Where growing, making & good living come together

Alphabet in August – U to Z

Posted by on Wednesday 31 August 2011 in meta | 2 comments

This is a month-long creative exercise led by Chiot’s Run: descriptive words and pictures about me/my life starting with each letter of the alphabet. Most people are doing a letter a day but I’m doing it in groups instead. I’m a little behind at the moment because of one of the words for L and one of the words for P… :)

I’ve done five words for each letter up to now but I don’t think I’ll be able to manage as many for these difficult letters, or find pictures for everything! It’s also pretty hard at this stage coming up with words that aren’t just synonyms of previously mentioned things.

U is for unusual: I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was a unique and beautiful snowflake but I think it’s fair to say I am quite unusual in my habits and hobbies, certainly not what people expect when they meet me for the first time.

U is also for underemployed: With the exception of a few weeks here and there, I just about always have been, either in terms of workload/hours or difficulty of work. This is mostly by choice now.

and U is also for ubuntu & Ubuntu: the philosophy (“I am what I am because of who we all are”) and the operating system. Actually, I’m not particularly tied to Ubuntu per se, but in the 10 years I’ve been using Linux, it’s the distro I’ve used the most and I can’t see that changing very soon.

V is for video games: I’ve played video games all my life. My not so secret addiction.

W is for weird: Like with “odd”, not always in a good way.

W is also for waterbaby: Floating and paddling. Pools and ponds. Streams and the sea. They’re all good.

X is for XL: extra-large and extra-loud.

Y is for yarn: I like yarn.

Y is also for Yorkshire: my adopted home county, which I’ve gone on-and-on about before :)

Y is for yummy things: there is a reason I’m “fat”, “XL” and the one below – I’m all about tasty, tasty food.

And finally, Z is for Zaftig: I’ll admit I had a bit of help from a dictionary for that one but it’s definitely going on my “remember for Scrabble” mental list. Wonderful word, and one John has adopted as a nickname for both me and the dog!

Final thoughts

I’ll admit that the last half of the alphabet has felt like a slog (even though I had nearly all the words picked before I started) but overall, I’m glad I did it — as I said for Q, I’m not very good at finishing projects so I’m glad I finished something!

Reading other people’s alphabets – and seeing comments on my own posts, it seems we simple living bloggers have a lot of traits in common – perhaps we’re not all as odd or unusual as we think :)

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Alphabet in August – E to H

Posted by on Monday 8 August 2011 in meta | 2 comments

This is a month-long creative exercise led by Chiot’s Run: descriptive words and pictures about me/my life starting with each letter of the alphabet. Most people are doing a letter a day but I’m doing it in groups instead ;)

(Natch.)

E is for …

  • Eclectic: I like (and do) a whole load of different stuff.
  • Elephant-memory: Although I usually don’t say I have “good memory” but a good retrieval system (I say my brain is like Google; John, who can’t ever remember anything, is like Lycos circa 1996. Both of us have the results but I can find them more efficiently.)
  • Envious: Not of diamonds and wealth, but of soil, growing conditions, seed selections… I can’t read growing or making blogs without wanting to do it myself too.
  • Euphemistic: My favourite Twitter hashtag is #notaeuphemism
  • Emoticon: I’m not a fan of fancy ones or multiple ones used in rapid succession (which my dad does, all the frickin’ time) but I use the basic smiley one a LOT – including every time I sign my name (electronically or on paper). It makes me smile whenever I type it. :)

(Food and [marrow flower] fritters – double whammy!)

F is for …

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