Dictionary Love

I recently discovered an awesome new section in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary that I hadn't noticed before.  It happened when I was looking something up at work, and just kept flipping to the back where I discovered a compilation of all of the words that have been most recently added to the dictionary!  So awesome.  Words like "cougar" and "bootylicious" are constantly emerging and coming up for review by dictionary editors, but I'm never sure which ones actually make the cut.  Anyways, some of the most relevant and entertaining ones, in my opinion, are below...

• Icicle lights (thank you 2001)
• Bad hair day (really?)
• Boy band (thank you BSB vs. 'N Sync rivalry circa 1999)
• Oxygen bar (ugh, people are so lame)
• Machiato (thank you Starbucks...and Italy, I guess)
• My bad (ew)
• Text messaging
• Yada yada yada (I want to say thank you Elaine from Seinfeld, but I'm not sure...anyone? Tash?)
• Talking stick
• TTYL
• IMHO
• Forensic accounting (thank you big business scandals of the 20th century)

Anyways, I thought it was pretty cool.  Some of the words totally suck, but I guess that's not a legitimate criteria for not including them in the dictionary. While we are on the subject, here is a word I would like to see REMOVED from all dictionaries: irregardless.  SHUDDER.

And here is something fun: The Pictorial Webster's Dictionary

Okay, one more thing, since I don't often indulge a dictionary blog post...I was flipping through the "C" section of the dictionary last week and happened to read the definition of Corona.  I had no idea that one of the definitions was "a chandelier of wrought metal, having the form of one or more concentric hoops". Did anyone else realize that this is why Corona LRT station is so named?  It totally has two huge corona style chandeliers above the escalators.  I never thought of it, although I always thought that the chandeliers were awesome and that it was a strange choice for the station name.

I love dictionaries.

Bicycle Love

I have always liked biking around, but many summers ago, I spent a summer biking an hour each way to work at the farm, and then two summers ago, my friend Rebecca decided to challenge herself not to drive for  the month of June except when it felt absolutely necessary.  She's cool like that and inspired me to start riding my bike to work.  I fell in love with the commute and ended up riding almost every day until it snowed in November.  I had purchased a new bike that spring and probably made its cost worth back in saved gas money that summer.

Anyways, it was a great summer, but then the next year I got a new job, and it messed up my biking groove, because I now work in a stuffier office tower downtown with nowhere to change and nowhere to stash my bike.  I haven't been able to overcome the obstacles, so my bike didn't get nearly as much use last summer as it had previously.  Sad.

Anyways, another strike came against my little bike when I got a flat tire riding home from my parents' house last fall. It sat in the garage all winter just waiting for me to fix it.

As much as I love biking, I don't know much about how to fix them.  I always feel a little embarrassed about it because generally I like doing little repairs on things and like to know how to take care of my stuff.  So, when my friend Caylie invited me to take a basic bike maintenance course at the Bikeworks, I jumped at the chance.  It cost only five bucks, and I took my flat tire with me and they totally showed me how to patch it!  So great.

Also, Caylie's tire was a bit wonky and wavy, so they showed her how to "true her spokes" as I breathed down her neck in fascination until she asked if I wanted to try.  It was so awesome. 

You just put your tire in this stand, spin it and carefully watch for the places that are scraping and tighten the spokes accordingly.  Caylie and I nerded out and compared it to editing, because it requires such careful attention and detail. Anyways, I ended up buying a membership and definitely plan on going back to learn more. I definitely recommend checking it out.  Like right now.  Go do it.

Swap-o-rama

A couple of times a year for the past few years, my girlfriends have been getting together for an event we have come to lovingly refer to as swap-o-rama.  We unofficially practiced clothes swapping one-on-one, with my mom always being unable to keep track of whose clothes I was wearing, but this is our more official way of doing trades. 

Here's how it works: we get together at one house and all bring our reject clothes.  Anything goes from ugly, stretched out, tye-dyed tank tops (ahem, Natasha) to leftovers from ugly sweater parties.  And of course, we fully expect there to be some cuteness as well.  We organize the clothes into piles according to type, and then one person volunteers to be the auctioneer.  This time around it was Kerry, who entertained us all by holding things up and commenting with gems such as "And here is a tragic mistake in Jenny's past" and "this shirt looks like it belonged to someone with a desk job".  Inevitably, someone ends up with layers of clothes.  You can see it in the picture below where Kerry is wearing four or five shirts plus a bikini top.

This time, we hung the uglies off of the chandelier in my living room.  It started with a red tank top I had leftover from grade nine (it was my first item of clothing with spaghetti straps).  It continued with a 'wizard robe' left over from a costume party and a few other awful, awful items.

So, enough talking.  Here is a collage of the photo highlights from the evening.  In the bottom right, you can see the piles and piles of clothes.  We are ridiculous.  Kerry is drowning in them in that little photo on the right.  Click on the photos to see them bigger.