Incoming

I'm going to start posting here more often. Just as soon as I can get away from this sniper fire.

gloppened

Bonnie got me this great day-at-a-time calendar for my desk at work. Each day I have a new word or phrase from forgotten English. Today's is "gloppened."

The word means (or did so once upon a time) surprised.

The following is the anecdotal account that accompanies this word on my calendar:

Blessing the Flour
A reenactment of this ancient custom takes place near Limerstone, on the Isle of Wight, each year on this date. The ritual distribution of flour is linked to the Tichborne Dole, a charity initiated in 1150. It seems that Sir Roger Tichborne ruled the House of Tichborne with little compassion. But in the spirit of Lady Godiva, his kindhearted wife, Lady Mabella, who lay dying, wished to provide the local poor with a cushion in the event of a bad harvest. In response to her request, stingy Sir Roger mockingly
offered to set aside a parcel of farmland for the poor if she could circumscribe it while a stick was burned to mark time. To his horror and surprise, she fell to her knees and pitifully crawled out a twenty-three-acre tract, still known as "The Crawls," in the allotted period. She then pronounced a curse on any Tichborne descendant who failed to honor this pledge, and promptly died.

That sure would have gloppened me.

Spring

I haven't posted here in awhile. I realized my posts were becoming steadily more angry and frustrated. I started this blog to post more than my political opinions. Unfortunately it has devolved into that, and the opinions have become less and less insightful and more and more predictable; it was time to take a break.

This morning is a good time to post again. For starters I am going to be hanging a garden gate which I started making last weekend and which I have been painting with several coats all week. Bonnie's back yard is a constant source of creative interest and endeavor for me, and a nice thing to post on. I'll put up a photo of the gate later on (although in reality a photo about one month from now will be the one really worth posting, with all the spring blooming not yet here).

We're off to Hawaii in two weeks for a family memorial (my siblings and I were all raised there and most of us were born there). The memorial is a bit late; our mother died over 30 years ago and our father died a year and a half ago. The memorial will be a placing of our father's ashes and our mother's symbolic ashes under a headstone in a cemetery on Kauai. This will unite them again as seems fitting. We will follow with a second ceremony on the Big Island in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which my father loved, where we will spread more of his ashes.

When we return I am going to build a wooden extension on top of the cinder block wall we have separating our back yard from the arroyo behind us. Ours is the shortest wall on the street which makes our house a potential attraction to would-be thieves wandering the arroyo trail. I am very excited about building this wall extension. After two years discussing a dozen options, making and breaking plans, and letting things simmer, Bonnie and I finally arrived at a solid plan last weekend. It's going to be very attractive. I'll post a photo of our work when it's finished as well. That should be near the end of April, and the yard should be in full bloom then.

I had started this post also intending to copy and respond to a particularly vitriolic comment left last night on this blog. I'll save that for later if at all. It's nice to write about nicer things occasionally.