Commonly Misspoken Phrases

Wanna feel smug? This weeks random quiz should help you do just that...

Commonly Misspoken Phrases

In this one, you're selecting either column A or B. Just use those keys on your keyboard. And there's a way to skip questions. It's right around the answer box, so feel free to do these in the order you feel most comfortable.

I expect to hear perfect scores. We all got this, right?

The Old in Coffee

It's time for a dive back into the way-back files. This post originally appeared December 8, 2009. 

12th grade AP English. They were working on some essay or other (I didn't have a lot of details, but they were AP kids and could be trusted to do their work without me having to prompt them). They were half working, half talking about random stuff.

One student started talking about coffee. He asked what people put in it. One of the girls mentioned cream and sugar. The boy said that no, that's what kids put in it. Adults put old in it.

That's not a typo. He said "old".

He continued with this reasoning. He said that coffee makes kids old. One girl complained that she drank coffee, but she wasn't old. The boy said that she might be 17, but the coffee made her older.

So, I asked what about older adults who did not drink coffee. He said that they just age normally, not extra aged because of the old in coffee.

It made only a smidgen of sense. Of course that was the point.

The stuff these kids come up with!

Denied Access

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉

What if the big pharma execs who are gouging drug prices (insulin prices!) could be tried for murder? Or, at least what if they could be held liable for all the lives damaged due to their reckless endangerment?

Called It

Do you finish things you start? I generally do. No matter how long it takes.

Over the last year and a month, I have been working, off and on, on an infinity scarf. It was a fingering weight yarn, and I was using size 2 needles. That means that I was using a very fine yarn, and each stitch was very small. So, the finished product was going to need a lot of stitches.

I cast on 324 stitches. I figured I'd work until the yarn ran out.

I've talked about the scarf as I've progressed. Here are the posts if you'd like to see it as it grew:

• New Infinity Scarf
• Knit & Crochet Check In
• A Scarf Closeup
• Some Christmas Knitting
• Stalled
• Scarves Update

But then, almost two weeks ago, I took a look at the scarf. It was looking wide enough.

How wide should a scarf be? I decided I'd aim for 8 inches.

I measured my scarf. It was 7 inches across.

via GIPHY

I was... gulp... almost done!

Keep in mind, I've been working on this puppy since June. 2018. (Ravelry is great for keeping track of these things.) I was beginning to think I'd never finish the thing.

8 inches is long enough. I was calling it. One more inch to do...

I pretty much dropped all my other projects and focused on this one. And on Friday, I finished.

Hooray.

Just to get an idea, I tried it on to show you how big it is (even though it's not for me)...

And I had a bit of yarn left over. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. I'll worry about that later.

Now that that's finished, I can concentrate on the other scarf.

I started this one in November. So, totally doable by December, right?

Figure Out the Lyrics

Do you like The Beatles?

Today's quizzes are hard. Really hard. I've noticed that I tend to only post quizzes that I did well on. I think it's time to post some quizzes that I failed miserably at.

So, today, it's figure out the lyrics. No clues. You have 8 minutes to randomly add words in hopes of figuring out what Beatles song it is.

You can type in the words in any order. If it's correct, the word disappears right away. If it's not, it sits in the box. It'll fill in all the iterations of the word in the song at once (so you only have to type "and" once).

I totally cheated on this. I had a list of some Beatles songs up in a second tab. It didn't help. But, you might remember more songs than I do.

First:

Figure out the lyrics (Beatles 2)

I managed to get 49 of the 131 words. You may not be surprised that words like "the" and "and" come up a lot. 

Then try: 

Figure out the lyrics (Beatles 6)

On this one, I managed to get one word that was all the clue I needed to know which song it was. (Like, if I were to stumble on "strawberry" or "Lucy" or "paperback".) And, I got 152 words of the 200. Because it turns out that less than 3 minutes is not enough time to recall the whole song. (Yes, it took a good 5 minutes to stumble on that one word that broke it all open.) 

Good luck. Without giving away the song in the comments (don't give anyone a hint!) let me know if you figured it out. Don't worry, I now remember which song was which.

Didja Feel That?

You may have heard, we had some earthquakes around these parts last week.

Lucky for us, the epicenter was way-the-f-out there in the middle of nowhere. (Not great for the residents of Trona and Ridgecrest as they got the direct hit.) 150-ish miles makes a huge difference in intensity.

The foreshock (what they're now calling it) on July 4th hit while I was lazing in bed, playing Candy Crush on my phone. It was that same phone that I then went to Twitter on to find out what we all want to know right away: epicenter and Richter scale magnitude.

You make initial guesses. It was a gentle one, with everything swaying. It was almost like being on a boat. But just when it should have been over, it wasn't. Length is a good indication of how big it is as it could be far away.

I follow a couple earthquake bots on Twitter. They pop up with information right away.

I had never heard of Searles Valley, so I knew it was a distance. And the initial 6.6 (it was downgraded later) was big.

The news goes a little crazy with earthquake stories. We shrugged it off. We were far enough away that we had sympathy for the woman whose house was totalled (it totally went off the foundation), but we weren't in the mood to watch the local stations fill news time with all the minutiae that they find to fill time.

I read blogs and later watched a movie on Netflix.

Friday night's earthquake was bigger. I posted all about it on Twitter:

I’m leaning over (in the shower) to shave my left leg...
Whoa. Dizzy. Why am I...?
Oh... Earthquake.
And the room kept swaying. And swaying.
Nope. Not getting out. It’ll be over. Any time now...#LAearthquake

— Elizabeth Arundel (@ZiziRho) July 6, 2019

That's the second time I was in the shower during an earthquake. I blogged about it the first time. (Oh my, that was ten years ago.) This time I wasn't all soapy, but I was in a good spot. I held on as the world swayed around me.

The earthquake finished. I finished my shower. What? I wasn't going to interrupt my shower once the shaking was all over. There was no immediate damage.

7.1 is huge. But again, over 150 miles away.

We seriously lucked out.

Trona and Ridgecrest, not so much.

(My other earthquake stories are filed under the label: earthquake files. You can find them here.)

American Princess

It's Wednesday, and it's summer, so it's time for my "Under the Radar TV Show". This is a show that you probably have not heard about. If you're looking for something to watch, here's a show you might consider.

I don't watch Lifetime much. The last show they enticed me into watching was You. (Totally creepy. I don't know if I'd recommend it.) But when I read a short piece on American Princess, I figured, why not?

American Princess follows Amanda. It starts on her wedding day. She's gone full bridezilla. And then she catches her fiance... Well... I won't say what she catches him doing as I'm trying to be all PG here.

Upset, she wanders into a Renaissance faire.

And she stays.

The Renaissance faire she ends up at is filled with all sorts of quirky characters. It's totally something you've seen before. (Warning: links to TV Tropes. Beware of rabbit holes...) We've got a New York character ending up in the sticks. The faire is populated by eccentric townsfolk. There, she experiences a very light humbling.

Nothing here is new. How it's done is where the fun is. And that's the point. It is fun.

Because, don't we all need a little fun?

The show had its finale on Sunday. (Sorry. I probably should have recommended it sooner.) It looks like right now you can see it via Amazon. If they do what they did with You, it may end up on Netflix sometime soon. And it may still be available OnDemand from Lifetime.

Have you seen American Princess? (Did you see You?) What's a good show on Netflix that I should check out? (Seriously, I have no idea what to watch now that I've caught up on Longmire.)