11:11

Started this post at that time. Therefore, I am happy.

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(Rampant use of quotation marks ahead. You have been warned)

The trees changed color last night. No lie, y'all. Yesterday there wasn't much uh nuthin', and today there are glorious fall colors bedecking the woodses around here. I thought about taking a picture of it as I driving into work, but because I was driving I thought better of it. Yay for being responsible!

Also, it was cloudy.

Alas, no rain.

Or is it alack?

A little more research on this point reveals that the definitions for these words are almost exactly the same. So why does "Alak, no rain" sound so odd?

(AND, as a total aside, why don't we say "Alad, no rain"? Is the "las," which can reasonably be expected to be a diminutive of "lass," meaning "girl," be taken to be laden with sorrow, and so much so in fact that the extra "s" can be lopped off the back end and still connote an atmosphere of regret? Why "las" and not "lad"? Look - the "lad" doesn't have to be truncated one tiny little bit to fit into the 4-letter scheme we got working here, and I would submit that young males are as capable of engendering regret in the hearts of their forebears as young females are, so why NOT "alad"? And hey! Why should it be that "alad" is the beginning of the name of a great youthful boy adventurer and there are no princesses or girl pirates with a name like "Alassin"? Huh? Why IS that?

These, in case you did not know, are the kinds of thinks I think when I'm being ornery.)

Bottom line here is this: Little-used words get lonely, people. We need to bring them out, dust them off, use them like the tools they are, and put 'em on a near shelf to use again soon. Words like that sort of thing., honestly, they do!

So today, I would ask you to use the word "alak" more than once when you are experiencing the need to utter a phrase that is suffused with the aura of a sigh. Or maybe use it as a cuss word, that would work too!

To wit:

"Alak! My alaking engine caught fire!"

"Alak you, you alaking alaker!"

"That alaking idiot cut me the alak off in traffic!"

You know, like that.

Let me know how that works for ya, mmkay?

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I'm out. Gotta go do work more than usual to prepare to switch jobs in three weeks. It's time to see just how much I can get done in that time to catch up on all the stuff I haven't been doing in the last 2 years.

Have a good one!

(Ended this post at 11:28. 17 minutes per post - that's not wasting time y'all! Woot!)