1. Do not put on red lipstick, don a balaclava, and ride your bicycle to work. You will end up with lipstick from mid-nose to mid-neck. This has been a public service announcement.
2. The Federal Courthouse is two blocks away from my workplace, and there is a park between the two buildings. Yesterday morning it was so foggy that I couldn’t see the courthouse, which is a large and futuristic building. I use the courthouse as a weather marker. If it has been raining and the courthouse has dry patches, it must have stopped. If the courthouse is showing wet patches, it must be sprinkling. If I can barely see the courthouse across the two-block park, precipitation of some sort is very heavy. When it is snowing, it looked like The World’s Most Forbidding and Imposing Snowglobe.
Seen above, left to right Federal Courthouse, view across park from 17th floor, city hall lost in a fog.
3. Angostura Bitters in tonic water is really pretty good. So much so that you don’t really even need to put any gin in it. I discovered this kind of accidentally, but have since drank several glasses of just tonic water with a few drops of Angostura Bitters in it. That stuff smells so good…kind of spicy and kind of citrusy. Yay, bitters!
4. I’ve been addicted to the Free Rice vocabulary-test game lately. I have tabled at 50, and I am kind of driving myself nuts to see if I can get beyond that. Whenever you make a mistake, it drops you back a level, and I’ll get dropped back to 46 or 47 and have to build back up. I tell you, it can drive a recovering English Major crazy. It’s also re-awakened my horrible, pretentious vocabulary skillz. When I was a teenager I was addicted to Dickens, and by god, I had the most obnoxious vocabulary you could ever lay hands on. I thought it was quite clever to wax prolix and mellifluously orate with bumptious gusto. In short, I was like a goddamn walking thesaurus, and it’s amazing nobody punched me in the yap just for being a loquacious and unconstrained twit. I am also pleased to learn that “ecdysiast = stripteaser.”
5. How to weird-out your co-workers (a must-see for joEL). Also, totally NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
6. I meant to write up my memories of performing as an extra in a production of the Nutcracker when I was a kid, work up my “blogroll,” and add categories to some more posts in my archives, but instead today I decided to finish that silk blouse and make a pair of bluejeans, as well as do laundry, so all that’s getting posted is this lousy list.
Bitters are also very good for the digestion!
You crack me up, as always.
There are only 50 levels! See the FAQ.
There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48.
I tabled at 43 so I find myself in awe of your vocabularian powers. Compared to Average Jane, my vocabulary is excellent, but even 4.5 years of graduate school haven’t exposed me to some of these words. And contextual SAT tricks don’t work.
I’ve got a good vocabulary, but not enough sense to read the FAQ. Typical, ain’t it?
I never did the SAT, so I’m not sure what tricks you used, but I find that I usually know at least one or two of the words on each question outright, and can often extrapolate the meanings of at least one of the others via a latin root word or some other dirty etymology trick. That’s generally enough to get me there. I know a lot of cognates.