Insufferable imbeciles

Today's FANCY WORD OF THE DAY is one of my personal favorites; I've been saving this one for a special day. Which is today. Ready?


imbecile (n.) - One who is inane, stupid, absurd, idiotic, marked by mental feebleness or weak intellect.
Ex: You, sir, are an imbecile of the highest order.

Ostensibly odious...

It's been a while since my last FANCY WORD OF THE DAY. So today's installment is:

odious (adj.) - Deserving of hatred; exciting hatred or repugnance; hateful; disagreeable; offensive; repulsive.

Ex: I found both the movie and its devotees to be veritably odious.


I've got quite the collection of FANCY WORDS OF THE DAY, each awaiting its debut. Prepare your minds.

Sneaky slatterns

Today's FANCY WORD OF THE DAY is:

slattern (n.) - a woman or girl untidy and slovenly in person, habits, or surroundings.

Ex: Sneaky slatterns savor sleazy, sinful situations.

Here is an example of one particular slattern looking incredulously sleazy:

Graduation!

Today is Commencement at BYU. So to honor all of my friends who are graduating and moving on with their lives, I'm doing a special FANCY WORD OF THE DAY!

indomitable (adj.) - that cannot be overcome or subdued by labor, difficulties, or opposition; unyielding; stubbornly persistent or resolute. But in a good, noble way.

Ex: Carry on, with an indomitable spirit and a cheery disposition.

This applies to those who are still in school, as well as out of it. In whatever you're doing, be INDOMITABLE!

Those voracious vorianders...

This month, I've arranged for a very special treat for my faithful readers. Each FANCY WORD OF THE DAY will follow a featured theme, so prepare your minds to absorb some of the most useful lexicography you will ever encounter. Smashing!

Today's special word is brought to you by Burgess Unabridged: A New Dictionary of Words You Have Always Wanted.

voriander (n.) - a woman who chases after men, instead of being chased; a woman who telephones to men, or invites herself to dinners at his expense.

"The voriander is sometimes pretty, but never attractive. Her attempts are usually dodged, but she still persists."

"Never introduce a friend to a voriander. There are kinder ways of getting rid of her. A cat can be kissed to death, or smothered in fresh butter; not the voriander. You have simply to leave town."

"The voriander is 'crazy' over you, and your purse. She writes you perfumed notes, she telephones you during business hours. Many vorianders are over thirty years of age."

Piqued vs. peaked.

I'm overdue for a FANCY WORD OF THE DAY, so without further ado or procrastination, I present to you today's installment:

pique (vt.) - to stimulate or provoke to action, esp. by arousing jealousy, etc.; to arouse (a feeling, esp. curiosity or interest).

Ex: The news of this dark chocolate has piqued my interest.

PLEASE NOTE:

This is not the same word as:

peak (vi.) - to project or rise in a peak.

Ex: The wave peaked, then proceeded to crash down upon the unsuspecting surfer. Cowabunga!

That's one of those things that bothers me, I hate when people refer to their interest being peaked. Unless, of course, their interest really has risen to its peak. But that's usually not the case.

Anyways, stay tuned for another episode of THE JOY OF LEX!

The Scream

I picked up this little treasure at the gift shop at the Museum of Art on campus:



Yes, it's a refrigerator magnet / finger puppet. See the resemblance to Edvard Munch's "The Scream":

















Check out some of the other sweet personalities here. I kinda want the Frida Kahlo and the Charlie Chaplin ones.

Color inspiration

All my friends seem to be buying new furniture, painting rooms, etc. So I figured I'd get in on the fun as well. Unfortunately, my apartment contract prohibits me from painting or in any other way beautifying my living space. However, it is nice to dream. So here are some of the ideas that I've come up with for a living room.
Paint:
This beautiful color is called Riverside Blue, by Behr. (If you ever want a good time, go to behr.com and play with the color creator tools there.) Accent trim will be bright white.








Flooring:
This is the Tundra laminate floor, in medium brown. From IKEA.
Don't forget a shag area rug. I love feeling shaggy carpet under my feet.






Furniture:
I love sectionals, but they've got to have a chaise. This one does, so it wins my liking. Check out this chocolate brown microfiber sectional here at RC Willey's website. Throw in this matching ottoman too. (They really are the same color, I've seen them in the store, haha.)

I love IKEA. Here is a sweet end table from there:
Finish it all off with this entertainment center/bookcase combo, also from IKEA:

A tedious tome...

I apologize for the recent lack of FANCY WORDS OF THE DAY, I took ill last week and essentially ceased all functions for a few days. Anyways, today's FANCY WORD OF THE DAY is:

tome (n.) - a book or volume of books, usually suggesting a large, heavy, old-fashioned publication.

Ex: A tedious tome is a terrible time.

Pestering pedant...

Today's FANCY WORD OF THE DAY is brought to you by Kirsten:

pedant (n.) - A person who excessively reveres or parades academic learning or technical knowledge, often without discrimination or practical judgement. Hence also: one who is excessively concerned with accuracy over trifling details of knowledge, or who insists on strict adherence to formal rules or literal meaning.

Ex: A pretentious pedant promptly pesters prudent persons.

Those reprehensible rabble-rousers!

Today's FANCY WORD OF THE DAY comes from my own extensive repertory of fancy words.

reprehensible (adj.) - deserving of criticism, censure, or rebuke; reprovable; morally detestable.

Ex: Who even understands those reprehensible rap guys anyways?

Weekend with the family!

Shelby and Monica came to Utah to celebrate Tiffany's birthday and to attend a Cake concert. The following is an accounting of my weekend:

Thursday: Everyone came to visit me at work, then they went and checked out the campus til 5 when I got off work. Then we ordered Brick Oven pizza and watched the Lakers/Celtics game. They went on their way to Ogden.

Friday: I woke up and went to pick up my rental car, but my card was declined. I put the deposit on my credit card, so that worked out. But then when I went to Bath and Body Works, my card was declined there too. So I called Bank of America, and it turns out they shut off my bank card without thinking to tell me. So I ended up having to write myself a check to deposit at UCCU so I could have money for the weekend. Moral of this story: Bank of America sucks butt. If you haven't already done so, you should break up with them. So once I finally got to Ogden, things were great. We went on a walk around the duck pond, went to Target, had a swim, then made dinner and watched a movie.

Saturday: Woke up early and made green scrambled eggs with bacon bits for the boys. Then we went to Tiffany's birthday luncheon at Wingers. A good time was had by all. Then we went to Salt Lake to shop around at the Gateway. After waiting a couple hours for the concert to start, we were finally seeing CAKE! The concert itself was great; but the swarming mass of drunkards and trollops was a little hard to bear. I got beer spilled on me twice, and inhaled just enough second-hand smoke to shorten my lifespan by 72 hours. Nevertheless, Cake put on a great concert.

Sunday: We woke up at the crack o' noon, lazed about til 2:30 or so, then went to Temple Square. Came back, had dinner, and watched Alice in Wonderland. Thankfully, I fell asleep before I had to watch the Futterwacken dance that so effectively ruined the whole movie for me.

Monday: Woke up early, packed everything up, stopped at Einstein's Bagels for a delicious blueberry bagel with honey-almond schmear, then went home to run errands all day.

So, it was essentially a great weekend. I'll post some pictures sometime soon. Cheers!

A perfunctory day

Today's FANCY WORD OF THE DAY is brought to you by Robyn:

perfunctory (adj.) - done merely as a matter of duty, form, or routine, and so without interest, care, or enthusiasm; carried out with a minimum of effort

Ex: I greeted the student at the window with a perfunctory smile.

Feeling fractious...

Today's FANCY WORD OF THE DAY is...

fractious (adj.) - refractory, unruly, peevish, especially of children.

Ex: The small EFY children are quite fractious.

The Food Journal

Dieting - EEEEEW!

There comes a time in every person's life when he or she must become accountable for one thing or another. Because my efforts to fit into my skinny jeans (no, not the nasty emo jank the punks wear; I refer to the jeans I could fit into when I was skinny) have heretofore been unsuccessful, I became determined to become more aware of what I was feeding myself. In the simplistic metaphor in my head, dieting is like banking. You deposit calories when you eat, and withdraw them when you exercise. Unlike real banking, where overdrawing is a terrible, terrible thing, in dieting you want to withdraw more calories than you've deposited. Life is so much easier when you make everything into a simplistic metaphor, isn't it?

Anyways, those of you who know me should know by now that I hate counting calories. I usually cringe at the thought of reading a nutrition label (especially for a product that I have just consumed; it's like finding out you did worse on a test than you had previously thought!) I was reading WebMD.com's Health and Cooking section (I highly recommend it to anyone) and came across the suggestion to keep a food journal. I found this awesome, blank Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone journal from God-knows-when and decided that would be come my new FOOD JOURNAL!

I try to keep it simple. At the end of each day, I write what I had for each meal, and any snacks in between. If something (or a combination of somethings) I ate made me feel sick, fat, greasy, healthy, whatever... I write that in there too. If I made a naughty food choice, then I can analyze which emotional or environmental influences possessed me to do so. Then I can make a sort of GAME-PLAN for the next day. This has really helped me be more conscious of what I'm eating. If I want to eat something naughty, I have to first weigh out the consequences (namely, how I'll feel when I have to write about it in that day's entry.) The good thing is, instead of beating myself up over one bad choice, I can just write about it and have a plan for the next time I'm confronted with that or a similar situation.

Here's an example of an entry. This was Sunday, June 4, 2010:

• Skipped breakfast (woke up at 11:30)
• Lunch: Chicken salad sandwich w/ Muenster cheese, sweet potato fries, Cherry-Pom juice.
• Dinner (Ward Break-the-Fast): Subbed Garden Burger w/ Provolone for hamburger, hot dog (made me feel gross), wedge of watermelon, 2 small handfuls of potato chips, 2 cookies.
• Late-night snack: Chocolate Slim-Fast w/ PB and banana (ended up being too much)
• Tomorrow: Cereal and juice for breakfast, Take a Fiber One bar for a work snack, COME HOME for lunch, Chicken or pasta for dinner w/ salad (but go easy on the cheese and dressing)
  

See, it's not so hard!

I've been keeping said journal for just over a week, and I've already noticed emotional and physical differences. I don't feel like I've lost weight quite yet (although a few people have noted a slight difference); however, all this eating well has made my tummy-box not feel quite so broken.

I know this was an extremely lengthy post in comparison with my usual ramblings. But this food journal has really been a great addition to my daily life. It might not be YOUR solution (heck, it might not even be MY solution!) Find something that works for you! If you need some great ideas on living and cooking healthy, sign up for WebMD's Health and Cooking emails (found at the bottom right of the webpage.) They rock.

Traipsing through the tiger lilies

Today's FANCY WORD OF THE DAY is:

traipse (vi.) - to walk or go aimlessly or idly or without finding or reaching one's goal.

Ex: I should very much like to traipse through the tiger lilies.

Fancy word of the day

Salutations! As you can see by checking the dates of my most recent posts, I clearly have an issue with posting regularly. So I spent some time (about 30 seconds, to be precise) thinking about why that could be, and the answer came to me: I don't have anything to write about regularly! I've already attempted to create a blog that stuck to one subject (q.v. "You Learn Something New Every Day"), but that was a failure. In my desperate search for a blog-worthy subject, some friends suggested that I use my love of obsolete and obscure words as material for blogging. I therefore present you with:

THE FANCY WORD OF THE DAY!

Not all of these entries come directly from my brain. For example:

Today's word is brought to you by Maren.

trollop (n.) - An untidy or slovenly woman; a morally loose woman.
Ex: That trollop has stolen my billfold, as well as my reputation.

Here are the Kardashian sisters looking quite trollopy:

You know it, now you can't un-know it!

Brace yourself for more... FANCY WORDS OF THE DAY!

The Happy List

Hi everyone! It's been ages since I've posted. I've made several attempts at posting again, but alas, they've all just been saved as drafts after a few sentences. But today is the day I complete a post! Huzzah!

Anyways, I've been feeling kind of down lately, for various reasons. So I thought it would be a good idea to make a list to remind me of things that make me happy. I've already done this once before on this blog (q.v. "Simple Pleasures") but it's time for a new list. Here goes:

• Fluffy white clouds against a blue sky. On a clear day, of course.
• Feeling grass between my toes. (Even though it makes me itch)
• Singing at the top of my lungs while in the shower
• Drinking milk after a PB&J sandwich
• Avocados on sandwiches.
• Walking into a clean apartment. (This doesn't happen very often, haha)
• Seeing the first tulips in spring
• Serving somebody food and you can tell that they love it after the first bite
• Finding the perfect opportunity to use a fancy word in everyday speech
• Hearing people speak in a British, Irish, or Australian accent
• (Or a Spanish accent if they're speaking Spanish)
• Watching foreign films
• Meeting people that have awesome British names, like Carlisle.
  
• Popping bubble wrap
• Feeling the nape of my neck right after a hair cut
• Watching the reel of unwanted receipts get super-long (My Recorstration buddies know what I'm talking about)
• Feeling warm sunshine after I've been in a cold room
• Scratching behind puppies' ears.
• Sunflowers, daffodils, day lilies, all the awesome summer flowers :)

To be continued...