Word of the Day: Vexation

vex·a·tion (vk-sshn) Pronunciation Key
n.
The act of annoying, irritating, or vexing.
The quality or condition of being vexed; annoyance.
A source of irritation or annoyance.

So I'm standing at the grocery store the other day. I have four items. Dutifully, I get in line behind a woman with a cartful of things that she is unloading from her cart. This is the shortest line. I only have four items.

The woman stands and watches as the checker scans her 412 items and waits for him to give her a total. And once he does, she sets her bag on the counter and begins the tedius task of routing around for her CHECKBOOK. After what felt like 15 minutes of her scrawling in the checkbook, she tears out the check, hands it to the cashier, who quickly scans it through and hands back a receipt. Then the woman folds up the receipt, flips through her wallet to the section where she stores receipts, rearranges a few things, then inserts the receipt. I think she's leaving now, finally, so I sort of rudely sidle up to the front with my debit card in hand. But no, she's not done. She's now filling the amount of the purchase into her check register.

I implore you. WHO STILL KEEPS A CHECK REGISTER????

So today, Gene's chat is back after three long weeks on hiatus. I was very happy to see it's return. And even more happy to see a link to a column he did last week regarding the very pain I just described. Gene understands me.

Here's a short excerpt:

My profound impatience about small matters of everyday living is both a curse and an embarrassment. At these times I enter my own personal space, in which I become something that rhymes with "glass bowl." This is my Glass Bowl Mode.

Glass Bowl Mode is wordless but, sadly, not entirely interior and private. I roll my eyes. I fidget. I take long, deep, sighs. That is why, when I finally make it to the front of the line and the anxiety ebbs, I am filled with remorse and self-loathing and become overly cordial to the point of obsequiousness. It is hell being me.

Exactly.

Word of the Day: Laudable

Laud‧a‧ble: Deserving praise; praiseworthy; commendable

We had another extremely successful small group social last night. Over 12 groups were invited to a Spanish Fiesta at Ashley's house. At least 55 people made it out and we had way too much food and... candy. My fault on the candy, but I couldn't help but get a pinata. It was a Fiesta -- what kind of host would I be without providing a pinata. It was shaped like a chili pepper and Ashley smashed it and all the candy against the wall with the handle of a broom. It was well worth the effort.

Next month, being October and one of the best months of the year, we will be having three pumpkin picking socials and "hopefully" a haunted forest social, if someone with less fear than me will agree to host it. I don't know, maybe people don't like haunted things anymore. Maybe as we get older we give up on being scared as something "fun" to do. Next to go -- roller coasters and sledding down extremely steep sheets of ice. Oh and skydiving. Ever since plummeting to what should have been my death from a crop duster 12,000 ft in the air, I have changed my perspective on the activities I do for fun now. Being firmly attached to the ground at all times is a good start. Haunted houses have never really been my thing. "Monsters" with fake blood dripping down their faces and arms protruding from their necks, welding (albeit plastic) butcher knives as they jump from a thicket of trees and scare the night out of me is just no longer fun. I still remember when my dad took my sister and me to a haunted house when I was maybe 5 years old. I'm sure it was the stupidest haunted house ever built, but I was so freaked out we had to leave through a stage door halfway through. I just went geocaching with my parents today and we had this tarantula travel bug that I had wrapped in a plastic bag so I didn't have to look at it. I made my dad take it away. It's been in my possession far too long. You know you're old when... a plastic spider scares you.

Apple Picking!

It's my favorite time of year again... And why I love it so much is based entirely on my obsession with apple picking. I think this stems from my childhood -- I was raised in a house that was completely surrounded by apple orchards (except for the one rogue cherry orchard). The best time of year was September because we could walk 50 yds in any direction and pick a ripe apple or 50 right off the branch. Now, I make the trek up to Poolesville, Maryland, every year to relive the joy I got from this activity as a child.

This year was lovely, but not quite the same with out my friend Dawn there, whom I've gone apple picking with for three years. This year, Brian and Michelle and Eric went with and we came back with some good apples, with which I aspire to make a deliciously apple crisp... if things ever slow down long enough for me to slice the apples and be home long enough to not burn down my condo because I forgot I turned on the oven.

Word of the Day: Aficionado

aficionado: an enthusiastic admirer; a fan.

I have for a long time been an admiring fan of tea. Black tea, green tea, white tea... There's this great place called Teavana that supplies my expensive habit for exceptional loose leaf tea. They have some of the best mixes I've ever tasted -- such as the Jasmin Dragon Phoenix Pearl with Rooibos Tropica and Ginger Peach Apricot. It's been so dreary and gray here the past week, I've been drinking multiple cups a day. Now I hear that store-bought tea bags are going to get fancy. They're finally going to start selling high-quality long leaf tea in nylon mesh bags shaped for a better brew, in place of the left-over crumblings of low-quality tea in paper teabags. I'm excited.

In other news, Walla Walla, Wash., which many of you know is where I grew up, has been named the top place to retire in the U.S. I think their reasoning is a bit faulty, but is there really any place in the world that is perfect for retirement? The Walla Walla area used to be nothing special, but now there are hundreds of wineries, rolling hills of grapes, cute eclectic storefronts and three colleges. The population is only 30,000 and the median 3-bedroom house costs roughly the same as my 700 sq ft one-bedroom condo. I definitely remember a time when it was more podunkville than anything else. But yay for Walla Walla.

Word of the Day: Alfresco

alfresco \al-FRES-koh\, adverb:
1. In the open air; outdoors.

I went on a retreat this weekend with 500 other people pretending to be 10 again at summer camp. It was a very, um, interesting weekend, since the majority of us were over the age of 25, some even approaching the over the hill mark. That did not stop anyone from making complete fools out of themselves. Why is it that packing a backpack full of clothes, going away from home and sleeping in groups of 10 on bunkbeds in cabins makes us feel young again? This camp was unlike any other I've seen. It was a walking, talking liability in every imaginable form. We had to sign fourteen forms releasing the camp of all responsibility before we were able to set foot outside the registration building.

The cabin I stayed in was called Miner's Mountain. This was no ordinary cabin. It was a "luxury" cabin. There was vinyl siding. No hot water, but that's a different story. So we go in to pick our bunks and realize that someone has elected to bring their mother on the trip. Their very out-of-place 70-year-old mother. My first thought: do they really think we need cabin moms at this age? My second thought: Oh, that's so sad. And it really was. This girl was the highest maintenance morning person I have ever encountered. She had to get up 6am just to make it to breakfast at 9am. She took one hour to shower and get dressed, one hour for makeup, one hour for hair. I am not exaggerating. At 8:20am on Sunday morning, after the whole camp had been up until 2:30am the previous night, she bolts out of bed and yells "Girls! Wake up!! Breakfast is over. We missed it." I am a very light sleeper, and had been awake laying in my bed cursing her since she'd gotten up. But now she was frantic because we had all overslept. Only... we hadn't. Breakfast didn't even START until 9am. I, as politely as possible for being woken up on numerous occasions during the night by her incessant snoring, informed her that I would be getting up at 8:45 and I did not need her help in preparing myself for breakfast. She probably rolled her eyes at me. Sure enough, at 8:45 I got in the shower, and I was waiting for breakfast before the doors even opened.

The camp had this big giant thing called a blob that was floating on the edge of a man-made lake. You'd jump off the tower onto the blog then position yourself precariously on the edge and wait for someone to jump down and catapult you off the edge and into the water. Cassie and I enjoyed watching people splat on their faces. There was a zip line that dropped you into the lake near the blog. This afforded great laughter as we saw numerous people lose their shorts upon hitting the water. There was a rock-climbing wall, two water slides, a very large sling-type swing, a thing they call "The Pole" and a ropes course. I'm telling you, it was a liability waiting to happen. Fortunately the only injury was when Greg got pelted in the face by a dodgeball and ended up with a black eye on his birthday. Good times.