13 April 2001
Last year: Matt described the incident to me in detail, and eventually some of it sounded vaguely familiar, but in all honesty, I don't really remember much of anything.
I am amused. You know why? Take a good look at the Word of the Day down there at the bottom of the page. Go on, I'll wait. Gruntle. Say it out loud. It's an amusing word. And how many times have I or one of my friends said, "Can someone be gruntled?" No, really. We've said it. And now we know: We can.
Of course, it's still wrong, in the way that "flammable" is wrong. This is what Merriam-Webster has to say about it: "Gruntle" is the result of a mistaken assumption about the verb "disgruntle," which means "to make ill-humored or discontented." The prefix "dis-" often means "to do the opposite of," so people naturally assumed that in order to have a "disgruntle" there must be a "gruntle" with exactly the opposite meaning. But actually, "dis-" doesn't always work that way -- in some rare cases it functions instead as an intensifier. "Disgruntle" developed from this intensifying sense of "dis-" plus "gruntle," an old word meaning "to grumble." "Gruntle" began to mean "to make happy" only in the 1920s, when it was assumed to be the antonym of "disgruntle." By contrast, "disgruntle" has been around since 1682, and the original grumbling "gruntle" dates back to 1589.
I am still amused.
Matt got home last night. Yay! But he still doesn't want to do Easter baskets. Oh, well. Maybe I'll put together one for the both of us. I'm going shopping this evening anyway - I need to pick up the ingredients for the lemon chess pie Mom wants for Easter dinner, and eggs to dye. Might as well grab some silly treats while I'm at it.
Which means I'll be spending a goodly portiong of Saturday either baking or dying. I was trying to work in a joke about dying and living, but it didn't work. Trust me.
And - for petesake, these things keep sneaking up on me! - I need to put something together in the next week or so for PunDay!
See, there's a very good reason why I like fall better than spring, despite the proliferation of spiders in the fall. And that's allergies. This morning, my car was no longer electric blue. It was yellow. I couldn't see out the windshield, and when I ran the wipers, huge clouds of yellow dust puffed up at me - but the windshield did not actually clear.
And it's thinking about raining - it's spitting - but it's not actually going to rain hard enough to wash all this pollen out of the air and off my car for at least a couple of weeks.
In the meantime, the corners of my eyes are itchy and dry - and yet, at the same time, watery! It's a fantastic sensation. I guess I should consider myself lucky that my sinuses are still functioning more or less normally. Though at least if I was having a full-blown allergy attack, I'd feel justified in doping myself up.
Ah, well. Only a few more weeks...
Y'all have a good weekend. If you celebrate Easter, have a good one and eat lots of chocolate. If not, well... Eat lots of chocolate anyway. It's good for you.
Word of the Day:
gruntle - to put in a good humor
Currently Reading:
- Soldiers Live by Glen Cook
Current Projects:
- Kris' afghan
- garden