My First Entry

A blank text box. A narrow cursor blinks tauntingly at me. How on earth does one begin their first blog entry....?

I have started this blog as part of a weekly commitment to spend an hour a week writing. This is part of a "Team Accountability Challenge" which I helped to initiate, and this is one of the disciplines to which I have committed. Perhaps I should BE committed, but I suppose if that's true then I am more than qualified to have my own blog on the "Wonderful World of the Wide Web." When I conceived of this discipline, I would have been content to just capture some thoughts in a Word document, save them in my "Users" file for a while, and then eventually re-read and delete these documents in a fit of embarrassment. But Lynne, my supervisor, had a different idea.....she suggested I start a blog, to document my weekly musings and even allow other people to READ what I'm writing. No pressure.

I have no idea at this point how many people will read this drivel, or if it will develop over time from drivel to something worth reading. That's my secret hope, anyway.

Hey, if you type something onto a blog and call it "secret", it no longer is....is it?

It's very dark outside right now, and quiet here in the office. I decided that I'll be more disciplined (there's that word again) about getting this done if I slot time for it at the START of my day, knowing how easily I can get distracted in the post-4:30pm world. So, I suppose this is some sort of a disclaimer.....I am writing this VERY early in the morning, and I am NOT a morning person by nature. But I think it could be a positive thing that my mind is perhaps a little more loosely collected in the morning hours, because I'm less likely to self-edit and more likely to let the words flow - either to my benefit, or to your detriment.

I do love words. Steve and I have been engaging in games of Boggle lately - more like tournaments, really - because of another discipline to which I have committed: no TV on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. With the absence of mindless entertainment, I have found mind-stimulating entertainment to be a shockingly wonderful substitute. It's very satisfying to me to find unusual and difficult words embedded in the Boggle cubes.......words like "quitted" or "taper" or "taunt." We play with some pretty strict house rules - 4-letter minimum, no adding an "s" to make a word plural, no proper nouns or foreign words, etc. We end up having some pretty heated discussions about whether a word qualifies as foreign, or whether it is used commonly enough in English to count. We always have to keep a dictionary handy when we play, because Steve is forever using words from his biology classes that I don't believe exist, and I am forever using Biblical words or words from Jane Austen novels that HE doesn't believe exist. Words like "pram," "thou," "quid," or "anon." Each of us inevitably has at least one moment during the game where we throw open the dictionary, bent on proving the other has just made up a word, and find ourselves scowling at that very word on the page. We usually read the definition with a sarcastic tone - as if to say, "You didn't really know that was a word....it's just some obscure thing and you got lucky that it actually qualifies to be in the dictionary - and what kind of stupid dictionary is this anyway?" - sigh heavily, and reluctantly surrender the point.

It's amazing how passionate we both can be about the words that we know. Of course, it's quite satisfying when I see a "made-up science word" that he is forever using on me, and he doesn't. A little in-your-face Boggle taunting is sure to follow.

Yes, I do enjoy words. So it's my hope that I will also enjoy stringing them together in some sort of cognitive fashion here in this blog.

Here goes!