One of the great pleasures of listening to a well-loved set of books1 on CD is becoming reacquainted with wonderful things. 1. I have discovered by listening to them that my favorites are The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Life, The Universe and Everything. I like them all of course but these two crack [...]
My quality of life has just improved by about 75% thanks to the new mattress and pillows I had delivered yesterday. It doesn’t hurt to have a friend who works for Mattress Discounters. I now have, even with the “low boy” bedframe and half-as-deep box springs, a very tall bed. The mattress alone is 17″ [...]
There are, for all of us I think, certain words or phrases or images that trigger infinite giggling, and I have discovered a new one in the book Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean: “Tropic of Cancercorn” I don’t even care what type of verbal slip it is an example of. [...]
Apparently, I’ve always been pretty clear on what I do and do not like, will and will not do, and feel and do not feel. This doesn’t mean I’m not open to change or new information; it just means that in general, I have a pretty strong sense of these things. I also tend to [...]
“The average adult English speaker has a vocabulary of around thirty thousand words and speaks ten to twelve sounds per second. Most of us in modern America, apart from the very solitary and the very garrulous, speak anywhere from 7,500 to 22,500 words a day.” -Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, [...]