It Pays to Increase your Vocab!

If you've ever had brunch with me (and only a certain lucky few of you have), you'd know that I like to start the day with coffee, some breakfast and a crossword. It all started when I rented Wordplay a few years ago.



Look at my boy Will Shortz and tell me he is not exactly what sets your motors running, ladies. Seriously, tell me, because if not, I've been modeling myself after the wrong guy.

(Side Note: If you search "Will Shortz" on photobucket.com, you get a whole bunch of pictures of young chicks posing for the camera, which leads me only to believe that girls ARE indeed nuts about this guy)

I also like to think that my boss at work, Jim (as opposed to my boss not-at-work... you know who) would look like Will if he had hair. Here's another shot of Will executing what one might call "The Hooter Honker"


Ok, I feel my point has been suitably made. Moving on.

Here is where I admit I have a personal fault. I tend to hear something funny or witty and want to integrate it into my life. This fault, sadly, has occassionally left me unconsciously using words that other people have trademarked. This then feeds into another fault I have where I know my vocabulary is much larger than the number of words I actively use, yet seldom do I find ways to incorporate all the words I'd like to use. I particularly despise it when I use a word or saying that I tend to hear a lot at TMH (Anie's place... yes, she bribed me to refer to it as this), because;

1.) I'm just globbing on to the words of Anie & Co.,
2.) these are chick-words in my mind and I should clearly be able to think up my own unique witticisms without ever having to gender-blur,
3.) I cherrish the concept of personal identites as "Ryan" and "Anie" who happen to be a couple, as opposed to "Ryan & Anie" who would be a tragic siamese hybrid-thing of awefulness (we all know a couple like this in our lives, if you're not doing something to avoid being them, it may already be too late!).

Yes, I know these are nerdy, complicated issues. This is the minutae of my life. Now we're ready to move on.

Last week, Anie & I were crusing along on our way to New Year's Eve her cousins and we were talking about Resolutions for the New Year. One Resolution I had on my mind was to never use a word or saying that I have heard her use. Then, I decided to take it one-step further. For this year, I'm going to try to use a new, interesting word that i've either under-used or never used before every other week. This week, the word I chose is:

Aleatory -- accidental, chance, occurring randomly

As in, this blog is totally aleatory, because I came home to play video games and the servers were down, so I needed something else to fill in my time.

I think we're off to a good start.