Living In the World, Not on It

I'm watching the end of the latest Celebrity Apprentice , which aired last night, too late for me to stay awake. (Good thing...) I'm appalled that Dennis has lasted this long into the show. He was obviously drinking the whole time, missed the second task, and then got so bombed in this task that he went with two customers to a restaurant. And drank some more. He'd started when they were working. This guy is awful. He looks ugly as hell. I have no idea if I've seen him sober, so I can't tell you whether or not he appeared hung over or drunk. But the slurring of words and not showing up was ugly. And he looks like he's been attacked by a hardware store. All over. He pierced both nostrils, his lip (I can't ev en look at that! There's someone on Hell's Kitchen with that same deal. EEEEIIIIIIUUUUWWWWW! Yuck. It is so disgusting). I don't care what you pierce that I cannot see, but there is no way I can deal with the weird facial piercings. Oh, my go...

Today I ran our first Balance Point payroll. I loved it. Sure, it needed some tweaking, there were some little things here and there that needed to be adjusted, added in, recalculated. But this was the very first run in something that began a mere three weeks ago. And the adjustments and such could have just as likely been my fault especially with all the little weirdnesses that I wanted and that go with my specific industry. Well. Adjustments or not, the programmer there was wonderful. I am usually really pleasant and I give more than fair warning about working with me: early morning is the best time of day for me; I have a very dry/sarcastic sense of humour and I can be brainless sometimes. As long as you can roll with that, we'll be fine. Arunan, their programmer, put up with my late afternoon uselessness, my mathemadical idiocy, and worked with me at every minute of this process to make it the most painless process in the world. Once we had the tweaking done, the rest was so e...

with Anu Garg Monday, 9 March 2009 - This week marks the quindecennial of Wordsmith.org. Fifteen years ago, on Mar 14, 1994, the first word went out to a handful of grad school friends. Since then, here's the journey in numbers: 15 years, 200 countries, 4000 words, 700,000 subscribers, who share our infinite enjoyment of words. To mark the milestone, this week we'll feature words that are 15 letters long. And a contest for you. Today's 15-letter word infundibuliform can be defined in exactly 15 letters as "shaped as a funnel". For the other four words this week, can you likewise provide definitions that are exactly 15 letters each? We'll select four winning definitions, one for each of the words. Winners will receive their choice of an autographed copy of a book by Anu Garg . Send your definitions to (contest at wordsmith.org) by Friday (replace at with @). infundibuliform PRONUNCIATION: (in-fuhn-DIB-yuh-luh-form) MEANING: adjective: Funnel-shaped ETYMOLOGY: F...

I love these guys. GO GET 'EM! Your favorite fast food restaurant is often like your favorite city: Visit some neighborhoods and you live the high life. Visit others and you’re just plain asking for trouble. And that’s where Eat This, Not That! comes in: We’ve analyzed and graded 66 different chain restaurants—fast food and sit-down—to determine which ones have healthy options, and which could turn out to be diet disasters. What we found will surprise you. Specifically, some of the fast food joints you’ve come to think of as terrible for you actually ranked alright—McDonald’s scored a B+, for example, so the Micky D’s drive-thru just might be your fast-lane to weight loss. Something even more shocking, though: more than half of the sit-down restaurants we graded ended up with our lowest scores! To separate the commendable from the deplorable, we calculated the total number of calories per entrée. This gave us a snapshot of how each restaurant compared in average serving size—a key...

That is all there is in the Spring season - madness! It is usually good madness; sometimes it is bad madness but most of it really is positive in nature. But no matter how it goes or what it is... it is insanity! Hiring is not specifically my area... I'm more the facilitator of the process. I'm the one who enters the person into the system - I'm the one who makes the candidate an employee, after the manager has decided to bring that person on board. While I have little interviewing to do, I have a lot of paper processing to do. In some ways, I prefer it - I enjoy recruiting as a part of my job but I always hated doing it to the exclusion of all else. Having been there before, this is a pleasant change. On the other hand, by May I am fried from paper nightmares! It is a funny thing. Still... there are some great people to be had out there now and this is the time to find them... if we can. Sometimes recruiting is a huge challenge in this kind of economy. We'll find out s...

I know, I know, how cheesy. We watch Celebrity Apprentice - how embarassing. On the other hand, if you gotta watch a reality show... It's an interesting group. There's Joan Rivers, who has someone else's face; her daughter, Melissa Rivers, who is butt-ugly and openly takes credit for ideas that she did not have; a professional poker player, a former Playboy bunny, a model from Deal or No Deal , a reality telly star, a women's professional golfer (yay!) and an R&B singer. This is the women's team. So far they have kicked the asses of the men's team. The men consist of Andrew Dice Clay (casualty number one, whom I don't miss; Scott Hamilton, who is wonderful but is not in his element as a team leader (casualty number two); Tom Green, who is a complete mental midget and while no one actually said it, showed up drunk to manage the last task... but I would almost guarantee that he is bipolar or just severely ADD. Casualty number three. I don't miss him....

Up until autumn of 2005, I'd never have paid attention to a story about golf. Like almost any sport, this is not something I was even aware of before then. Now, this hardly means I'm going to become one of the dropping-balls-all-over-the-place people... but this was definitely worth a read and a chuckle. "Okay, ready for your you-gotta-be-kidding-me story of the week, if not the year? Your setting: lovely St. Petersburg, Florida. Your heroine: 62-year-old Norweigan native Unni Haskell, who, after two months' worth of golf lessons, teed up her first-ever shot on a real live golf course. On the first tee of the nine-hole par-3 Cypress Links in St. Pete, Ms. Haskell pulled out a driver -- this is a hundred-yard hole, but remember, Ms. Haskell had never played before -- and drilled a 75-yard corker that bumped, ran and ended up right in the hole. That's right ... on the first swing of the first hole of the first course she ever played, Unni Haskell hit a hole-in-one . ...

with Anu Garg The great humorist Mark Twain once said, "In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language." Well, that's the pitfall of learning a foreign language away from its natural habitat. We might become proficient in the grammar but there is never a certainty about the nuances of the language. No matter. Some of the terms we borrow from French have now become part of the English language. They often help us convey a whole idea succinctly just in a word or two. This week we'll look at five of them. A note about pronunciation: When we adopt words from other languages, we don't always adopt their pronunciations as well. So the pronunciation suggestions given with these words reflect how they're generally pronounced in English. bon ton PRONUNCIATION:(bon ton) MEANING: noun: 1. Good form or style 2. Something regarded as fashionably right 3. High society ETYMOLOGY: From French, ...

I'e finished the Mything series by Robert Asprin and have begun rereading the John Grisham books. I read The Chamber in about two weeks, not quite, and today I started on The Testament . I have brought up several from the "library" but I know I have more to find. The Rainmaker has to be there somewhere as well as The Street Lawyer and The Pelican Brief . As good as the movies for The Pelican Brief and The Client were, the books are just that much better. The Chamber inspired some thinking because it is indeed a grisly subject - an old man on death row who grew up with a family in the Ku Klux Klan (I did some reading on them years ago but have always found them to be dispicable and so have forgotten the history of the group's name. I should look it up on Wikipedia, but I have trouble just admitting that such a group exists. Sadly, I imagine they still do exist, but on the fringes of society. 1950 Mississippi this is not. But The Testament is much lighter, more ...

Isn't this amazing? I love this image and I enjoy sunrises. I happen to enjoy sunsets, too, but I never seem to be in a place where the sunset is spectacular and also can be taken while indoors and get this rather unusual look. I take images through glass all the time, especially this time of year, since I have this thing about being cold. I have taken many rising sun images from all over but there is something about this glass that creates the "phantom sun" that is in the lower part of the image. And amazingly enough, I may have somehow gotten the moon. It was a new moon when I took this last week, and I don't know how, but there is a crescent-shaped shadow in front of the phantom sun. It's the only image that came out this way. So maybe something else created that shadow... dirt on the glass? But if it was dirt, why didn't it show up in any other photo? I stood there and took images of the rising sun from the same spot for a few minutes, many images. (The fi...

by Anu Garg "Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else." Like all genuine humor, this waggish remark carries a grain of truth. There are six billion of us around, and we are very different - in our demeanor, diction, and dreams; in our fingerprints, retinal patterns, and DNA sequences. Yet, no matter which hand we write with, what language we speak, or what we eat, there is something that binds us all, whether it is our preference for a life free from fear, our efforts to make this world better for us and for others, or our appreciation of beauty of the soul and our longing for love. With so many people, so many shared traits, and so many differences, there's no wonder we have so many words to describe people. This week we look at five of them. contumacious PRONUNCIATION: (KON-tuh-may-shuhs, -tyoo-) MEANING: adjective: Stubborn, insubordinate ETYMOLOGY: From Latin contumacia, from contumax, contumac- (insolent) lachrymose PRONUNCIATION: (LAK-ruh-mos) ME...

We all know those cute little computer symbols called "emoticons," where: :) means a smile and :( is a frown. Sometimes these are represented by :-) :-( Well, how about some "ASSICONS?" Here goes: (_!_) a regular ass (__!__) a fat ass (!) a tight ass (_*_) a sore ass {_!_} a swishy ass (_o_) an ass that's been around (_x_) kiss my ass (_X_) leave my ass alone (_zzz_) a tired ass (_E=mc2_) a smart ass (_$_) Money coming out of his ass (_?_) Dumb Ass (O)ASS HOLE

Monday, 23 February Week Number 157 1) If you could eliminate (or lessen the effect of) one emotion from your life, which would you choose? I'm pretty sure this is the same as the prior week's first question, but the answer is unchanged. I need to have all of my emotions, all at the same strength. 2) What is the nicest imperfection in your Significant Other? Number 1, I hate the term "significant other" as it implies that one of us is insignificant. That is just wrong. As for a quality that is considered an imperfection that I like... I don't know. His imperfections are, by nature, annoying. I love the whole package - the whole Luis Gomez, perfections, imperfections, and everything in between. He would not be Luis without those things. 3) If one thing you own were to become a religious relic, what would you pick? Oooo, fun question! Does this mean just one thing, or can it be a collection? Hmmm. I know. I'm going to make my mondo-cheep be the religious icon. ...

...for snow... URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MOUNT HOLLY NJ 245 PM EST SUN MAR 1 2009... HEAVY SNOW TONIGHT AND MONDAY MORNING.... LOW PRESSURE WILL BE MOVING NORTHEAST ALONG THE EASTERN SEABOARD TONIGHT... PASSING TO THE EAST OF DELAWARE AND NEW JERSEY MONDAY. MORRIS- HUNTERDON-SOMERSET- MIDDLESEX- WESTERN MONMOUTH- EASTERN MONMOUTH- MERCER- GLOUCESTER- CAMDEN- NORTHWESTERN BURLINGTON-OCEAN-COASTAL OCEAN-SOUTHEASTERN BURLINGTON- CHESTER- MONTGOMERY- BUCKS- DELAWARE- PHILADELPHIA - INCLUDING THE CITIES OF... MORRISTOWN... FLEMINGTON... SOMERVILLE... NEW BRUNSWICK... FREEHOLD... SANDY HOOK... TRENTON... GLASSBORO... CAMDEN... CHERRY HILL... MOORESTOWN... MOUNT HOLLY... JACKSON... LONG BEACH ISLAND... WHARTON STATE FOREST... WEST CHESTER... NORRISTOWN... DOYLESTOWN... MEDIA... PHILADELPHIA 245 PM EST SUN MAR 1 2009... WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT INTO MONDAY AFTERNOON... THE WINTER STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT INTO MONDAY AFTERNOON. SNOW WILL SPREAD THROUGHOUT ...

FRIDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) -- You might look like you're not paying attention when you doodle, but science says otherwise. Researchers in the United Kingdom found that test subjects who doodled while listening to a recorded message had a 29 percent better recall of the message's details than those who didn't doodle. The findings were published in Applied Cognitive Psychology. "If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," study researcher Professor Jackie Andrade, of the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, said in a news release issued by the journal's publisher. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task." For the experiment, a two-and-a-half minute listing of several people's names and places was played for test...