Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Word of the day: amanuensis

by

I generally think of myself as having a fairly good vocabulary, but yesterday at a department meeting Carrie tossed out a term that I hadn’t ever come across before — amanuensis, which she said was a synonym for secretary. We weren’t sure how it was spelled (I had guessed amenuensis, guessing that the amen used at the end of prayers could mean something like ‘the word’ [as in ‘the word of the Lord’], which could tie into a secretarial profession), but Lee was able to look it up and send us the correct spelling via e-mail. I just looked it up on dictionary.com, and here’s what they returned:

amanuensis Aman`uen”sis, n.; pl. Amanuenses. [L., fr. a, ab + manus hand.]

A person whose employment is to write what another dictates, or to copy what another has written. [Latin amanuensis, from the phrase (servus) amanu, (slave) at handwriting :a, ab, by; see ab–1 + manu, ablative of manus, hand; see man-2 in Indo-European Roots.]

I just thought it was interesting, and another two-cent word to toss in every so often. Apparently mom’s been an amanuensis for most of her working life!

Apparently I was pretty off-base about ‘amen’ having anything to do with ‘word’, however — I just looked it up on dictionary.com, here’s the result for that:

amen A*men” (?; 277), interj., adv., & n. [L. amen, Gr. ‘amh`n, Heb. [=a]m[=e]n certainly, truly.]

An expression used at the end of prayers, and meaning, So be it. At the end of a creed, it is a solemn asseveration of belief. When it introduces a declaration, it is equivalent to truly, verily.

I still think my ‘amen/word/word of God’ guess was a good one, though. :)

Still in Hollywood

by

It’s Thursday morning, and I’m sitting here staring slightly bleary-eyed at the computer monitor here at work, trying to do two things: firstly, kick-start my brain into gear after being up fairly late last night; and secondly, see if there’s any way I can communicate how absolutely cool the Concrete Blonde concert I went to last night was. I’m probably not going to be able to do that good of a job, but…(shrug). Trust me. It was incredible.

Read more

It does snow here!

by

Snow in Seattle!I just thought this was pretty nifty, and funny too. Seattle actually got some snow this weekend! I snapped this pic of it just to prove that it actually can happen here. Of course, it’s nothing like Anchorage — but from the reactions down here, you’d think it was the Apocalypse!

Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating just a little bit, but…it’s still funny. Candice and I walked down to Westlake Center (one of two main shopping malls in downtown Seattle), and were both amazed at how dead it was for a Sunday afternoon. Apparently nobody thought they could actually make it out of the house.

Flaming down Broadway

by

Passing the torchI’ll expand this entry more later on tonight with pictures and such, but last night the Olympic Torch relay came through Seattle. I’d already checked the route maps provided by the Seattle Times and King 5 and seen that the route was scheduled to go within a block of my apartment at about 5:45pm! Since the walk home from work only takes about 20 minutes, I knew I’d be home in time to wander down and watch the relay come by.

Just before 5:45 I left the Shoebox and wandered down the hill to Pike Street. There were already a few other people standing on the corner of Pike and Boylston waiting for the relay to come by, and we chatted off and on for the next few mintues as we waited. Round about 6-ish or so some trucks came by handing out noisemakers for us to play with as the runner came by, so we each grabbed a few and kept waiting. And waiting. Apparently the procession wasn’t exactly keeping to schedule.

By 6:15 or so we were getting a bit chilly — though the temperature last night was in the mid-30’s, which isn’t too bad, there was a fairly constant wind that made things a bit colder — when a couple ladies came by selling t-shirts. We asked them if they knew how far along the runner was, and they said that he was still working his way through downtown Seattle! At that point, we all decided that a stop by the Rosebud to warm up sounded like a good idea, and off we went. I grabbed a table right by the street so I could keep an eye on the crowds still gathering along Pike Street to get a feel for when things were coming our way, and nursed a very nice Malibu Rum and Coke.

It was probably around 6:30 or so when we noticed that the news helicopters were now hovering almost directly overhead (side note: even when you know they’re news choppers, it’s a wee bit disconcerting to be able to look in the sky and see three hovering helicopters with spotlights trained in your general direction), and a few minutes after that people on the street started pointing down the hill. Everyone waiting in the Rosebud took that as our clue, and headed out to the street.

The next runner gets readyI hadn’t known this before, never having seen the Torch relay before, but it’s not done with one runner from start to finish through each town. Rather, they have multiple runners, each one carrying a torch for a short distance, at the end of which the flame is passed on to the next runner with their own torch for the next leg. As it turns out, they were switching runners just a block before the Pike/Broadway intersection, so I was able to get a couple shots of the new runner getting ready to go, the passing of the flame, and then the previous runner getting his congratulations. It was a pretty cool thing to be able to see — I’ll try to get my pictures up this evening.

Karl got fat! Er…phat? Um…

by

Quite nice — just a quick note to say congratulations to Karl on his new Harley Davidson!

This is one of those things that mom would kill me for admitting, but I’ve occasionally thought that getting a motorcycle would be a lot of fun. However, should that ever happen, it’s a long ways down the road…but for now, congrats, Karl!

That’s a big cockroach!

by

I swear, that cockroach is going to pick up my stereo, put it on his shoulders and just crawl right out of there one of these days…

— overheard while walking back to work on lunch

Greeneyes rocks too!

by

I’ve been promising to do this ever since I made my Belinda rocks! post — and since that was back in late November, it’s probably about time I actually did it, huh?

Anyway, GreenEyes rocks too ! Another instant celebrity, courtesy of lil’ ol’ me!

Never let it be said that I won’t whore myself out for attention.

What the heck is this from?

by

I stumbled across this little exchange today, that sounds extremely famliar from a long time ago….

Wanna buy a duck?

A what?

A duck!

Does it quack?

Of course it quacks, it’s a duck!

For the life of me, though, I can’t pin down where in the world it comes from. Doing a Google search doesn’t help much either — it pops up around the ‘net, but never attributed to any one thing, always just listed as an ‘in joke’ or as a party game or some such.

Anyone else remember this, or have any idea what it’s from? It’s stuck in my head and driving me mildly batty….

Read more