I am happy to report that I know the definitions of all of the top ten words that people look up on Merriam-Webster.com. I'm thinking about signing up for the "word of the day" email notification just so that I can wax bombastic in my discourse.

Here are the top ten words according to Merriam-Webster:
1. pretentious
2. ubiquitous
3. love
4. cynical
5. apathetic
6. conundrum
7. albeit
8. ambiguous
9. integrity
10. affect/effect

Interesting commentary on American society that we have to look up the definitions for integrity and love. Typical.

Mom and Dad come into town tomorrow for Thanksgiving break. I had Thanksgiving dinner with my Family Home Evening group. We put a fake fire on the television and provided a full course meal complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, jell-o, apple pie, rolls, green been casserole, and a vegetable platter. The conversation naturally turned to old mission stories and I felt all of my roommates roll their eyes. I couldn't help contributing a story of my own. They rolled their eyes even more.

The sisters' weekend was lovely. I think my favorite part was, surprisingly, going to see the movie together. The cartoon had numerous funny moments, and I laughed heartily--deep, stomach-aching laughter. I feel a deep kinship around the people with whom I can laugh freely. I don't always feel at ease enough to laugh loudly and mirthfully, but I do when I'm around my sisters. Here's to being a family.

family time

Weather report for Provo, Utah: Sunshine with a high of 57.

How lovely.

Spent Halloween Sunday up at Denise and James's home in Bountiful. We enjoyed a delicious Greek meal and delectable pumpkin pie for dessert. I serenaded the family on James's guitar, sporting the travis pick and the whopping two songs I know by heart, while they all played Scum. Max and Mason dragged me outside in my sunday best to kick the soccer ball and pretend to be goalie. Mostly, I crave the refuge of being with family, feeling accepted, and being in the presence of those that I love most in this world.

Today: Woke up at 5:00 AM to complete take-home midterm. Hello nose, please meet Mr. Grindstone. But I also discovered a bulletin board, dedicated to bad poetry, that made me grin. These were my favorites:

My dear roommate the pre-med

was just recently wed.

Perhaps she'd have seen

she preferred to date me

if my major weren't history instead.

That deliciously sly Mrs. Potiphar,

We know Joseph saw quite a lot of her

Til the day that he fled,

Left his shirt in her bed--

He never said what he thought of her.

Autumn

I don't know why I'm starting a blog. My sense of responsibility tells me to work on the supplementary exercises assigned for my linguistics class. All that good, healthy sentence parsing and all those fat, juicy t-units. So scholastic. So sterile. And then the other side of my brain tells me that I've been in the library or in class for nine hours now and I deserve to play with bright colors and pictures on the computer screen. Clearly, I opted for creativity.

We had our first snowfall this week in Provo. It brought to mind a poem called Autumn by Judith Viorst:

One by one the petals drop
There's nothing that can make them stop.
You cannot beg a rose to stay.
Why does it have to be that way?

The butterflies I used to chase
Have gone off to some other place
I don't know where. I only know
I wish they didn't have to go.

And all the shiny afternoons
So full of birds and big balloons
And ice cream melting in the sun
are done.
I do not want them done.

Anyone else feel nostalgia at this time of year? Sometimes I want to just spend an afternoon remembering.