The dog ate my flash drive.

Actually, it’s really not the dog’s fault.  I thought the INTERNET BREAK would help me solve my bloxistential crisis, but I haven’t found any answers.

I know other people deal with this, so tell me, please - if you’re a blogger, why do you blog?  who do you blog for?  what do you blog for? what do you expect from the blogging process?  If you’re a blogreader why do you read blogs?  what keeps you reading?

Now that I have delegated all that thinking to you all, I’m going to go watch the Season Premiere of Lost.

Posted in Biography of a Blog |

At least one thing is improving.

I have some kind of weird dental or sinus pain. That’s my excuse for not posting much this week. Tune in next week to see whether I can come up with something more creative or if I’ll have to resort to “the dog ate my flash drive.”

In the meantime - go take this quiz to celebrate that there’s only one week left until Lost resumes.

I am a bit happier with my results this time. Last time I didn’t fare as well.

Find out Which Lost Character Are You at LiquidGeneration.com!

Posted in Everything Else |

Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Bono?

I don’t have a lot of memories from Kindergarten, but I do have some. I clearly recall that my teacher, Mrs. Farley, a sweater-clad grandmotherly woman with curly red, teased hair, had filled our classroom with personified letter balloons (Mr. M, Lady L and the like). We spent a lot of time learning about Mr. M who made muffins and Lady L who loved lions. We drew shapes. We talked about colors. And, if memory serves me, we devoted a good chunk of my 1/2 day class period to drinking milk and eating a cookie.

The Kindergarten students of today, it seems, receive slightly more advanced instruction.

Friday, 6 came home with a picture he’d colored of “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” Because, as he explained, “Monday is Dr. Junior’s day.”

What a fabulous opportunity, I thought, to take the lesson he’d learned in school and expand. And so I started in on what I thought would be a terrific, age-appropriate Dr. King lesson.

“You’re right,” I explained as all three kids listened intently.

“Martin Luther King taught us all about how important it is to treat people the same.”

I continued to my captive crowd. “He was a very important person in helping to tell people that they shouldn’t judge each other by how they look and that it’s what inside that counts.”

6 looked at me quizzically. “Actually,” he said in a tone of slight annoyance, “there used to be all these laws saying that black people couldn’t do things. And there were a lot of signs everywhere about how only white people could be in restaurants and places like that. But Dr. King got the laws changed.”

“That’s right,” I said, a little speechless as he continued.

“But then he was shot because some people didn’t like him. And do you know where they killed him, mom?”

I paused briefly, and ran the song through my head just to be certain … early morning April 4 … “Memphis?” I responded.

“Yeah, in Tennessee.”

Apparently the academic life has changed a bit in the last nearly 30 years.

“So, who wants cookies and milk?”

Posted in Kid Speak |

I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s cold.

Here in Minnesota it is cold.  Every Minnesotan I encountered today agreed.  It’s cold.  Today is just one of those days you have to comment on the weather to every person you see.  One of those days when, according to the word on the street, it is colder than a bejesus.

Having heard the phrase a couple times today.  Man, it’s colder than a bejesus out there.  I got to wondering — What, actually, is a bejesus?

And, since I like nothing more on a cold day than a good research project (actually, I do find that cold weather seems to drive me, almost instinctively, to refined and processed carbohydrates, and I really can’t get enough warm sugary treats when the mercury drops below zero, a fact which, I think, supports my hypothesis that there is a scientific reason why women who live in warm climates can stay thinner, but I digress), I took off my mittens and fired up Google.

A Bejesus, according to the Online Slang Dictionary is “An expression of surprise or alarm.”

Well, um, yeah.  No offense to the writers of said Dictionary, but I knew that much.  What is a bejesus?

“Slang” says Answers.com “used as an intensive.”

Again, less than helpful.  I guess, what I am really looking for, dear Google, is the etymology of the word Bejesus - when did bejesus become an intensive and why?

Since Dr. Jacques Bailly is nowhere to be found I try Google again “etymology of bejesus.”

Merriam Webster is slightly more helpful, letting me know that it’s a noun and that it is an alteration of the phrase “By Jesus.”  And, depending whether I look at Merriam, or another source it appears we started using the term in the late 19th or early 20th century to say things like, “the bear scared the bejesus out of me.”

Even though I still don’t know what it is, I am willing to bet that if I came toe to toe with a Grizzly Bear, my by Jesus, and any other part of me that could, would depart the scene post haste.  But I still don’t know when we decided that a bejesus is very cold.

I am about to research it further when I stumbled on this, The Bejesus Quarterly, several webpages of proof that you can waste a lot of time on the internet, and perhaps evidence that there are people in the world who have more time on their hands than even me.  I give up.  My hands are too cold to type.

Tomorrow’s research project - determine what is, in fact, the coldest part of a witch’s anatomy.

Posted in Everything Else |