2019 - Day 219/146 - Wednesday...Connive...

In the spirit of equal time allotted to any and all with differing opinions and/or values, tonight's picture is of Callie, sister (kind of) and co-habitation canine of the Estate on the Edge of Nowhere. Neither of these two dogs care for having their pictures taken, but Lexie (the piglet) is definitely the more amenable and more photogenic of the two. When you take a picture of Callie, there is sometimes a challenge determining which end you are actually capturing for posterity; the front end or the back end. Callie, however, is the much more calm and patient (tolerant) of the two. I was wakened this morning at about 3 a.m., because the piglet had to go outside. When I let them back in, I camped out on the couch, and never really did make it back to sleep. So, I am a little cranky right now and am looking forward to bedtime. But night time chores first.

Connive -- Verb. 1. to pretend ignorance of or fail to take action against something. 2a. to be indulgent or in secret sympathy. b. to cooperate secretly or engage in secret scheming: conspire. "Moreover, the government was only too happy, for propaganda purposes, to connive at such large-scale fraud." Anthony Daniels, USA Today Magazine, September, 2014

Did You Know? Connive may not seem list a troublesome term, but it was to Wilson Follett, a usage critic who lamented that the word "was undone during the Second World War, when restless spirits felt the need of a new synonym for plotting, bribing, spying, conspiring, engineering a coup, preparing a secret attack." Follett thought connive should only mean "to wink at" or "to pretend ignorance." Those senses are closer to the Latin ancestor of the word (connive comes from the Latin connivere, which means "to close the eyes" and is descended from -nivere, a form akin to the Latin verb nictare, meaning "to wink"). But many English speakers disagreed, and the "conspire" sense is now the word's most widely used meaning.

2019 - Day 218/147 - Tuesday...Supercilious...

So...this guy showed up at the house the other day; Fat David. He seems to be happily ensconced out on his little pedestal out beyond the pool. This is what happens to you when a lithe and handsome guy from Italy gets a green card to the US, and discovers McDonald's. Just a testament to the society in which we live and the helplessness of the fast food generation we have become. Other than that, it was not a terrible day. It started early for me, I left the house just before 6:30 to make sure I had plenty of time to get to an 8:30 meeting. Then it was off to the office, then to another meeting, and then home. I am tired of talking about traffic issues, so I am taking a vow NOT to talk about it at least until the first of September. I don't think the odds are particularly in my favor to accomplish that task, so if anyone is taking bets, I would bet against the house.

Supercilious -- Adjective. coolly and patronizingly haughty. The supercilious critic clearly wasn't expecting to be impressed by the new restaurant, but in the end he gave it and its staff a glowing review.

Did You Know? Arrogant and disdainful types tend to raise an eyebrow at anything they consider beneath them. The original supercilious crowd must have shown that raised-eyebrow look often, because the adjective supercilious derives from supercilium, Latin for "eyebrow." (We plucked our adjective and its meaning from the Latin adjective superciliousus.) Supercilious has been used to describe the censoriously overbearing since the late 1600s, but there was a time in the 1700s when it was used as a synonym of another supercilium descendant, superciliary ("of, relating to, or adjoining the eyebrow"). Although the eyebrow sense of supercilious is now obsolete, it does help explain what ornithologist John Latham meant in 1782 when he described a "Supercilious K[ingfisher]" with a narrow orange stripe over its eyes.

2019 - Day 217/148 - Monday...Soi-Disant...

As you can see, the morning sunrise from the rear view mirror showed great promise, but I am totally fatigued by the incessant news (not really news) of the tragedies sustained yet again in our country by persons obviously unhappy with the current state-of affairs. Or should it be states-of-affairs? Not sure, but there is no sense in quibbling about the details. SO, this journal entry will be brief so you can all spend less time on this, and more time telling those you care about that you care about them.

Soi-Disant -- Adjective. self proclaimed, so called. The mechanic was a soi-disant "expert" on European cars, but he still couldn't figure out why my Swedish sedan was leaking oil.

Did You Know? Soi-disant, which in French literally means "saying oneself," is one of hundreds of French terms that entered English in the 18th century, during the period known as the Enlightenment. Even as political antipathies between France and England were being played out on battlefields in Europe and America, English speakers were peppering their speech and writing with French. Soi-disant first began appearing in English texts in the mid-18th century as a disparaging term for someone who styles or fancies himself or herself in some role. Crepe, vis-a-vis, etiquette, and sang-froid are a few of the other French terms that became naturalized in English at that time.

2019 - Day 216/149 - Sunday...Arduous...

Try as we might, we were not able to get any extra sleep today. I dreamed that a plane crashed into the (good) neighbors field next door. Not really a crash, in my dream there was a pop (or a snap) and the plane turned into just a flat disc. Think frisbee, only really flat, imagine those giant car crushers in the junk yard. Kind of like that. There was a lot of activity after the plane crash, and Joel was in charge of calling the (good) neighbor. I woke up and realized it was just a dream, and decided thought, okay, I will just go back to sleep. That is when it started; either a smoke alarm or a carbon monoxide detector, somewhere in the house, was beeping. You know the beep, the 'I need a new battery!' beep. The beeps that only happen in the middle of the night. In this case, it was 5:48 a.m., kind of a regular time for rising, except this was a Sunday morning, and I really did not need to get up. And the rest is history. SO, after reading a little bit of the paper, I started watering, and doing some finesse to both the HVAC units. A little of this and a little of that, and just about the time I finished watering, it started raining. But I kept watering, not trusting that we would get anything significant, and I was right. 0.04" of an inch of rain, just enough to make everything really humid when the sun finally came out about 2 o'clock this afternoon. I did get an interesting picture (I think) of one of the blooms on the sweet potato vine. And the chicken coop got cleaned out, and, w
ell, never mind.

Arduous -- Adjective. 1a. hard to accomplish or achieve. b. marked by great labor or effort. 2. steep. The rescue crew embarked on what would be a long and arduous trek up the mountain in search of the missing hikers.

Did You Know? "To forgive is the most arduous pitch human nature can arrive at." When Richard Steele published that line in The Guardian in 1713, he was using arduous in what was apparently a fairly new way for writers in his day: to imply that something was steep or lofty as well as difficult. Steele's use is one of the earliest documented in English for that meaning, but he didn't commit it to paper until almost 200 years after the first uses of the word in its "hard to accomplish" sense. Although the sense is very true to the word's origins; arduous derives from the Latin arduus, which means "high" or "steep."

2019 - Day 215/150 - Saturday...Sparge...

It was a great day for watering stuff. Cloudy, overcast, not too hot. There were a couple spritzes of rain, nothing more than a trace, not even enough to get the patio or the decks really wet, just indications of the drops. So, I got a lot of the beds watered, and I can finish up tomorrow. A little bit in the morning, and a little bit later in the evening. Otherwise, the day was pretty quiet. Napping was impossible; I was on a 15 minute timer schedule with the watering, and we were waiting for the VAC guy to arrive. Nothing terribly complicated, and I am pretty sure we are in business again. I need to go up in the attic over the garage tomorrow and make sure everything is okay with that unit, and do a little bit of preventive maintenance. Jody and I went in to Georgetown for lunch, and got home in time for the news. The piglet got her face washed after the news, so we can try to keep that under control. It is going to be an early night, I believe!

Sparge -- Verb. 1. sprinkle, bespatter; especially: spray. 2. to agitate (a liquid) by means of compressed air or gas entering through a pipe. "The first batch of red IPA was mashed, sparged, and transferred to the kettle." BeerAdvocate.com, March 16, 2010

Did You Know? Etymologists think that sparge likely came to English by way of the Middle French word espargier, itself from the Latin spargere, meaning "to scatter." (Spargere is also the source of disperse, intersperse, and sparse, among others.) Although sparge has been a synonym for "sprinkle" since the late 16th century, you're now most likely to come across this word in one of two contexts. The first is a process called "air sparging," in which air is injected into groundwater to help remediate contamination. The second is the process of beer making, during which mash is sparged-that is, sprayed with hot water to extract the wort.

2019 - Day 214/151 - Friday...Sobriquet...

Well, I have to admit, this is NOT something you will see on a regular basis; Evans in the attic pretending to be an HVAC service tech. Last weekend, I noticed there was some water staining on the ceiling in the den, and I went up into the attic to see if there was an active leak. I could not find anything, so I decided it had been something that happened a while back and corrected itself. We did have some strong rain earlier in the year, and I assumed that was the problem. However, while I was up there, I just about knocked myself out on an unfortunately place 2x12 (2x16? who knows...), and if you have seen me this week, that was the cause of the six inch scab across my forehead...but I digress... This evening when I got home, I noticed that it looked like the staining was getting worse. I got the step stool out, and the spot was indeed wet. So, back up in the attic I went. I found the origin of the leak, and called out HVAC guy, who will be out tomorrow to make it all better. In the meantime, after dinner, I wondered if I should turn off the AC in that part of the house (the answer is 'of course you should'), but instead, I went back up into the attic (it is effing hot up there, too), and put a tupperware tray under the spot to see if that will keep it from causing any more damage. It can't hurt, and as long as I was going back into unchartered territory, I might as well take the opportunity to document the happening for this journal entry. Ta-da! The other alternative was a picture of a wreck on the Interstate, and I already bore you with plenty of those.

Sobriquet -- Noun. a descriptive name of epithet: nickname. "There was none more powerful a performer than Harvey Phillips, a man whose love for the instrument earned him the sobriquet Mr. Tuba." John Tolley, Big Ten Network, September 2, 2017

Did You Know? This synonym of nickname has the same meaning in Modern French as it does in English. In Middle French, however, its earlier incarnation soubriquet referred to both a nickname and a tap under the chin. Centuries later, the connection between these two meanings isn't clear, but what is clear is that the "nickname" meaning of sobriquet was well established in French by the time English speakers borrowed the term in the mid-17th century-and it was the only meaning that was adopted. In current english, the spelling sobriquet is most common, but soubriquet is an accepted variant.

2019 - Day 213/152 - Thursday...Abulia...

Tell me what it is that concerns you the most about this picture: 1). Cars to the left of me, cars to the right. B). I have travelled 4.8 miles in 28 minutes. 3). It is 109 degrees on the car thermometer. D). It is 4:38 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. Statistically, Thursday afternoon in central Texas is the worst traffic day. If that is the case, I would like to know (statistically speaking), what is the best traffic afternoon in central Texas, and weekends do not count. I have said it before and I will say it again, central Texas (and Austin specifically), is on the brink of becoming inconvenient. We may has tipped over the edge while I was sleeping, but I am not really ready to throw in the towel just yet.

Here is an extra paragraph, being quoted from yesterdays edition of the Bartlett Tribune Progress (Serving Central Texas since 1866). This quote is attributed to The Bartlett Philosopher, who shares his knowledge with us in every (weekly) edition. "I WOULD LIKE to ask those persons opening a new business to please stay in business long enough for me to mention it in the paper. It is somewhat embarrassing to say something nice about a new business in the paper and have the business close before the paper comes out. Also, it is always helpful for businesses to put up a sign so people will know you are running a business and not just squatting in a vacant building". I can't argue with that.

Abulia -- Noun. abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions. "Abulia is a motivational deficit that is associated with apathy, loss of will, and lack of intimidating behaviors." Handbook of the Neuroscience of Language, 2008

Did You Know? "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind," Mark Twain once wrote. "It takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up." The indecision Twain laments is fairly common; only when the inability to make decisions reaches an abnormal level does it have an uncommon name; Abulia. The English term we use today comes from a New Latin word that combines the prefix a-, meaning "without," with the Greek word boute, meaning "will." Abulia can refer to the kind of generalized indecision that makes it impossible to choose what flavor ice cream you want, though it was created to name a severe psychological disorder that can render a person nearly inert.