Resolutions 2019

The holidays have past. It’s a brand new year. And frankly, I’m exhausted. So while this post will be new, I think I’ll do some reposts for the rest of the week so I can take it easy. Until I start cringing over how badly written the old posts were.

Anyway, it’s time to figure out just what I want to do this year.

1. Figure out some way to keep my yearly resolutions in mind. Maybe I’ll put them at the top of the file I organize my blog posts in.

2. Finish the first draft of my new WIP and make my editing plan.

3. (Hopefully) finish my older WIP, and at the very least keep making progress on it.

4. Write something new, but not necessarily an entire book. Something smaller.

5. Start up a new spam blog. I know. It’s the stupidest thing ever. I just think it’s hilarious.

6. Arm myself for the upcoming revolution.

7. Be nicer. To the people who are nice. The people who are mean will learn new definitions of pain.

That’s my 2019 plan. Now let’s see how it all goes to hell. Ugh, I made myself feel bad.

What do you hope for this year?

The End Of The Year

Big mood.

See you next year!

Words I Will Never Know How to Spell

It’s the last Thursday of the year, and as always I’m looking at words in a slightly different fashion. This year: words that I will never know how to spell. Come on, it’s in the post title.

Connoisseur

Heads up: having French genes does not make you able to spell French words (I guess linguistics can’t be passed down that way). Also, why the hell is this word so freaking hard to get right?! Seriously, what is with French and letters? “Let’s throw an O in there!” “Shall we pronounce it?” “No, what are you, crazy?”

Miscellaneous

I think it’s the S and the C in this one that really screw me up. This is why I hate the letter C. It’s so pointless. It’s designed to make you not know how to use it. Is it pronounced? Silent? A K sound? An S? A ch?

Twelfth

I suppose that this might be embarrassing to admit, but I always forget either the L or the F. It’s all those consonants in a row! Sometimes it seems like the F isn’t even vocalized, and I know there’s a linguistic word for that although I can’t think of it off the top of my head and don’t feel like looking it up.

Cemetery

I am just always convinced there’s an A in there somewhere. Secretary uses the same vowel pronunciations but has an A in the end. Why not cemetary? I mean cemetery. I just did it again. Not making this up. I totally spelled it wrong in my post about spelling it wrong as I’m looking at the correct spelling of the word.

Millennium

I never remember that there are two N’s. Or sometimes I spell it with the two N’s, but only one L. I will never, ever get it right on the first try unless I look it up.

So that’s all I can think of, but what about you? What words do you never get right?

Reflections 2018

It’s Christmas, but it’s also the last Tuesday of the year and obviously it’s more important for me to stick to my schedule than put up a filler post. I mean, have you met me? Sticking to schedules is what I do.

If this year was any rougher I’d be in court pointing to where it hurt me on a doll. Saying it was better than last year is like saying being stabbed is better than being shot. I’d rather not have either!

Anyway, this is what I had planned for the year:

Resolutions 2018

1. Figure out some way to better keep track of my goals and resolutions. I used to use a sticky note on my desktop, but I hate it looking cluttered…

I went back to the sticky note. I guess it’s not the worst. It does help me remember what I should be doing.

2. Write a new book.

I’m more than halfway done with the first draft, so it’s getting there!

3. Actually finish a book this year!

I didn’t, although not for lack of trying. I worked really hard to get it to the point where it could have beta readers, and there are still a million things I have to do with it!

4. Once again, try to eat better. Cut back on sugar, and whatnot.

Yeah. No.

5. Takeover/destroy the world. Which it’ll be will probably depend on my mood.

It’s probably a good thing for people that I’m too lazy to get off my ass and do this, because it definitely would have been destroy.

6. Find something fun to do in my spare time. I need more fun. We all need more fun.

Meh, kind of. I bought new games to play. That counts.

7. Write something every day. Well, at least this will be easy.

Pretty close to it, yeah.

I guess it was a successful year in terms of writing, but that’s where it ends. What a nightmare 2018 has been. Wake me when the revolution begins because I’m going to go sleep forever.

Have a nice holiday! Or Tuesday, if that’s what you’re celebrating.

Early

I’m probably not the best person to be put in charge of baking.

Language of Confusion: Baked Goods

This will probably be the last real etymology post of the year. Enjoy it!

Pie

Pie showed up in the mid fourteenth century, or maybe even older than that because in the twelfth century there was a thing called a piehus that meant bakery. It comes from the Medieval Latin pie, which was meat or fish enclosed in a pastry instead of delicious baked fruit. It might be related to the Medieval Latin pia, which meant pie or pastry, but you know how words can be weirdly not related at times. It also might be related to pica, which means… magpie. Which was once just called pie in English. So that answers that question that no one thought to ask.

Cookie

Cookie showed up in the early eighteenth century from Scottish, but back then it meant a plain bun and it’s not actually sure that it’s related to what we know as a cookie. It wasn’t that until 1808, and that was actually taken from the Dutch koekje, little cake, which is from koke, their word for cake. Speaking of which…

Cake

Cake showed up in the early thirteenth century meaning flat or thin baked dough and replacing the Old English word for cake, coecel. It comes from the Old Norse kaka and West Germanic kokon- (which is where the above mentioned koke comes from). It was once thought that it was related to the classical Latin coquere, to cook, but they no longer believe that anymore. Don’t ask me why.

Pudding

Pudding showed up in the fourteenth century meaning, get this, a kind of sausage. We didn’t use it to mean a pudding like we know it until 1670, when it started to mean other foods that were “boiled or steamed in a bag or sack”. Which sounds pretty nasty to me. Pudding might be from the West Germanic pud-, to swell, or the Old French boudin, sausage, but it’s another one that no one is really sure about.

Brownie

Fun fact, in the sixteenth century brownie meant a “benevolent goblin supposed to haunt old farmhouses in Scotland”. It wasn’t until 1897 that it actually meant a brownie. We don’t have a real explanation as to why, but I’m assuming it’s because it’s brown.

Obviously there’s a lot more besides these, but they’ll have to wait for another time. Go list your favorite delicious baked good in the comments!

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at Arlington

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Dictionary of Medieval Latin

The Last Spam

It’s last in the sense that it’s the last spam posts I put up on my Tumblr, but hopefully not the last ever. I’d like to find some way to continue it. Mostly because I have just so much more left on my hard drive and I’d feel really stupid for collecting it if I didn’t at least post it.

Spot the Red Flags!

1. They call me “customer”, when these places always call you by the name on your account.

2. “…your payment information we hold on record” sounds off, like they didn’t quite get the translation right.

3. They forgot to capitalize the name of their company. Even if it was only once, that is suspicious as hell.

4. The most obvious: my Netflix account is not connected to that email address.

If I’m fed up with fake dating, somehow I don’t think your website is going to help me.

The secret to managing your blood sugar: putting spaces between every letter in every sentence.

Honestly, I have the opposite problem. If I tried this stuff I’d go full yeti.

Look at this totally super real new follower I got on Twitter! Not a single thing weird about it, from the series of weird numbers after the name, to the fact that his name is “Gonzalez Jonathan” instead of “Jonathan Gonzalez”, to the fact that he has “sugar baby” as the only words in his profile.

It wouldn’t be spam if there wasn’t at least one cancer widow. Granted, she doesn’t actually say that she has cancer or that she’s a widow, but the spirit is there.