clever words

that explain themselves:

• gargantuan
• shrew - sour she
• feckless - i think of clueless claude tripping along his unfortunate way.
• alacrity - hoppity hop
• nincompoop - but this is a holdover from the days when people knew more vocab than just the f- word.

words

that make me feel stupid:

• formication - i'm seeing some hot-blooded coupling, not the cocaine addict with his hallucinations.
• pulchritude - don't you just think of gagging rolls of fat, or rotting flesh?
• disingenuous - this sounds so guileless...
• synesthesia - sounds as erudite as what it describes, so it is clever, but i don't feel so.

service standards - a dedication to the young financial officers populating our portfolio

continuing my encounter with the bank, here are my conclusions:

1. service-with-a-smile campaigns miss the mark. before we talk service, we've got to talk baseline competence. a smiling ass, methinks, is still an ass. he sleeps well after a full day of smiling, fecklessly unaware of our dissatisfaction.

2. and alas i seem to be dealing with an ass...

deliver the goods you are paid to do, i think, and i will take a pass on the smile. i will even take a pass on the apology, because you have apologized for the wrong thing anyway.

waiting

for HOM to get home so we can go to worship practice, but he's still stuck at work. in the meantime, i have spent my hour posting to the blog, fiddling with its color scheme, and posting to the blog.

i like the new color scheme.

quaintisms

things that have struck me and won me over about the u.s.:

1. that stuff is so uniform for the most part. one goes to home depot and buys a replacement toilet without blinking (or one could) because the measurements are all standardized. or one goes and buys an entire new kitchen. or new windows. no need for custom building unless one is extremely rich, or extremely unfortunate.

2. the stop sign. which a majority of drivers (more or less, depending on locale) actually obey. having driven in malaysia, thailand and singapore, i am enchanted at this widespread show of civility. if we had a 4-way stop sign in sgp, only chaos could ensue. the biggest cars would have right of way, followed by the other men. little women in tiny cars would be left paralyzed with fear and quite unable to accelerate to their destination.

3. the courtesy of many men. i love having doors held open for me and being given way to. i love being treated as weaker and therefore in need of physical assistance. i wish sgp men would stop deriding courtesy as manipulative behavior and just be gentlemanly! fortunately HOM, who doesn't read my blog, is quite the gentleman. as an aside, the most neanderthal man i ever met was not my geographic, but my ethnic, countryman.

4. the ham radio community, of whom i am a nominal member. despite my awfully shallow acquaintance with them, i am impressed by their sense of civic responsibility and charmed by their childlike enthusiasm. if i were a more active member, i would go get myself a number plate with my call sign.

steinweg

the new piano has arrived. i love its solid bulk. i love the understated finish so that it does not look new. i love that the name is quietly printed below the shelf. i love the evenness of the touch (the yamaha was 31 years old). but most of all i love the buttery richness of its tone that effortlessly floats to the far reaches of the room.

is this how a good piano should sound, J1 asks. he misses the tinny tone of the yamaha.

i have met my dream piano, i think. HOM slyly asks if i will dream of a grand in a few years, but i think not. my dream (my hope, really) is to have many years of jamming on my beloved piano with HOM on his beloved taylor. we have become polygamous, me with my second husband and he with his second wife.

but for now, i need to:
1. get it seasoned.
2. figure out how to fix up the dammp-chaser.

observations

i pull up behind an infiniti with a number plate that goes, oommmmm. hmmmmm. it would be nice to have a wittily personalized number plate, i sometimes think, except that it would also be so typically and effusively american.

then i see a chunky pink gentleman arrayed in full suit outside the supermarket. rather like what a middle-aged bertie wooster might have looked, perhaps. in the summer! of course i feel much more appropriately dressed in my barely there stuff and proceed to sneeze my way through grocery shopping.

J2 comes home from family life ed having sat through the screening of a labor video and pronounces it disturbing. what do you mean, i ask. did you find it frightening, or ugly, or vicariously painful, or what? disturbing is so typically and euphemistically american.

to set things straight. i love that we are in the u.s. and that we have the opportunities that we do. certainly school agrees with the J's a lot better and is a lot more forgiving than in sgp. i love that the pace is gentler and smiles are a lot more ready and it's easier to switch lanes. i spell american these days. sometimes i am amused at the flip side of american enthusiasm, that's all.

irritants

linguistic irritants
1. starting a sentence with As well,
2. different than
3. ppl who hv no idea how 2 write in full
4. and salesmen who say, i will double confirm this.
my blood would boil over.

behavioral irritants
1. gum chewing adults. awful.
2. touchey feeley acquaintances. excuse me, that's my body.
3. people who freely use my first name. did i say you could?
4. right handed men who wear their watches on the right.
crabby day.

the day i thought the gps died

faithful old emily crashes from her holder onto the floor of the car, sputters her next directions, and collapses. in a blink, we lose:

1. the direction!

2. the shape of the road ahead!

3. the distance we have traveled!

4. the time to our destination!

oh no!

i've forgotten how to navigate by the printed map, or driving directions, or human help.

postscript.

fortunately HOM manages to resuscitate her. he is a man of many talents.

waiting

for the new piano
with a deliciously shivery sense of anticipation...