Save a Word Saturday

The lovely bloggers over at The Feather and the Rose have started a cool blog hop! It's dedicated to saving old and archaic words from disappearing into the dust of history. You can sign up and learn more about it here!

Here are the rules:

1.  Pick an old word you want to save from extinction to feature in your blog post. It really must be an old word, not just a big one. We are trying to save lovely archaisms, not ugly giants (for example, "Dihydrogen Monoxide" is not an acceptable choice). Luciferous Logolepsy is a great database of lovely words, if you're having trouble coming up with something on your own.

2. Provide a definition of your word. Use your word in a sentence (or even a short paragraph) vaguely related to the theme we have chosen this week. You may also add visual or musical interpretations of your word or your sentence. In fact, add anything that moves your creative spirit.

3. Use as many of the words as you can on the people in your life. Do leave us a note or add something to your own post to let us all know what wonderful old word you whipped out to befuddle your friends and relations.

 This week's theme is:

Tea

My word is vade mecum
n. - a favorite book carried everywhere

And here is my sentence (well, it's more like a paragraph...whatever):

Miranda sat on the banks of the river, cup of tea clutched in hand, and watched families float by in their little boats. They all laughed as everyone failed rather spectacularly at steering in a straight line. She looked at her book where it lay in the grass and mused about how funny it was that even after ten years, her tattered (and quite tea-stained) copy of Lord of the Rings still remained her vade mecum.

Save a Word Saturday

The lovely bloggers over at The Feather and the Rose have started a cool blog hop! It's dedicated to saving old and archaic words from disappearing into the dust of history. You can sign up and learn more about it here!

Here are the rules:

1.  Pick an old word you want to save from extinction to feature in your blog post. It really must be an old word, not just a big one. We are trying to save lovely archaisms, not ugly giants (for example, "Dihydrogen Monoxide" is not an acceptable choice). Luciferous Logolepsy is a great database of lovely words, if you're having trouble coming up with something on your own.

2. Provide a definition of your word. Use your word in a sentence (or even a short paragraph) vaguely related to the theme we have chosen this week. You may also add visual or musical interpretations of your word or your sentence. In fact, add anything that moves your creative spirit.

3. Use as many of the words as you can on the people in your life. Do leave us a note or add something to your own post to let us all know what wonderful old word you whipped out to befuddle your friends and relations.

 This week's theme is:

Snow

My word is Aurated

          adj. gilded

And here is my wonderful sentence:

Alice woke up early that morning. The cold seeped in from outside and wrapped her in thin tendrils. She jumped up and raced the window, her toes curling up as they touched the cold floor. The front yard had been covered with a blanket of white, aurated with glittering snow and untouched by anything alive.

(Just a random note, my original word was "Tarchanjan", from Old High German. It meant "to hide, to conceal" but I can't speak German, so I was unable to use it in a sentence :(  It's a cool word, though. It's theorized that it's where we get our word "dark" from, which is originally from Old English.)

The Year I Turned 18 Blogfest!

Cally Jackson is celebrating the release of her YA novel The Big Smoke! Hooray for her writerly wonderness!

She decided that to celebrate the release she was going to host a really neat blogfest. Since the two main characters of her book both turn 18 during the book, all participating bloggers are writing about the year they turned 18! (Or, if they haven't reached 18 yet, what they hope it will be like.)

You can find out more about the blogfest here, and add the book to Goodreads here.

So without further ado, here is my post:


When I was 14 years old, my family packed up our house in Virginia, hopped on a 24-hour plane ride and moved to Singapore.

By about the first week, I knew what I wanted to do for my birthday: eat at Morton's steak house, the nicest and most delicious steakhouse on the island. Unfortunately, the food there costs a small fortune.

My parents adamantly refused.  "Maybe next year," they said, "for your 16th birthday."

Well 16 came and went, and so did 17. By the time my 18th birthday approached, I had turned into a Morton's steak-craving zombie monster.

"But moooom! I just want a steak! It's all that I want in the whooole worrrllddddd."

Somewhere along the way, I managed to convince them that this would be a wonderful coming of age present. My parents decided that we would go out to eat on Saturday night, even though my birthday wasn't actually until Monday. They planned it all out-- my dad would take me to the restaurant bar before dinner started,and buy me my first-ever legal alcoholic drink. (In Singapore, the legal drinking age is 18. However, this does nothing to stop the crazy partying that goes on. Not that I was ever a participant of said parties...)

So, dressed in beautiful clothes, we walked through the fancy hotel lobby, over the fancy bridge of the fancy koi pond, and ascended the hotel in the fancy elevator.

Morton's bar was closed. They weren't open on Saturdays.

Feeling a tiny bit dejected (and at least for me, a tiny bit nervous, as I had never ordered an alcoholic drink before) we walked across to another bar where I nervously ate a bunch of snack mix and my dad ordered me my first ever "legal" Cosmopolitan.

The bartender didn't even look at me with a single ounce of suspicion on his face. (I came to the conclusion that this was because I was a master of deception. Clearly this meant I should become a spy.)  I felt so freaking sophisticated there are no words to describe it. I was in a bar, with a real Cosmo in a super fancy-sophisticated Cosmo glass, and I only tripped over my heels once and also there was A KOI POND IN THE LOBBY and the Cosmo was surprisingly good and the bartender was cute and I turned 18 in two days and everything was awesome.

And that is the story of my first ever kind-of-maybe-sort-of-not-really-legal alcoholic drink on my almost-18th birthday. It was a good birthday.

So happy book-birthday to Cally! And happy (belated) Halloween, everyone!

Do you guys have any cool 18th birthday stories to share?

Upcoming Blogfest: The Year I Turned 18

Look! A wild blogfest has appeared!

Cally Jackson is running a blogfest to celebrate the upcoming release of her New Adult book, The Big Smoke! Both of her main characters turn 18 in the novel, so she decided to have all of us post about the year we turned 18! Or, if you're not 18 yet, what you hope it will be like! (Note-- it's a fun experience, I promise.)

The blogfest will run from October 29-- November 2. When it goes live you'll be able to sign up on over on her blog. For more details about the event go here.

So mark your calendars! Spread the word! Because it sounds like this will be a lot of fun :)