Day: July 14, 2023

Fibbing Friday — Old Words with New Definitions

Fandango4 Comments

Di (aka Pensitivity101) hosts Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. For this week’s Fibbing Friday, Di has given us some “old fashioned” words and wants some modern definitions.

1. Brabble — An ancient form of scrabble using bricks made with hieroglyphs.
2. Bedward — Middle ages hospital wards.
3. Crapulous — A dice-like game using stones.
4. Elflock — The name for a group of flying elephants.
5. Expergefactor — Factors that were used at witch trials to find the accused guilty.
6. Groke — A type of coal found near the surface of the ground.
7. Grubble — What remains on the surface once all of the groke has been mined.
8. Lanspresado — It’s what they called subdividing a large area of land into small parcels and then having prospective land purchases bid on the subdivided parcels.
9. Mumpsimus — What the used to call swollen glands.
10. Rawgabbit — Uncured rabbit pellets used in small stoves to heat huts.

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — Baseball

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For Jim Adams’ Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Friday Faithfuls, Jim has challenged us to write anything about sports or fans, or to go with whatever else that we think fits.

I am not a rabid sports fan. In fact, in the universe of sports fans, I’m rather mild mannered. I follow professional sports: baseball, football, and basketball, and I have favorite teams in each sport. And when my favorite teams win, I am pleased. And when my favorite teams lose, I am disappointed.

Right now we are just past the Major League Baseball All Star break, meaning we are entering the “second season” and the run for the playoffs.

Are you still with me, or have I lost you? If you’re still here, I promise there is a point to this post and I’m about to get to it. So thank you very much for sticking with me so far.

When it comes to baseball, I am a Boston Red Sox fan. And even though the Red Sox had a promising pre-season, they’ve been disappointment this year. They are in fifth place (i.e., last place) of the five-team American League East division.

In case you don’t know it, Major League Baseball has 30 teams divided into two leagues: the National League and the American League. Each league has three divisions: East, Central, and West, with each division having five teams.

And yet, as of yesterday, despite being in last place in the AL East, the Red Sox are having a winning season, with 48 wins against 44 losses. The Red Sox win-loss record is better than all five teams in the AL Central and better than three teams in the AL West. In fact, theirs is the seventh best record in the entire American League.

And when you consider the 15 teams from the National League, the Red Sox record is better than seven of them.

So while the 2023 baseball season for my Boston Red Sox has been disappointing, I take solace in the fact that they have the best last place record in all of Major League Baseball, and of the 30 baseball teams in both leagues, the Red Sox are #14.

So maybe there still is hope for the 2023 Boston RedSox to make it to the World Series this year.

Tranquil Thursday — Patience Grasshopper

Fandango9 Comments

Maggie, at From Cave Walls, has this Tranquil Thursday prompt in which she selects a topic and welcomes us to post a photo, poem, prose, thought, or memory related to the topic. She chose the word “tranquil” because she thinks a little peace is always welcome.

In this week’s edition, Maggie wants to know about patience. Specifically, she asked us these questions about patience.

1. Do you consider yourself a patient person?

I used to be a very patient person in my younger days. In fact, more than one person told me that I had the patience of a saint. Not being Catholic, I’m assuming having the patience of a saint is a good thing, right?

However, as my age has increased, my patience has decreased proportionally. I am no longer a very patient person, although I do my best to not let my growing impatience get the best of me.

2. Do you lose patience more often with yourself or with others?

I do lose patience with myself due to how much longer it takes me to do almost everything since I busted my hip and injured my shoulder in January. It’s been six months and I still need a cane to get around, so my pace of walking is slow and I still have limited movement in my right arm and shoulder, which makes simple things like getting dressed or showering take longer than I’d like them to.

But most of my impatience is directed toward other people or things.

3. What is it you have no patience for?

Stupidity, selfishness, lack of regard for others, 21st century Republicans, far-right Christians, white supremacists/nationalists, racists, bigots, idiots, liars, and cheaters,

4. Under what circumstances are you the most patient?

With our dog and with our grandchildren.

5. Lastly, thinking about the phrase, do you believe patience is a virtue?

Depending upon the situation or circumstances, patience can be a virtue or a handicap.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — July 14th

Fandango22 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (14th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on July 14, 2017.

I’m Considering Dropping WordPress

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I’m seriously thinking about dropping WordPress. Well, from my blog’s URL that is.

It’s not because I have anything against having “.wordpress” in my blog’s web address. To be honest, I couldn’t give a shit about that. Especially since keeping “.wordpress” in the URL saves me some money. And I’m all about saving money.

But apparently my blog has become popular enough recently that ads are starting to show up on my posts. I realize that in life there’s no such thing as a free ride, or free lunch, or free market, or whatever that expression is. I also understand that we live in a capitalist society and somebody’s got to pay.

I appreciate that WordPress is providing a valuable service by enabling thousands — nay, millions — of us with this free blogging platform and that it takes effort and costs money to keep it going.

And, for the most part, I think the folks at WordPress are doing a damn fine job of it. It’s easy to use, there are many free themes (templates) available, and you can pretty much tailor the look of your blog any way you want.

That said, having advertisements displayed on my posts seems tacky to me. It’s pure unadulterated, crass commercialism.

Plus, I’m not a fan of ads. I rarely watch live TV because of that. I watch shows I’ve DVR’d so that I can fast forward through the commercials. Why would I want to have ads on my blog?

And so I’m torn. Should I continue to take advantage of the free blogging platform and not worry about burdening you, my readers, with ads? Or should I fork over 36 bucks a year so that my blog will be ad free?

To help me decide, I have three questions for you.

First, do advertisements appearing on blog posts annoy you?

Second, have you dropped “.wordpress” from your blog’s URL by purchasing an upgrade so that advertisements won’t show up on your posts (or for some other reason)?

Third, if so, was it worth it?

Thanks for you responses.

FOWC with Fandango — Sincere

Fandango19 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “sincere.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.