Random Thoughts #41

There is a Classic Calvin & Hobbes comic where Calvin talks about "verbing". He mentions words like access and impact that used to be nouns, but are now also used as verbs (I will still hold that impact is a noun and should stay as such). He commented, "Verbing really weirds the language."

Our culture has gone beyond verbing now. The new trend is adjectiving. We are making nouns and verbs into adjectives.

Don't believe me? Think of the word genius. I grew up being told genius was a noun indicating a person of far-above-average intelligence. Now people use it as an adjective, as in saying, "That's genius" when they are describing something interesting or clever. You have "genius hacks" to make life easier.

The latest popular example of adjectiving is "cringe". For most of my life, cringe was a verb meaning to shrink away from something in disgust or horror. Now cringe is an adjective meaning to invoke those feelings of disgust (or at least discomfort) in others. "That's so cringe." "I'm cringe." "He's cringe." "That's a cringe TikTok video." 

The English language is full of vivid descriptive adjectives. Can't we do better than to make adjectives out of other parts of speech?

***

Another one of Life's Little Annoyances. I need a small amount of cream for a recipe (like a half a cup at most), but I can't buy less than a pint at a time. I'm stuck with at least a cup of cream and no use for it. There are only so many ways I can cook and bake with it. There are only so many things in my kitchen I can top with whipped cream. 

***

I had a rather morbid thought after watching Only Murders in the Building.

In the current season, Sazz's body ends up in the incinerator and she is nothing but a pile of ashes. However, her metal joint replacements remain intact.

I intend to be cremated after I die. This makes me wonder. I now have a metal plate and screws in my body. Will that survive my cremation? When my next of kin receives my ashes for disposal, will it include the plate, or will the funeral director remove it?

The things one thinks about at 3AM...

***

Being in Tootsie with Curtain Call taught me many lessons, but one lesson I didn't expect is how time and distance are relative to different people. What is considered a long time? What is considered far away? 

Every weekend I drive seventy miles one way to the barn. That's at least an hour and fifteen minutes in one direction in normal traffic. Heavy traffic takes even more time. Kevin and I spend roughly three hours a day in the car every Saturday and Sunday. 

When I first started auditioning for Curtain Call theater, I thought nothing of it. Stamford Connecticut isn't Harrison, NY, but it's not far. I used to drive to Stamford and Norwalk every day for work. It's no big deal.

When I tried to encourage my friends to come see me perform, I was often met with resistance. "Stamford? That's so far away. I can't drive all the way to Connecticut. You want me to drive to another state just to watch you?" (Never mind that Southeast Westchester is close to the Connecticut border.) I can drive to the theater in less than a half an hour in normal traffic. To me that's nothing. Anything that takes under an hour to drive to is close in my book. It took me less time to drive to Stamford, CT than it took me to drive to the other side of Westchester County to do a haunted house in Sleepy Hollow.

Now I know not everyone sees it that way. Some people just can't be bothered to drive more than five miles away from home. Anything farther than that is too far. I'm used to doing long drives, so I see distance and time differently. 

***

I'm really not picky when it comes to weather. Some people are so persnickety complaining that it's too hot or cold.

I am comfortable anywhere from 50-97 degrees. I don't like being cold, so anything below 50 degrees is too cold. When the temps are above 97 it's too hot regardless of humidity. (Humidity can make all the difference in how uncomfortable hot days can be.) That's forty degrees of difference. 

Every temperature range is good for something too. I can do all my favorite outdoor activities within this range: riding, hiking, long walks, reading outdoors, swimming, kayaking. I prefer light summer clothing to heavy winter clothing, so the upper end of the range is my preferred fashion range (and I don’t want to cover my cute outfits with a heavy parka in the cold) The lower end is best for riding and hiking.

Fortunately, I have enough indoor hobbies (theater, indoor reading, dance, weight lifting, cooking) that can sustain me in the colder weather. 

(And now my handful of readers are going to tell me what temperatures they like and how it's too hot and they don't like heat and love fall but maybe don't like the cold but prefer the cold. I can't tell people I like heat without people telling me how much they hate it. Look, I'm still less picky about temperatures than you are. I am not interested in hearing how you can only bear temperatures below sixty degrees.)

***

There are plenty of reasons to love the month of October (and they have NOTHING to do with the Fall Industrial Complex) such as my anniversary, my nephew's birthday, my niece's birthday, and Kevin's birthday, but the best thing about October is it's a great month to save money. It's rarely hot enough to put on the AC, but the days are still long enough that I don't need to have the lights on all the time. It's the best month to save electricity. I suppose the same can be said for April.

***

Here is another observation about relative distance.

I had a busy Saturday and needed to fulfill some errands and do my daily workout. It was a mild, pleasant day and a walk seemed like the best option for exercise. However, I wasn't sure how I would squeeze everything in. I needed to go to CVS to pick up a prescription so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and walk to CVS instead of drive. 

According to my Apple Watch, the trip was a little more than a mile and a half long. It took me fifteen minutes each way (not including the time I was in the store).

When I returned, Kevin seemed surprised I had walked all that way. 

Isn't it funny how a fifteen minute walk to a nearby destination seems long if you're used to driving it. I pointed out that if he and I were on vacation in another city and wanted to walk to whatever local attraction we wanted to visit, we would consider a fifteen minute walk from our hotel to be nothing. When you don't have a car, anything you can reach within an hour on foot is walking distance. When you become car dependent, it changes your perception of how far you can walk.

I need to remember, I can find a lot of peace on an ordinary walk.

###

Like many kids in my generation, I envisioned the 21st century to mirror what I saw on The Jetsons. This is why so many Gen-Xers greet each new year with, "Where is my flying car? Where is my robot housekeeper?" Technology has made some impressive leaps in my lifetime, but I'm still driving a car on the ground and that car is powered by a petroleum-fueled internal combustion engine. I also clean my own house.

Rather than The Jetsons, I should take my inspiration from the NYNEX commercials in the 1990s. (For those of us too young to remember or have lived in the 1990s, NYNEX was the regional phone company that was eventually absorbed into the Verizon juggernaut.) These commercials envisioned cool future communication technologies claiming NYNEX would bring them to us in the future.

The commercial asked, "Have you ever made a phone call from your watch? You will."

Well, I can make a phone call from my watch (thanks to Apple and not NYNEX). Some of that technology I dreamed of as a child has come to be.