Of Dwarves and Lexicon

Today I have mostly been just sitting around, lump-like; I have some sort of nasty cold thing going on that has elevated my usual phlegmy state from moderate to torrential (national mucus threat level: orange!). Not to mention the fevery business--yesterday morning I was so cold that no matter how many layers of clothing I piled upon myself or how many cups of hot tea I swigged down, I was shivery and miserable. And then by last night the pendulum swung the other way and I was a reduced to a sweaty puddle of overheated exhaustion. According to Jen, I have a fever, today, too, but I don’t feel quite so nasty.

I took Jen to a doctor appointment today; she had asked me last week so I couldn't leave her in the lurch. While I was waiting for her, I went downstairs outside the medical building to sit on the edge of the stone fountain and bask in the warmth of the sun. It was quite nice. The gentle heat and the gurgling water were so soothing I even forgot how bad I felt temporarily. And then I heard a voice--an adult’s voice speaking in high-pitched baby talk--ask me “Did you put your feet in the nice wataw?” I looked around, confused, and saw two women in their 60s walking arm-in-arm toward me. The one who addressed me was holding up a doll puppet on her arm at face height, and the doll’s blank frozen happy face was nodding at me, yellow yarn-hair wagging. It was the DOLL who asked me the question! Egad. Trying to disguise the fear leaping into my throat, I managed to say, “No” or some other stunted phrase in a normal voice. To which the doll said something else babyish as the scary puppet lady grinned at me. Fortunately, they kept walking throughout this exchange, so by that point I was free to let the look of horror wash over my face. I feel like I should have checked to make sure David Lynch wasn’t lurking around the corner with a movie camera. No dwarves speaking in tongues followed, so I think I’m safe.

I need to talk about something else now. Think of England! Think of England!

So, my mom sent me this fabulous link today: Free Rice. It’s a nonprofit website that donates rice to people who don’t even have enough of that to eat on a daily basis. Instead of just clicking a button to donate, you take a vocabulary quiz. Each word you get right donates 10 grains of rice. Sounds odd? Wait til you try it! It’s addictive. Now, I’ve always been a word nerd, but even if you aren’t, you should try it out--people will be fed and you will have made yourself a much smarter human in the process. I like that it keeps track of which level you’re on. It also reacts much like the GRE tests--it keeps asking you harder words when you get them right, and then switches back to easier ones the more you get stumped. Unlike the GRE, it is untimed, and you don’t feel like your entire future is balanced on whether or not you guess the next question correctly. If you are good at word roots, it’s fairly easy to figure out the definitions of words you don’t know. For instance, I got that hortatory means “urging” even though I’d never seen it before. Think exhortation. Fun, huh? Or maybe I am just a raging geek. Yeah, probably that.