More of the Letter Meme

[gnomi]

A slightly different version, requesting only 5 rather than 10 words. And anyone I'm giving letters to, feel free to do either 10 or 5; whichever works better for you, I say.

Here's the meme again, to remind you:

This is how it works: Comment on this entry and I will give you a letter. Write five words beginning with that letter in your journal, including an explanation what the word means to you and why, and then pass out letters to those who want to play along.


From tsuki_no_bara, B

• Bee: I appreciate the job they do; I appreciate the honey they give. I wish they didn't want to join us in our sukkah during meals. And I highly recommend Clan Apis, a graphic novel all about the life cycle of the bee (given to me some years ago by some dear friends).
  
• Boston: Where I live. A city steeped in history where the streets were laid out by cows. Where if you don't know what street you're on, good luck finding a street sign. Where my beloved Red Sox play baseball.
  
• Bears: I think live ones are adorable (from a distance). mabfan and I have many stuffed ones.
  
• Books: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." I have a natural tropism for books. And not just fiction. I read lots of non-fiction. I'll read anything with words, actually. I've amused myself more than once reading the user's manual for whatever car I'm sitting in.
  
• Beets: Known in Yiddish as "borishkes." My father tells the following joke:
  Mrs. Goldberg goes to the greengrocer and says, "Give me ten cents' worth borishkes."
  The greengrocer replies, "Mrs. Goldberg, you've been in this country now fifty years. In America, we call them 'beets.'"
  Mrs. Goldberg says, "In the summer, when it's hot, I put on my bathing suit and go down to the beets. When I get dressed up, I put on a nice dress and a string of beets. When my daughter-in-law sees me coming, she says, 'Here comes that old beets.' Give me ten cents' worth borishkes."
  

From squashed, Z (pronounced "Zed")

• Zipper: When I first started making my own clothing, I was told that zippers were much harder than buttons. I've found the opposite to be true. Putting in button holes freaks me out; I'm always worried I'll slit 'em and then discover I've misaligned them. Zippers, however, just need to be centered.
  
• Zoo: I love zoos. My dad and I like to go to the zoo and take photos of the animals. We haven't done it in a while; I should see if he's got time some time this summer.
  
• Zebra: Zebras are cool. And photograph well in black-and-white. :-)
  
• Zionism: I grew up in a Zionist youth organization (Young Judaea); Zionism is in my blood. This does not in any way mean that I think the Israeli government is always right. But I support the right of Israel to exist and I donate time and money to its continuing existence.
  
• Zone: As in Time Zone. They can really mess with your head, y'know? Especially in places that shift time zone because they don't do Daylight Saving Time when most of the rest of the US does.
  

tygerseye gave me "S" (as in "Socks.")

• Susseration: One of my favorite words in the English language. It's onomatopoea, which is also neat.
  
• Sleep: I am what some call a "sleep camel." I bank sleep on the weekend and then don't get enough during the weeknights.
  
• Singing: Something I love to do, though I have no formal training in it.
  
• Sewing: My mother taught me to sew my own clothing when I was in late elementary school, and I started doing it seriously in high school. My parents got me a sewing machine for my 21st birthday, and I still use that machine. It's a Singer school model, with all-metal innards (which is less common these days).
  
• Serious: I can be serious when I need to be. Actually, I'm usually serious. But my silly side frequently pops out, even when I'm being serious.
  

cicirossi gave me "E"

• Elephant: In the spring of 2000, due to the Big Dig, the Barnum and Bailey Circus had to find an alternate route to get their animals from the circus train into the (then)Fleet Center. They ended up walking the animals down Memorial Drive, right past my office building. We all congregated by the office windows to watch the elephants (and zebras and horses and others) go by.
  
• Eggplant: I'm quite fond of it. As eggplant salad, baba ganoush, eggplant parm, whatever. Yum.
  
• Egress: I've always thought this should be not an exit but a female egret.
  
• Emacs: My father is an old-time UNIX geek. It was from him that I gained my love of Emacs as an editor. This may be heresy (see "H"), but I never learned VI and have little desire to do so. I've written some of my favorite pieces in Emacs (eal, much of the stuff of mine you first read was written in Emacs).
  
• Enter: I still think of this key as "return" or even "carriage return." And I've found way more people than I expected to who had no clue what I meant by "hit return," so I've trained myself to say "hit Enter." But it's still a struggle sometimes.
  

Comments

[tiptoe39.livejournal.com]

Comment! Comment! Gimme a letter! :snickerhappy:

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

OK! :-) I give you...T!

[gem225.livejournal.com]

Letter for me, please? It's high time I updated my LJ. People are beginning to send me email, asking if I'm still alive. Not good.

[gem225.livejournal.com]

Also, my zebra icon because you wrote about zebras!

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Yay for zebras!

I have no zebra icon; here are some elephants.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

A letter for you? Sure. How about...Y!

[docorion.livejournal.com]

Don't necessarily want a letter, but did want to say 1) your dad's joke cracked me up :-) and 2) on my Mac, the Return key has enter written on it, for all the world like it was put there to calm the masses who have apparently forgotten what that key was originally for - on IBM Selectric typewriters (where I first saw such a key, prominently marked Carriage Return), oddly enough, it did a carriage return (and a line feed), and I still think of it that way also.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I originally learned to type on my mother's manual Smith-Corona typewriter, where you had to push the carriage return bar all by yourself. I was given a Smith-Corona electric typewriter for my bat mitzvah by a bunch of my parents' friends, and I used it all through high school and even part of college.

And I'm glad my dad's joke made you laugh. He's the one who taught me that language was something to be played with, and this joke is one of his examples of that.