Sandy's Favorite Word of the Week

                                        SANDY'S FAVORITE WORD OF THE WEEK

POLAND

 My favorite word this week is a word I have loved for a long time:

MELLIFLUOUS (mel LIF loo uhs) sweet sounding, sweetly flowing

" Her mellifluous voice charms any savage beast."

Lauren's Word of the Day

Lackadaisical

Adjective: lacking enthusiasm and determination; carelessly lazy

i.e. lethargic (also a good word)

Admit it: “I was quite lackadaisical on Sunday afternoon” sounds way better than, “I was lazy and sat on my butt all afternoon on Sunday,” right?

I love this word. I learned it in 7^th grade English class, and immediately liked it because it made me think of flowers. Yes, lying in a meadow of flowers on a soft sunny day being… lazy.  It makes being lazy sound so nice!

So the next time someone corners you about being lazy, you can reply, “I was just in a lackadaisical mood,” and the case against you will most assuredly be dropped. Either, because your accuser has no idea what lackadaisical means, or because they too imagine you sitting in a field of wildflowers passing the warm, breezy afternoon by lying in the grass and reading books and such…

 Hope you enjoyed my word of the day- I’m off to spend a lackadaisical summer evening in Oxford ;)

~Lauren

Denise's First Post

The Power to Prosper by Michelle Singletary

Bob says he doesn’t understand how I can enjoy balancing the bank statement, doing our income taxes, etc. I just have an interest in personal finance, I guess. When I saw this book on the Amazon daily deals, it caught my eye. I downloaded a sample on my Kindle and quickly decided I would purchase it. 

This book is not for the faint of heart. The key feature of the book is a 21-day financial fast. Basically you commit to only spending what’s NECESSARY during that 21-day period. And you can’t use credit cards or debit cards. No eating out, not even if someone else offers to pay. No vending machines. You can’t pay for entertainment. You use CASH to buy what you NEED. Bob was not at all happy when I asked him to do this with me, but he reluctantly and grudgingly agreed to do it. I was excited about the challenge – this will be fun, I thought. As long as I have enough chocolate to get through the 21 days! So I did a quick inventory and decided that, yes, I can make it! 

There’s a lesson and an assignment each day of the fast. Throughout the fast, you keep a journal and I’m sure that neither of ours would qualify for pleasure reading. We just finished Day 13 – just 8 days to go! We’ve had lots of laughs (at the other’s expense) and I know this last week is going to be the hardest. But we’ve learned so much. This is a great little book that will help you learn to manage your personal finances. Are you up to the challenge?

Carol’s Booklist continued – May 3 through July 14

34.  Even Silence Has An End - Ingrid Betancourt .   Oh gosh, this is a really good book, the true story of  Ingrid Betancourt, who was running for the Colombian presidency in 2002, and was kidnapped and held in captivity in the Columbian jungle for six and a half years by the FARC, a brutal terrorist guerrilla organization.  She tells her own story, which is deeply moving and horrifying at the same time. 

35.  Shades of Milk and Honey – Mary Robinette Kowal.  Loved this, is very much like a Jane Austen novel, but with magic thrown in.  I really liked it.  See entry below.

36.  Glamour in Glass – Mary Robinette Kowal.  Sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey.  I enjoyed both of these books very much.  Set in the Regency era, these books pay homage to Jane Austen, who is one of my all time favorite authors.  I was caught up in the story immediately, as I love the details of daily life for women during this period, the food, dress, and social customs.  What makes these novels different is that along with the necessary skills a woman practiced during this period, such as needlepoint, art, and music, they were also schooled in “glamour” a type of magic! 

37.  Sh*t My Dad Says – Justin Halpern.   Simply hilarious, laughed out loud while reading this book.  The author temporarily moved back home with his parents at age 28.  He started posting funny quotes his dad said on his website, and it just grew from there, got a huge following, and a book deal.  This is some seriously funny stuff.

38.  The Wind through the Keyhole – Stephen King.  Latest volume in the Gunslinger series, loved it, was drawn instantly back into the story.  Actually it is a story within a story within a story.  Very clever and I really enjoyed it, makes me want to re-read the whole series.

39.  Rose:  My Life in Service to Lady Astor – Rosina Harrison

40.  Below Stairs – Margaret Powell

41.  Polly’s Story – Jennie Walters

42.  Isobel’s Story – Jennie Walters

43.  Grace’s Story – Jennie Walters

Entries 39 – 43 are all similar stories that I read after watching and falling in love with the PBS series Downton Abbey.  I have become fascinated with the stories of servants and the families they worked for.  Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love this kind of stuff!

44.  Redshirts:  A Novel with Three Codas – John Scalzi.  Fun story that plays off of every science fiction movie or TV show ever written.  A quick and easy read, but you have to be a little bit of a geek to get a lot of the references.  I liked it. 

I’ve also been re-reading book 4 and 5 of the George R.R. Martin series, A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as re-reading The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss.   But most of my time lately has been spent on CokeandPopcorn site and Netflix, watching great TV series!  I watched both seasons of Game of Thrones, All the seasons of Nurse Jackie and Shameless, the first season of Downton Abbey, and am currently working through the second season of Breaking Bad.  Lots of good stuff!

I also admit to reading my favorite blogs on a daily basis.  I will try to post a list of those in my next post, and would love for the rest of you to share your favorite blogs and websites as well

Chris' fave book passage

Okay, last post.  Mom has inspired me with her passage from the Kingkiller Chronicles.  This is one of my favorite all-time paragraphs in any book ever.  It is from Thomas Harris' classic The Silence of the Lambs.  This passage sums up Harris' writing completely, that is to say, pulp bordering on high literature.  For all you who love crime drama/procedurals ala Patterson and Cornwell,  I urge you to read all of Thomas Harris' stuff.  They are all magnificent and what other crime writers aspire to.  This passage may not be 100% as I am quoting it by memory but it is very, very close:

***********************************************************************************
     Far beneath the rusty Baltimore dawn, stirrings in the maximum security ward.  Down where it is never dark the the tormented sense beginning day as oysters in a barrel open to their lost tide.  God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again, and the ravers cleared their throats.

"and the ravers cleared their throats", god i love that, it slays me

Chris' word of the week

Hello Harrelson Family Blog, greetings from Cleveland.  (sigh)  I know you all must just simply be DYING for me to post my word of the week.  I can imagine you all anxiously peering at your monitors, a constant litany running circles around your brain..."is he logged in yet?, where is the post?, how come he hasn't posted yet?, why is it taking so long?"..... Definitely don't want to cause any undo anxiety so without further delay here is my long anticipated word of the week!  Cheers!!

Styg·i·an

   /ˈstɪdʒiən/ Show Spelled[stij-ee-uhn] Show IPA

adjective

1.

of or pertaining to the river Styx or to Hades.

2.

dark or gloomy.

3.

infernal; hellish.

 

As in........"Laptop in hand, caffeine coursing through his veins, focus in his brain and determination in his heart, Chris once again entered the stygian darkness that is the CatCenter."

Carol’s Favorite Quote of the Week (actually  an entire passage from a chapter of one of my favorite books)

                                                                                                                   

“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.

Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind