“Downton Abbey” Vocab

When I was sick last week, I decided to watch the season finale of “Downteon Abbey.” What a pleasant experience. I was in charge of The Buttons and I was able to pause, back up, and replay as often as I wanted. I caught nuances that I am sure I usually miss in any episode. In doing so, I caught some vocabulary that was common to the time period. In context, it all made pretty good sense, but I made note and looked them up.

Here we go!

Hobson’s choice
a choice of taking what is available or nothing at all.
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: named after Thomas Hobson (1554–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England, who gave the customer the “choice” of the horse nearest the door or none at all.

bored to sobs
no definition needed, self-explanatory

tweeny
(pl. tweenies) archaic, informal
a maid who assisted two other members of a domestic staff.
ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from between-maid, a servant assisting two others.

Church Hymnary (4th ed.) #309, Silent Night

Mary sang “Silent Night” at the close of “Downtown Abbey” this season. I wondered at the lyrics and decided to look them up.

1 Still the night, holy the night!
Sleeps the world; hid from sight,
Mary and Joseph in stable bare
watch o'er the child belovèd and fair,
sleeping in heavenly rest,
sleeping in heavenly rest.


2 Still the night, holy the night!
Shepherds first saw the light,
heard resounding clear and long,
far and near, the angel-song,
“Christ the Redeemer is here!”
“Christ the Redeemer is here!”

3 Still the night, holy the night!
Son of God, O how bright
love is smiling from thy face!
Strikes for us now the hour of grace,
Saviour, since thou art born!
Saviour, since thou art born!

Get all the details here.

Christmas Tree 2013

This is our Christmas tree for 2013, and the closer shot I put on FaceBook.

And, while I am at it, here’s the close-up from Christmas 2012.

Dental Floss

Various types of dental floss of come my way via the dentist or have been passed to me by other family members who do not like a particular type.

This is one I do not like.

It is slick and requires that I wind a lot of it around my fingers to hold it in place. I waste half of each piece in the winding.

Flowers From a Site, Day 9

I brought my bouquet home last Friday. Other flowers have opened beautifully.

Pretty pretty!

Flowers from a Site

As Coordinator for Extension Sites, I work with churches to work out their partnerships with the University. Part of the early process includes a conference call. This past week, on Tuesday, the mail room called me to say there were flowers to be picked up. I have never received flowers, so I could not imagine where these were coming from. Turns out they were from the person I talked to at this site.

Shipping Oddity #4

Today’s shipment included these names:

Brandi
Debbie
Jackie
Jerri
Jodie
Lori
Lori
Mary
Shelli

That’s for the sound of the long e.

Doubles

Torres
Debbie
Jerri
Miller
Moorman
Benney
Lynn
Ranney
Shelli
Reeder

Shipping Oddity #3

This time it is about double letters and double numbers. I know that double numbers occur in all shipments, but they stood out this time, because I was looking for doubles.


For 11 orders (oh and that’s the first double), we had these doubles:

1. 44, 66
2. Wattles, Comm
3. 33, Diann, Orr
4. Donna, Wood, 44, 99
5. Jerry, McAuliffe, Hoosick, Falls
6. Three, boofarm
7. none
8. Michelle, Shaffer, 55, 44
9. Todd, Libby, 99, 77
10. O’Donnell, 99
11. Robbie

And then the postage totaled $99.99.

This tickles me. Ha!

Shipment Oddity #2

We mail parcels twice a week.

In this week’s shipment we had these names:

Berry
Webb
Steffes
Witte
Goodwin

See all the double letters?

Shipping Oddity #1

Today our shipment to six customers included these names:

Margie

Marsha

Martha

For the size of this shipment the series of  “Mar-” names is noteworthy. These unusual  combinations of names stand out to me. Fun!

Plant Care “Between Times”

Picture it: houseplant-experienced resident elderly ladies and gentlemen. A woman has had a houseful of plants that she has cared for all her life. Some plants are as old as she is, or older. She knows how to keep them going. Or perhaps it is the gentlemen of the house who has the green thumb. Now, here they are with the limited space of their campus apartment. Not all the plants were able to come with them to their new home. Some were passed to the daughter or daughter-in-law.

Now a plant has been placed in a common area.

Residents from Hall A water it. Then a resident from Hall B recalls that it was dry when she checked it—yesterday—and thinks, I must water it when I come by tomorrow. No surprisingly, it becomes overwatered. So Cathy G makes a sign.

Who owns the plant? Is it a resident? Is it housekeeping? Who is supposed to water it? How does a person know when it is “between times”? ’Twas amusing to picture the plant-watering activities that called for the making of a sign.

Jigsaw Puzzle Putaway Rule

Greencroft is the retirement complex in Goshen, Indiana, where my parents chose to live after retirement. Our family traveled from Florida to see them (and other Indiana relatives) every summer for many years. Mother made her transition to heaven in 1996, and Daddy continued to reside at Greencroft for fourteen more years. Greencroft rented guest rooms at a reasonable cost. One guest room was right off a common area, where many residents spent some time each evening. A piano and organ, used for the Sunday meeting held in the common area, were available for residents to play. I sometimes sat down at the piano to play a few songs. A resident once caught me and asked me to play the piano while she played the organ. Using hymnbooks, we played together for about thirty minutes.

Daddy loved to work crossword puzzles and did at least one every day. He also enjoyed jigsaw puzzles. A puzzle was always under way in the common area. Residents had it worked out. Cookie sheets held sorted pieces. Participants never knew how much work would be accomplished by the time they came back to the table. We worked at the puzzle table most evenings when we were there. Other residents came to the area to play games, most often Rummikub. My small children, who had learned the game from their paternal grandmother, often participated in the game with these elderly folks.

The campus had several residential wings, as well as a health and rehabilitation center. After my mother died, Daddy expanded his lifelong commitment to serving others by volunteering to feed a younger resident, a gentleman who had been in an accident and was unable to feed himself. The gentleman eventually became a Christ-follower, much to Daddy’s delight. Daddy walked across campus to feed him for two meals a day. Sometimes our visit included a walk through or past another wing or another common area on campus.

In one such area we found an amusing sign about putting the puzzles away.

So it’s: Okay, to the closet! No, to the chair. Closet? Chair? Closet? Chair?

Creation Poem from Home Schooling

Way back in the summer of 2009 I was beginning to play around with social networking, probably before it had taken that name “social networking.”

I used My Space. And I like the Notes, as a place to store memories. I stored this one on August 8, 2009. It is from the Rod & Staff curriculum, which I used for home schooling.

The First Week

Day one brought heaven, earth, and light.
It must have been so very bright.

Day two God make the clear blue sky,
A place for many birds to fly.

Day three brought land apart from seas
With all the plants and grass and trees.

Day four shone forth moon, stars, and sun.
The work of God was not yet done.

Day five we see the fish and birds.
God did all this with just His words.

Day six God formed all beasts and man
To finish His creation plan.

Day seven was especially blessed,
A day for worship and for rest.

From Lynne Truss, #7

I’m posting my final entry from Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the calendar created from the book of the same name by Lynne Truss. This entry is from August 9, 2009:

It is worrying that people are no longer learning how to use the colon and semicolon, not least because, in this supreme QWERTY keyboard era, the little finger of the right hand, deprived of its traditional function, may eventually dwindle and drop off from disuse.

From Lynne Truss, #6

The calendar Eats, Shoots and Leaves was written by Lynne Truss, taken from the book of the same name. I’ve been sharing a few favorites. This one is from July 2, 2009:

Cecil Hartley, in his Principles of Punctuation: or, The Art of Pointing (1818), includes this little poem, which tells us the simple one-two-three of punctuation values:

The stops point out, with truth, the time of pause
A sentence doth require at ev’ry clause.
At ev’ry comma, stop while one you count;
At semicolon, two is the amount;
A colon doth require the time of three:
The period fourth, as learned men agree.

And just one more remains.

From Lynne Truss, #5

We’re continuing to look at my favorites from the 2009 Eats, Shoots and Leaves calendar taken from Lynne Truss’s book. This fifth offering is from April 29, 2009:

The trend in the 20th century has been towards ever-simpler punctuation, but take any passage from a non-contemporary writer and you can’t help seeing the constituent words as so many defeated sheep that have been successfully corralled by good old Comma the Sheepdog.

Only two more to go after this one.

Calendar Gift—December

Images from winter and Christmas are some of my favorites.

So many memories are conjured up from these images.

This was our own tree that Jo photographed, the final image for the

calendar gift she gave me for Christmas 2010.

To enjoy all the images, search for “Calendar Gift” on this blog.

Calendar Gift—November

Spanish moss in a backyard tree against billows on blue. Another image by my daughter, who put together this calendar for me for Christmas 2010.

Delightful!

View all the images with a search of this blog: “Calendar Gift.”

Calendar Gift—October

Jo presented this image of glassware from my cupboard. The calendar is a gift from her
for Christmas 2010, with images she took herself.

I had a delightful year to enjoy her work and her gift.

You can see all the images with a blog search, using “Calendar Gift.”

From Lynne Truss, #4

Lynne Truss pictures the comma has a sheepdog in this April 28 entry from her 2009 Eats, Shoots and Leaves calendar. Out of the 365 pages, I saved just a handful. Here’s #4:

Between the 16th century and the present day, the comma became a kind of scary grammatical sheepdog. The comma has so many jobs as “separator” (punctuation marks are traditionally either “separators” or “terminators”) that it tears about on the hillside of language, endlessly organizing words into sensible groups and making them stay put; sorting and dividing; circling and herding; and, of course, darting off with a peremptory “woof” to round up an wayward subordinate clause that makes a futile bolt for semantic freedom.