Tuesday, August 16, 2011

When "perfect" isn't perfect...

One of my friends has moved from Chicago to a small town on in Washington state. It is lovely there. The weather is what she has described as "perfect." There is no humidity and every day it's 80 with clear blue skies and no clouds. No storms. No "big hair" from the humidity.

So, what's the problem? She misses the unpredictability of Chicago's weather. One day it can be 80% humidity and 90 degrees, which feels like 105 (or so). The next it can be 80 with 40% humdity (today), and simply gorgeous. But then...there may be 50 mph winds with a thunderstorm. Thunderstorm! My friend misses them. She misses the humidity. The unpredictability of the weather. I can understand that. I lived in San Francisco for a year. I described it to everyone as 60 degrees all yearlong. The trees stayed the same. No fall. No spring. It was boring. That's the way my friend feels.

Now, when it storms or when it's 105, dripping with humidity, no, we don't love it. But we say, "Ah, that's Chicago. Tomorrow it will be different." We're not worried about "perfect" weather here in Chicago. We love the unpredictability!

Who'd have thunk it? Missing the unpredictability of Chicago's weather?

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Is the tea party over?

Is the tea party over?

Excellent article. I couldn't post it on my Facebook page because there are some conservatives among my "friends" so it goes here where nobody will read it.

Recently a friend suggested that the liberal Democrats need a group similar to the tea partyers. Not a bad idea!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

AWAD is discussing the e-word

AWADers are lucky. They are allowed to discuss "epicaricacy" on their discussion board about words. We can't do that on Wordcraft, and that's why I started this Blog. I recently got this from my "epicaricacy" Google alerts. Little do AWADers know there is a whole Blog dedicated to the word!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

And another citation

I hope John Simpson is reading my blog. I have lots of ammunition for him in support of adding epicaricacy to the OED. Here is another citation (albeit weak!).

Monday, August 1, 2011

From wwftd...

Tsuwm on wwftd (you really should sign up for his words) is just as passionate about epicaricacy as I am, and he is more talented at finding uses of the word. Here is a citation he sent me. Then he also sent me this pronunciation guide for it. It seems that the stress is on the third syllable:

ep-i-CARE-i-ca-see

Not easy for limericks or DDs!