Monday, May 20, 2019

2019 - Day 140/225 - Monday...Ineffable...

This particular soda machine on the 8th floor of the Marriott Wardman Park was pretty much the bane of my existence while I was in DC last week. $3 for a bottle of diet pepsi, cash, coin or credit card accepted. It had a receiver for dollar bills (and possibly bills of other denominations), but that little bastard would not take my dollar bills. Out of desperation, I charged a three dollar diet pepsi with my credit card, and got NO receipt. I wonder if I will get reimbursed for that? Business travel is not nearly as glamorous was we want people to think it is. It's just not. There is some fun involved, but not a lot. Mostly it is wandering around lost, wondering what room you are supposed to be tonight, and why won't the wifi work. It never works until you have spent 30 minutes holding your mouth a certain way until you hit the perfect combination or smirks and tears. And don't even ask me about the length of time you spend trying to buy a diet pepsi with three dollar bills. I can't add up that high!

Ineffable -- Adjective. 1a. incapable of being expressed in words: indescribable. b. unspeakable. 2. not to be uttered. taboo. These descriptions, even as evocative and detailed as they are, still fail to capture the ineffable grandeur of the mountainous landscape.

Did You Know? "Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness," wrote Frederick Douglass in his autobiography. Reading Douglass's words, it's easy to see that ineffable means "indescribable" or "unspeakable." And when we break down the word to its Latin roots, it is easy to see how these meanings came about. Ineffable comes from ineffabilis, which joins the prefix in-, meaning "not," with the adjective effabilis, meaning "capable of being expressed." Effabilis comes from effari ("to speak out"), which in turn comes from ex- and fari ("to speak").

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