Getting out of jail time off, x-ray results, petty petticoats, Scrabble fun, & holiday cards…

~Monday~  Wrong Way Willie was driving this morning, but he took the correct route today. I suppose he may never live down the fact that he took a wrong turn one day. I certainly can’t see myself dropping it.

I’m going to go ahead and rename a character here, and I’ll mention both of her names for her next several appearances. Logorrhea (the character formerly known as Diarrhea-of-the-Mouth) was the only “regular” on the bus this morning, but as you know by now if you’ve been reading for a while, she provides as much entertainment as several of the others put together.

She was actually sitting toward the front of the bus today, and I didn’t notice her until I sat down one row behind her, but on the other side of the aisle. Within a few minutes she had her phone out, and I thought, “Oh lord. Here it comes. She is going to share her entire conversation with us.”

“HELLO AMY? THIS IS VICKIE.” Of course she spoke in as loud a voice as if she were addressing everyone around her. And everyone around her looked up to see who was talking and to whom.

“YOU REMEMBER LAST WEEK YOU TOLD ME I DIDN’T GIVE YOU ENOUGH NOTICE WHEN I NEEDED A LITTLE BIT OF TIME OFF DURING THE DAY? WELL, I’M CALLING TO TELL YOU THAT ON THURSDAY, I’M GOING TO NEED A LITTLE BIT OF TIME OFF TO GO PICK UP A FRIEND OF MINE WHO’S GETTING OUT OF JAIL.”

Pause while the person at the other end of the line says something.

“YES, OUT OF JAIL. SHE’S NOT ONE OF THEM, WACHMACALLIT, DOMESTIC ABUSE CASES, BUT, UH, A FAMILY COURT CASE. THAT’S WHAT IT IS. YES. JUST TWO HOURS. I THINK I CAN BE THERE AND BACK IN TWO HOURS.”

This morning she had a child with her, which I’ve never seen before, and to be perfectly honest, it both frightened and angered me. Frightened to think about what it must be like to be raised by her, and angered (some would call it bitter) about all the rigmarole perfectly loving, capable, and caring gay couples have to go though to “qualify” to get a baby (and that’s only in the states were they’re not outright disallowed to get one no matter what), when all someone like Logorrhea has to do is have sex.

The Doublemint Duplicates were not at the McKimmon Center stop, nor were there any other students in fact. It’s exam week, which means no formal classes, so presumably they’re all home studying.


I finally received the results of my chest x-ray after yet another—little bit nastier—phone message left at my doctor’s office this morning:

Findings: Frontal and lateral views of the chest are obtained. The lungs are fully expanded and clear. The heart is of normal size. The bony thorax is intact.

Impression: NORMAL EXAMINATION OF THE CHEST

I got your intact bone! But I digress…

Affirmation from my sister in response to receiving a copy of the x-ray results—the x-ray that she demanded I get, by the way:

Thank you God—I need my brother around for a long time—I am willing to pay for it and copay!!!

I love when stuff like this happens. Several months ago now, I noted that one of the Car Talk Puzzlers was around a sentence they read and asked what was unique about it. The answer was that every subsequent word in the sentence was one character greater in length than the previous word.

Well, today’s Word of the Day was:

rhopalic

Meaning: (adjective) Having each successive word longer by a letter or syllable.

Etymology: From Latin rhopalicus, from Greek rhopalos (club, tapered cudgel).

Notes: A rhopalic verse or sentence is one that balloons—where each word is a letter or a syllable longer. The word is also used as a noun.

Here’s a terrific example of a rhopalic by Dmitri Borgmann:

“I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications incomprehensibleness.”

and that example sentence is the same one they used on the Car Talk Puzzler.


I follow someone on Twitter who I don’t know, but I just couldn’t help but respond to this tweet of hers today:

There's an actual dress folder in the office to ensure nobody wears the same dress to the xmas party. Now that's organised!

to which I replied:

Wouldn't people be happy just to share time together irrespective of their clothes?

I’m just saying… I mean really, could they be any more shallow?


I got a nice chunk of work done today in the office, and I caught the 6:30 bus home, which was uneventful. No characters aboard, so I listened to part of a Car Talk podcast on the way home and laughed out loud like a lunatic on the bus, the likes of which people are used to in said transportation venue.

After a dinner of a delicious salad and a little more leftover of that veggie lasagna, I played a game of online Scrabble (and chatted) with Robert, while I addressed holiday cards in between.

Leave a Comment