Rob, Rambling

I call the girlfriend by a couple of pet names whenever we’re together, just the two of us. I usually work with “eejit”, “weirdo” or “spaz”. Yes, not the most clear examples of love and affection, but I say them sort of tenderly.

She was over earlier this evening, and told me half-jokingly that I wasn’t allowed to use them any more. I quite literally lay there and tried to think of a new word.

Suddenly it came to me: “cretin”! “I’m like fucking Shakespeare with my vocabulary,” I exclaimed.

“Shakespeare?!” said she, incredulous.

“Actually, it does kinda sound like a Shakespeare word, come to think of it”, I said.

Cue a mad rush over to the laptop, where we discovered that “cretin” actually comes from the Alpine French word “crestin”, which means a dwarfed and deformed idiot.

That. Is. Awesome. There are times when I love the internet.

Of course, I then typed “cretin” into Thesaurus.com, which gave us words like “tomfool”, “nincompoop” and “nitwit”. There was no “woman” though.

This lead to further linguistic games and talking nonsense, which resulted in the following hierarchy of fun-related activities:

1. Hi-Jinks

2. Tomfoolery

3. Japes

4. Jollity

I think the order is pretty much set in stone, but there is room between them for more precise definitions. Where would “Larks” fit, for example?

I do enjoy getting home from work and catching up on all of the videos people have been posting over the last 24 hours. I’ve got no sound at work, plus I’m supposed to be working, so can’t really watch anything.

Particular shoutout to lovepuppy’s series of videoblogging, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. I’d love to be that open and just generally have that many interesting things to say. Nora had a great one the other day, if a little more food-centric than most! Plus there’s the CollegeHumor clips, which are truly hilarious, especially good ol’ Jake and Amir.

Catching up on audio posts isn’t quite as fun, I’m afraid. It seems a hell of a lot of you guys are into the whole indie/guitar bands thing, which just isn’t my cup of tea. Having said that, I’ve posted nothing but dance music for a while now.

Christ, I really do post some minutiae sometimes. My life in boring / interesting detail.

*delete as appropriate.

Minor Irritations About My New House: Number 94

I bought an electric toothbrush the other day (these dental costs are going up and up), on the recommendation / instruction of my dentist. I used to have one way back when, probably while I was still living at home, but haven’t used one in years.

Unfortunately, my house doesn’t want to play ball.

The toothbrush has one of those two-prong plugs designed for a shaver socket that you find in every bathroom in the UK. Except my house, evidently. Honestly, I can’t even remember the last house I was in that didn’t have one of these sockets.

Of course, this type of plug doesn’t work anywhere else in the house, in our normal 3-prong sockets, so I’ve had to go buy a converter today. Plus, I’ll need to keep the thing in my bedroom, as there are no plug sockets of any kind in the bathroom, so no doubt I won’t use it as often as I should. Or will constantly forget to recharge it.

So this is another thing to add to the list of “features” of my new house that are starting to add up and irritate me. Oh well, only another 10.5 months left on the lease…!

I skipped the gym at lunchtime, in favour of Chinese food and buying a plug. It’s an exciting life I lead, I know.

I feel a bit guilty now, so am thinking of going for a run when I get home. I live handily close to a park, and it shouldn’t be too busy this evening because the weather isn’t brilliant. I can’t even remember the last time I did any exercise outside of the gym…

Or, of course, I could just leave my gym stuff under my desk and go tomorrow lunchtime. That seems like a much more likely option.