I crunched through the snow this morning to the back yard with my trusty plastic ruler (in my light purple non-Ugg Ugg-lookalikes that I've had for a decade or so*), and am happy to say that I now feel completely accurate in asserting that we have "a foot of snow" out there on the lawn. The ruler, 12" or 30cm long, disappeared into the snow accumulation until it was exactly level with the top. Just to make sure, since I suspected we might have at least that much, I had also brought out our extendable** metal tape measure. It only confirmed the figure.
Have I mentioned that we love snow? The only problem I ran into today (so far) with snow, was the little concern that my neighbours might report me for disturbing the peace by shoveling my driveway before 8am on a Sunday...but I wasn't using a snowblower, as some people have suggested I do on Facebook...so I think it'll be okay. :-) It was so quiet and peaceful out there (when I paused).
At the dinner table Thursday night, we got onto the topic of words we didn't think existed in the positive form. The counterparts of unkempt, disgruntled, and uncouth. Were we surprised and corrected upon opening the dictionary! They all exist in Merriam-Webster's (8th?) Collegiate Dictionary, the same one I had at college (so it's not a new-fangled thing):
kempt (1929),
gruntled (1926), and
couth (1896)! Check for yourself. The thing is, the etymology of every one of them is "back-formation" stemming from the negative version! We were pleased to note that we were all
gruntled - "to put in a good humor
<were gruntled with a good meal and good conversation — W. P. Webb>". My chicken mulligatawny soup, and our conversation about interesting words had a pleasant way of gruntling us. After dinner, I put the big, very hot pot of soup out in the snow on the patio, and heaped the white stuff around it to cool it more quickly for storage. Useful stuff, snow! The pot made a bunch of large, intriguing, perfectly round imprints.Friday night, we learned a new card game. Well, a very OLD card game, but new to us:
Euchre. It seemed like a four-person version of
Sheepshead, with more cards. It was okay. We played four hands and moved on.
[Warning: non-sequitor paragraph which, however, has a segue at the end to a continuation from the previous paragraph]
When we were all in school, my brother wrote at least one computer program to help with something on campus - a scheduler for the career night sessions, telling everyone what room to be in at what time to learn about gemology or journalism or aviation, for example. Well, history is repeating itself - my son is now writing a program to help the school with course reviews. They want 1-2 student reviews of each class taught, by randomly selected students, with every student reviewing at least one class. I am excited about both aspects of this: the fact my son is being instrumental in it, and the fact that they are doing reviews. We had comprehensive reviews of the courses at my university, and it was so helpful in choosing classes and teachers.
Speaking of my alma mater, after the Euchre game, I pulled out a puzzle I've had forever and ever and never done: an artistic rendition of the Smith College campus. With David's help, I managed to finish it that evening (only 216 pieces, but hard ones). I spent quite a while searching through the pieces for one that was irritatingly missing. Oh well. I guess only one missing is pretty good. It was an outstanding night, since we also had a fire in the fireplace and read aloud in four voices from the
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy original radio script. Very funny, especially the whale monologue. Jason's studying the script in English class.
More on the games front: in a brief ping-pong interlude, Jason and I played "first to five, by two" and the final score was 10-8 for me; what sweet victory, after five deuces! That was some quality ping-pong, there :-)
I want to thank God for breathing life into my blog again, and for breathing life into me in the first place (and every day). I am enjoying reading the Bible in chronological order this year (with a group of accountability friends who share a favorite verse each week on Facebook to keep each other going), and we came across a verse relating to this: The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Job 33:4 The other verse that springs to mind is There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven (
Ecclesiastes 3:1) - I am hoping this new season of frequent blog posts lasts for some time.
* By the way, since my daughter keeps calling my boots Uggs (which they aren't), I finally decided to figure out what they ARE. There is no identification at all on the outside, but in the bottom of the inside, it says BP. Apparently this refers to Bearpaw Boots. I don't see any purple boots on their site anymore. What a score for my mother-in-law, who gave them to me whenever it was for some Christmas. She is a GOOD shopper and knows me well. ** As far as I can tell, there are THREE spellings of this, all of which means exactly the same thing: extendable, extendible, and extensible. Do you have any opinions on these words, oh you multiple vocabulary experts reading? You know who you are. :-) I did find one site that said they would use extensible only for physical things, and extendable for things like time as well.
Posted via email from K's Café
