A New Word and Finding Things to Do.

I woke up this morning with the word ‘austipagia’ (pronounced OS-tih-PAH-zhee-a) in my brain.  Apparently in my sleep I had decided that this was an actual word, and derived from ‘austere’ and ‘page’.  Austipagia describes a book whose pages are not filled to capacity.  For example, the Edmond’s cookbook uses its page space well, but Jamie Oliver’s books are a good example of austipagia, since there’s only one recipe to every two pages, and they are usually quite sparsely laid out.  I am of the opinion that this word fills an important niche in the English language, and intend utilising it forthwith. 

I also discovered an awesome new (actual) word the other day: I was doing a crossword and one of the clues was ‘order of angels’ or something like that.  I initially thought it was ‘cherubim’ but that wouldn’t fit, so was trying to find another synonym.  Eventually got to ’seraphim’ (thanks Ms K and your hymns!) and then got to wondering whether ’seraphic’ was a word, by analogy with ‘cherubic’.  Looked it up and was delighted to find that it is.  Now I’m wondering why ‘angelic’ is so overused when ’seraphic’ sounds so infinitely cooler.

/nerd

In other exciting news (not), my father has decided that I am In A Rut (because I worked nights in Chch and therefore did very little during the day.  It seems to have escaped him that most people who work during the day do very little during the evening, so I was actually behaving quite normally) and so has apparently been offering my services (oo-er!) to all and sundry during the past couple of weeks.  I personally would have liked a day or two to myself after the intensive cleaning and moving feat I just participated in, but so far I have been chivvied into: a babysitting job; volunteer work at a) the library (which I’m actually quite happy about), b) the museum, and c) the SPCA; ringing up the local Guiding coordinator and arranging to join one of the units here, which also ended in my volunteering to help out at one of the local primary schools.  Oh and starting driving lessons.  That was actually quite fun.  My dad neglected to inform me that the brake pedal didn’t actually work unless you press the clutch pedal too (which seems ridiculous to me – surely if you need to stop suddenly, one pedal would be much easier and less time-consuming to press than two), so the sheep’s enclosure got a very firm little love tap, and the car got a couple of ‘laugh lines’.  I seem to be ok at reversing so far though, which is a little counterintuitive I suppose, but I’ll take whatever I can get!

Today I escaped to my friend’s house where I hung out with her and her gorgeous wee one-year-old most of the day.  We went to the library and the swings and the slide and played with playdough (I think I had more fun than the baby; I made a snowman and an aeroplane that looked a bit like a penis with wings (not on purpose!), and built Bubba’s name out of playdough snakes) and then I had to go home to cook dinner.  Had planned on dal or spinach canneloni but discovered we had neither lentils nor spinach so chucked some mushrooms in with a tin of tomatoes and made pasta, while bopping round the kitchen to Billie lol.  Also found out some awesome news about another friend of mine, which I am quite happy about (but can’t share lol sorry I know that’s mean!).