Thursday Thirteen 109: Spelling Bee

The 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee got under way Wednesday in Washington DC. Here are a few fun words to test or add to your vocabulary.


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

2. senescent \si-NES-uhnt\ adjective: Growing old; aging.

3. pseudandry \su-DAN-dree\ noun: The use of a male name as a pseudonym by a woman. (The opposite is pseudogyny where a man takes a woman's name as a pseudonym.)

4. lugubrious \lu-GOO-bree-us; -GYOO-\ adjective: Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, esp. in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner.

5. oneiric \oh-NYE-rik\ adjective: of or relating to dreams: dreamy

6. epistemic \ep-uh-STEE-mik\ adjective: of or relating to knowledge or knowing: cognitive

7. nescience \NESH-uhn(t)s; NESH-ee-uhn(t)s\ noun: Lack of knowledge or awareness; ignorance.

8. exorable \EK-suhr-uh-buhl\ adjective: Capable of being persuaded or moved.

9. gainly \GAYN-lee\ adjective: Graceful; dexterous.

10. chirography \kye-RAH-gruh-fee\ noun: handwriting, penmanship; Calligraphy

11. munificent \myoo-NIF-i-suhnt\ adjective: Very liberal in giving or bestowing; very generous; lavish.

12. outré \oo-TRAY\ adjective: Unconventional; eccentric; bizarre.

13. lickerish \LIK-uh-rish\ adjective: greedy, desirous; lecherous

You can watch the semifinals Thursday morning on ESPN (10 ET/9 CT) and the finals Thursday evening on ABC (8 ET/7 CT).

LINKS TO OTHER THURSDAY THIRTEENS:
(Please leave your link if this is your first visit!)

Janice Seagraves * Ella Drake * Elise Logan * Mary Quast
Adelle Laudan * Alice Audrey * Stephanie Adkins * Lanie Fuller
Hazel * Shelley Munro * Ms Menozzi * Carleen
Jennifer McKenzie * RJ LeBeau * Jamie Babette * Paige Tyler
Debra Kayn * Storyteller

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things.

Orange Butterfly

I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day Weekend. Me, I did very little. Watched a couple movies. Did a lot of reading--seven hours Saturday alone! Had a cookout with friends on Monday. That was the height of excitement here. Did not make it over to Brat Fest (see last year's post), but was most impressed when I saw how well they did this year. They didn't just break last year's record, they pulverized it, selling 17,000 more brats than in 2008. That's more than $100,000 raised for local charities!

Here's a quick card made over the weekend...



Stamps: Butterflies & Birds (Inkadinkado)
Paper: Pumpkin Pie (Stampin' Up); Fun in the Sun Summer Matstack (DCWV)
Ink: Pumpkin Pie (SU)
Accessories: Grosgrain Ribbon (JoAnn), Scallop Punch (Marvy)

The Stripping Down Test

You Are Observant in Life

You are serious and stable. You are a bit of a perfectionist, and you like structure. You are the happiest when you are planning and dreaming. You like to live in the future. You are sensitive and considerate. You are always putting other people's needs before your own. You are adventurous and constantly seeking. You feel like you still have a lot to learn about yourself.

The Stripping Down Test

Hmmm...I'd say most of this fits, but not all. Though I would certainly classify myself as a dreamer, I'd say I tend to live more in the past than the future. Goal-oriented I am not!

Thursday Thirteen 108: Frontier Words

Today I'm talking about a vocabulary building method we used in my tenth grade TAG (advanced) English class, “frontier words.” This is a method those writers amongst us may find useful. Parents and anyone seeking to strengthen their vocabulary may also find this of interest.


Understanding that no two people have the same vocabulary, “frontier words” seeks to strengthen the individual vocabulary.

Each week, students were to come to class with ten new vocabulary cards (index cards), the words culled from your own reading during the week.

Frontier words are those words that either you recognize but do not know, or words with which you are partially familiar (meaning, you think you know what it means but are not sure).

Though words were supposed to be culled from our regular reading during the week — books or newspapers — friends and I often randomly flipped through the dictionary when our lists fell a bit short. Hey, the better your vocabulary, the fewer unfamiliar words you encounter!

Word are written on one side of the card, the definition and example of usage (the sentence in which you found it) on the back. Write your own sentence if it helps you more easily remember the word.

Every Friday we paired off and tested each other on our words from that week. Not just spelling, but definition. You had to know those words!

In addition to that week’s vocabulary words, you were also tested on three to five random words pulled from your entire card stack. This meant you had to regularly review all of your words. If you are using this tool on your own, regularly shuffling and studying your cards will work in much the same way.

This practice came in handy senior year in high school, at the end of the first week of French V. I’m sure you could have heard our collective groan on the other side of the world when Madame V. gave us a list of 184 verbs to learn over the weekend. I only wish I were kidding. See samples at right.

I am also not kidding when I tell you that 95% of the class (those of us who also had English together for four years) showed up the following Monday with our own handmade vocabulary cards — which both surprised and impressed Madame V. Apparently, we were the first class to do so in all the years she'd been handing out this assignment. What can I say? We were special that way. *g*

I don't know what became of the English vocab cards—probably tossed them at the end of sophomore year—but I still have all of my French vocab cards. I added to that original stack of 184 throughout the year and took them off to college with me.

There is no age limit to frontier words — it is a tool anyone can use to improve vocabulary, no matter how young or old. Parents can use it during both the summer and school year as a means to entice kids to keep learning and retain what they learn. Make looking up new words a game, and encourage them to use their new words regularly. Once you learn a new word, you own it forever.

Having had the process of writing down and looking up unfamiliar words ingrained in me over the course of a year, I still practice it today. I don't jot them down on little vocabulary cards any more, but I do write them down in my journal, and will go back and look them over from time to time. The process of writing out the definition helps commit the word to memory.

A few words I have looked up so far this year include: peroration, benignant, penumbra, diffident, picara.

LINKS TO OTHER THURSDAY THIRTEENS:
(Please leave your link if this is your first visit!)

RJ Lebeau * Stephanie Adkins * Elise Logan * Adelle Laudan
Alice Audrey * Janice Seagraves * Nicholas * Hootin' Anni
Shelley Munro * Ms Menozzi * Ella Drake
I Am Harriet * Inez Kelley * Carmen Shirkey * Paige Tyler
Jamie Babette * Mary Quast * Jennifer McKenzie * Brenda ND

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things.

What Color Are You?

Whaddya know...my favorite color!

You are most like: You are Orange
Brilliant and stunning, you provide a pleasant surprise to any room into which you walk. This is a hard color to pull off, but you do it well.
Take this quiz: Which Crayola Box of 8 Color Are You?
Visit Toys For Your Blog.com for more blog quizzes

Masks

I'm a journaler. Have been since high school. I have an entire storage bin filled with old journals. Unlike Natalie Goldberg, who states that she routinely burns old notebooks, I cannot bring myself to destroy any of them. I find it useful to be able to go back to a particular year to look something up, and it can also be interesting to randomly pull out a volume and read what was going on in my life during that period. Sometimes I'll remember the events clearly, other times I have an, "Oh my God, I forgot about that!" moment.

This afternoon as I was working on something sort of writing related, I found myself wondering if I had a volume from a certain year that could verify a fact. Not only did I find the appropriate journal and subsequent entry, I found myself skimming pages from my high school years for more than an hour. A few of the recorded conversations with friends had me laughing while some of the writing had me groaning. I used to write scads of poetry. We're talking tons. Most of it was pretty awful (hence the groaning), but there was some that was pretty good. There are also a lot of beginnings of short stories, but few completed works.

I also found a couple of sketches doodled inide these notebooks. Yes, notebooks. These days I prefer 5.5 x 8.75 hardback spiral journals. During those early years I usually used college ruled notebooks. They were cheap and blended in with the regular class notebooks. Thankfully, I never lost a one, though it was many years before a few friends (AT, CB, KB) forgave me for a certain group notebook being stolen from my locker freshman year. It contained some group writings and -- at that time -- incriminating "surveys." At the time we were mortified, wondering how they got into my locker, who could have taken it, and what might happen as a result. We never did find out and, thankfully, nothing came of it. Were we the characters of some TV show or teen movie, the contents of those notebooks would have been all over the school. Thank the merciful heavens that was pre-internet and cell phones! Now, we would probably laugh and groan over the contents of that notebook. At the time, though, it was quite serious.

Anyway, this is one of the pages scanned from one of those ancient journals. I don't remember doing these, and have no idea why I did, what they were for, or what prompted them. Maybe I was listening to The Stranger too much. I have no idea. Click on the pic for a larger view.

{Best} Fishes

A quickie 3x3 gift card


Stamps: Fishy Friends (Stampin' Up), Best Fishes (A Muse)
Paper: DCWV
Ink: Basic Black, Old Olive (SU)
Accessories: Square punches (Marvy)

Thursday Thirteen 107: Recently Viewed Movies

For lack of a more stellar topic this week, here are the last thirteen movies watched, mostly on TCM, ABCFamily or Lifetime. An (*) denotes a first viewing.

Camille (1936) *
Penny Serenade (1941) *
An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
Secrets of the Summer House (2008) *
The Sound of Music (1965--a perennial classic)
Mary Poppins (1964 - so fun to watch with my 4-yr old niece!)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008--excellent film, but wish I'd seen it first on the big screen!) *
The Departed (2006) *
High Noon (2009, based on the Nora Roberts novel) *
My Fake Fiance (2009) *
The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009) *
Eight Below (2006) *
Bridge to Terabithia (2007--I did NOT expect to be all teary at the end) *

Bonus (Seen over the weekend, after I had this written up):
Stripes (1981...and I probably had not seen it since mid-80's)
I Remember Mama (1948...a classic favorite)


How 'bout you--seen anything good lately?


LINKS TO OTHER THURSDAY THIRTEENS:
(Please leave your link if this is your first visit!)

Elise Logan * RJ LeBeau * Stephanie Adkins * Adelle Laudan
Ella Drake * Alice Audrey * Carleen * Ms MenozziHootin' Anni * Carmen Shirkey * I Am Harriet * Brenda NDSandier Pastures * Sue * Janice Seagraves * Lanie Fuller Jamie Babette * Paige Tyler * Jennifer McKenzie * Daisy

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things.

Happy Mother's Day...

...to all my friends with children (both the 2 and 4-legged) celebrating today!

This is the card I made for my mom. The three little dolls represent my sisters and I. Naturally she loved it. *g*

Stamps: Dolls (Hero Arts Clear)
Paper: DCWV
Ink: Basic Black, Night of Navy (flowers on background) (Stampin' Up)
Accessories: Grosgrain Ribbon (JoAnn), Prima Daisies, Brads, Le Plume II Markers

Concert update

For those checking back and wondering how the concert was...it was GREAT! 3-1/2 hours of music with no intermission. We had seats behind the stage *behind Elton John), which turned out to be pretty good as we had a clear view of the stage--when the guy's head in front of me wasn't in the way. I swear he was 7 feet tall. Okay, maybe only 6-1/2, but you get the idea. This is the first time in this arena I've not been able to see over the person in front of me when seated. (This was not a problem when we were standing during the entire last set, it was only when we were seated that I couldn't see over him.)

Anyway, from where we were sitting we could see the different trap doors along the back of the stage opening to raise the different daises (six total--percussion, drums and keyboard for each band) or pianos at front of the stage, and could even see their hands flying across the piano keys. Billy's piano was on a rotating disc so that his back wasn't to one side of the audience the entire show--cool idea, no? There were also two screens set up behind the stage, one of which was directly in front of us, and one jumbo screen in front of the stage for everyone else.

The age of the audience ranged from college kids to aging hippies, and all us in-betweens. The latter were seated to my left, the former in front and behind. And the chicks directly behind us? They did not stop talking the entire concert. And because they were talking over the music, we had to listen to them all night. At one point I just wanted to turn around and tell them to shut up, or take it to the lobby. I find this sort of behavior incredibly rude, no matter what the venue or what kind of concert. The occasional comment to someone next to you is one thing, but when an entire group is talking so loud that everyone around them has to listen to it? How many people do they think came to hear them? That was the only negative aspect of the evening. Well, that and not going to the bathroom for four hours.

The way the concert is structured, the two pianists begin by performing some of each other's songs together, first just them and one keyboardist, then adding in other members of their bands. After six or eight songs, BJ left the stage, his piano was lowered, and there was a long set by EJ. Then the pianos and bands switched out and BJ played a long set, followed by another set of songs togther.

In our opinion, aside from a couple songs (I'm Still Standing, Crocodile Rock), EJ's set was more...sedate. With the exception of one guitarist who actually seemed to enjoy what he was doing, EJ's band almost catatonic . His people stayed in their assigned positions (except for that one guitarist who interacted with BJ's people at the end), and every time they showed someone in his band...blank looks on their faces, except that one guitarist, as though they wished they were someplace else. That is not to say people weren't singing along to the songs they knew, but it was a very mellow feeling. In fact, during one of the two songs no one in the audience seemed to know -- me included -- I found myself zoning out and could have easily fallen asleep. Good thing he kicked it up a notch after that one!

Billy Joel's band on the other hand...they were moving about the stage, hamming it up, laughing and having a good time together, and that energy carried over into the crowd. He was more personable and awknowledged those sitting behind the stage throughout the concert, even thanking "the people up there in Eau Claire"* at one point as he pointed to the nose-bleed section. His set was definitely the best. I would love to see him again in a solo concert some day.

All in all, a pretty good night!

*Eau Claire is a city northwest of Madison

Thursday Thirteen 106: Billy Joel / Elton John

Tonight is the Billy Joel/Elton John concert here at the Kohl Center, two of my all-time favorite artists. I tried --really tried-- to do one list of thirteen favorites of the duo, but there are just too many faves by each to narrow it down. So, here are dual lists: thirteen of my favorite songs by each of them, in no particular order. As some of my favorites aren't necessarily their top ten hits, there may be a few unfamiliar titles mixed in with the well-known and yes, I know -- there are some hits left off the list (eg: songs from "The Lion King"). These are the ones that came most immediately to mind. Click on the links for videos.

Billy Joel

This is the Time (My HS class song--be glad YOU didn't have to listen to it sung in an operatic soprano. I only wish I was kidding. I swear she shattered glass and eardrums.)
My Life (The runner up for class song...hey, he was popular in the 80s!)
And So it Goes
A Matter of Trust
Souvenir
Only the Good Die Young
You May Be Right
Where's the Orchestra
The Longest Time
The Stranger
Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
Piano Man
Christie Lee (Wicked saxophone!)
Bonus: If I Only Had the Words

Elton John

Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word (From "Speechless")
Crocodile Rock (Cannot sit still when I hear this one!)
I'm Still Standing (The upbeat tempo always makes me smile.)
Written in the Stars (From "Aida," with LeAnn Rimes)
Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road (Duet version w/ Billy Joel)
Sad Songs (Say So Much)
I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues
Daniel
Someone Saved My Life Tonight
Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny) (I can't believe I found a version performed here at the Kohl Center!)
Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
Mama Can't Buy You Love
Nikita



LINKS TO OTHER THURSDAY THIRTEENS:
(Please leave your link if this is your first visit!)

RJ LeBeau * Stephanie Adkins * Adelle Laudan * Mel
Janice Seagraves * Ella Drake * Alice Audrey
Jennifer McKenzie * Marcia * JourneyWoman * Paige Tyler
Jamie Babette * Inez Kelley * Nina Pierce * Jenn
Brenda ND * Janet * Carmen Shirkey * Chloe Devlin * Sue

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things.

Happy May Day!

Happy May Day!

Do school children still participate in this ancient custom? I remember an elementary school celebration in the gymnasium when I was in first grade. There were a couple of maypoles erected and classes took turns weaving bright crepe paper streamers in and out around the poles. In college, it was tradition for English majors to meet at dawn on the lawn of professor who headed the English department and wake him with a May dance. I have no idea when or how that tradition started, or if it continued after he retired.

I also remember making little paper may baskets that were delivered anonymously to neighbors filled with some flowers, or candy or homemade cookies. I don't think many people do that any more, either. The traditions we lose over the years...