Jairus' Daughter

I Heart Confetti

This little piece of heart confetti made quite a journey over the course of its tiny life.  First from the factory to the store, then from the store to my house.  It was dumped out of the bag and funneled into a balloon.  It rode the mile and a half to the party store to get helium, and all the way back to my house, floating near the ceiling of my car.  Then the party started.  A bridal shower.  The confetti, contained in a balloon, went from one room to the other with a guest, then eventually back to the foyer, where the balloon was popped.  The confetti fell to the floor, where it resisted vacuuming and clung to the feet of innocent passersby.  That was in July.  It is now October, and the day of the wedding.  This maverick confetti, which I just discovered on the upstairs carpet, eluded capture for 3 months.  The bride eluded capture for 28 years.

It doesn't take much.

My 3-year-old nonverbal client imitated consonants today.  Little did we suspect that "p," "b," and "m" hailed an overwhelming flood of hope.  What do you tell a mother when she asks if her child will ever be normal?  Now we can tell her he's making significant progress.

He loves peek-a-boo.  When he discovered that he could walk into the closet and close the doors behind him, it was all over.  We fill the closet with a bunch of toys, and all he wants to play with is the closet.

Go L33T!

After a lazy morning of long-overdue blogbrowsing, I came to a startling conclusion:

I am not a geek.

For the first time in my life, I felt some shame about this fact.  I am not a geek; instead, I am a geek-poser attempting to infiltrate the geek world.  I mooch all the geek knowledge I need off my geek friends, so that I can get by without actually having to learn the geek ways.

I'm a fan of LoTR, HP, Star Wars, but I'd flunk a trivia test in a second and it wouldn't really phase me.  I have a blog that I designed and maintain, but--here it comes--I know nothing about computers.  Nothing.  It's shameful.

Why do I do this?  Why do I tread so close to the boundary of geekdom without crossing over?  Maybe I'm just afraid.  What if I go geek and I can't ever go back?

Don't get me wrong; I am a great fan of the geek population.  I prefer, however, not to be assimilated.

Watch Your Mouth

As a trained linguist, I feel I am beholden to use my expertise for the betterment of society.  In this vein, I bring you my first installment of Making the World a Better Place Through Grammar.

Every day I run across language that has been misused and abused.  I can no longer sit idly by while I have the tools at my fingertips to get the word out, so to speak.  The following are just a few of the many misapplied figures of speech that cry out to be understood.

oxymoron:

An oxymoron is a literary device that follows a specific formula:  two words, a modifier paired with a contradictory noun.  Loving hate.  Military intelligence.  If the phrase in question does not fit this pattern, it is probably better described as a contradiction in terms.

concerted effort:

A concerted effort is one that is executed in concert, or together.  It denotes a group working toward a single goal.  One person can not act in concert with himself.  An individual may make a deliberate effort or a concentrated effort, but not a concerted effort.

heighth:

The word is height, HEIGHT!  Length; width; height.  It rhymes with kite, and flight, and fight, which is what I am liable to do if I hear one more person add that obtrusive "th."

That's it for today.  Stay tuned for more important messages from a committed advocate for those little guys we call words.

Just Say Yes to Drugs.

Excedrin, you had me at hello.

You had me at hello.

William & Mary Through My Camera Lens

Some very random shots and a not-at-all-comprehensive virtual tour of my alma mater:

This is a tree.  There are many of them on campus, though few as striking as this one, as the leaves have just begun to change color.

I discovered these benches behind the Muscarelle Museum of Art.  In my four years at WM, I never toured the museum.  I know, I can't believe it either.  Is there no limit to what I will take for granted?  I had hoped to redeem my lack of cultural curiosity this weekend, but sadly the museum had already closed for the day.

This is the hallway through the window in the door I always used whenever I had a play or concert rehearsal at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall (PBK).  Lining this hallway are photographs of past mainstage productions, including one featuring Glenn Close.

This streetlamp is competing with this tree for who can be the tallest.

 
These photos were taken of the construction around Small Hall.  Apparently, it will no longer be so small.

And here we have Oscar, a.k.a. "The Ugliest Thing on Campus."  Upon questioning aloud why anyone would have put it on the edge of the field in the middle of campus, my friends and I received the explanation from an aged alum...  When this horrible sculpture made its debut on campus in the 1960's, it was intended to occupy the place of the sundial, the focal point in the very center of New Campus.  The then-president of the college (thank God) thought such a modern sculpture looked out of place there and had it moved just beyond the New Campus buildings to the edge of the field.  And there it stands, still looking out of place, but not as bad as before.