.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. +Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. +To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. +Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. +The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. +The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. +The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. +Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery) – I suppose I should
9. *Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. +Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. +Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. +Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. +The Stand (Stephen King)
19. +Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. +Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. +The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. +The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
23. +Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. +The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. +The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. +Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. +The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. +Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. +1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. *I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. *The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. +The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. *The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. +Bible – well, not ALL of it
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. +Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. +The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) - a favorite – Cagey, you gotta read this one!!!
50. *She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. *The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. +A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. *Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. +Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) - in ONE sitting, mind you…
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. +Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) -
62. +The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. +The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) - almost killed me!
69. +Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. +The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. *The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. +A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving) – tried it – does that count?
79. *The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. +Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. *Not Wanted On the Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. +Of Mice And Men (Steinbecck)
83. +Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. +Emma (Jane Austen)
86. +Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. *The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. *In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. +Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. +The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. +The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. +The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton) - “Do it for Johnny, man, do it for Johnny!”
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. +The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. +Ulysses (James Joyce)

A couple of you also asked what my personal favorites were, as well as what’s on my nightstand right now. I should tell you that it is not unusual for me to be reading two or three books at one time. Here’s what’s there right now:

• Herbert Asbury’s “The French Quarter – An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld”
• “Ask the Fruitcake Lady” – Marie Rudisill
• “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” – David Sedaris

Favorites? That’s like asking me to choose my favorite child. But here are a few:

• The Secret Garden
• The Lovely Bones
• The Godfather
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Catcher in the Rye
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• The entire Harry Potter series

I’ll stop here, because I could go on forever. And as soon as I hit ‘publish,’ I’m going to think of half a dozen more that I should have listed.

Edited 3/6/07, 7:30 p.m. (one, because I knew this would happen, and two, because I CAN)

• To Kill a Mockingbird (my apologies, Atticus, for forgetting you…)
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

It’s an illness.

Because I’m a nerd.