The longest month
I am absolutely convinced that March is the longest month of the year. I realize that it doesn’t have any additional days, but for some reason it feels absolutely ENDLESS! It’s gray, ugly, often rainy, bone damp, and gloomy. The ground is sort of a mucky grayish brown and soggy looking. The trees are bare and gray and dead looking. It’s as if there is no color anywhere in the world.
I can’t wait for spring to really start. I need sunshine, color, buds on the trees, green grass and flowers!
Of course when that happens I’ll be dying from allergies, but I’m going to try to keep in mind how much I was longing for color and warmth.
This is going to be a long week. It’s observation week for the reading program, and it’s also seminar week. That means we’re stuck at school till five thirty Thursday night. I already am moaning at the thought.
I’m in good company there, though. So is everyone else who has gotten stuck learning this program.
Everyone is so ready to be done with it totally.
And we still have two more seminars and another observation to get through.
Ugh.
Monday is never an easy day. It seems as if there is crisis after crisis and people clamoring for help- that I really don’t know how to give.
I don’t think it helped very much today that there is a full moon.
I guess the good news is that the lid didn’t totally blow off anything and I managed to do some spin control. It might not last the week, but it works for the time being.
I went shopping this afternoon, even thought that was not my intent. My intent had been to go to the store to pay my credit card bill and leave.
Silly me.
I should have known that the sale racks would start out by softly calling my name and eventually start SCREAMING it when I didn’t pay close attention!
I picked up a spring shirt, that has a "fake out" element to it. It’s a gray knit shirt that has a "v" neck and looks as if there is a white t-shirt under it. But it’s just a dickie. I got a long blue cotton skirt to go with it. I also got a denim vest that looks as if it is over a chambray shirt, but that is also a fake-out as it’s all one piece.
Now comes the irritation. I got home to find a sale flyer containing coupons for an additional 20% off on all the things I bought. The sale starts Wednesday and I’m going to have to go back to have the price adjusted.
How irritating.
Listening to: The Stephen Schwartz Album
Reading: New York: Apple of My Eye Helene Hanff
Weather: 43, gray and gloomy
Trivia: Was golf really invented by the Scots?
Where the game of golf was originated has long been a subject of much conjecture by scholars. The issue has usually been whether it originated in Scotland, as has been long touted by the Scots, or Holland. One item, which throws the balance of evidence behind the Scots, is comparison between ancient continental games and Scottish golf. During the Roman domination in Europe, a popular game was paganica, a cross-country pastime played with a bent stick and a leather ball stuffed with feathers, similar to early Scottish golf balls. Early games in the Netherlands, however, have a more striking similarity to golf, particularly the Dutch game of kolven, otherwise known as "kolf." The Dutch even called the tools of the game "kolf clubs" and these clubs seen in early Dutch pictures suggest something like golf. Additionally, the game of chole had some resemblance to golf as well. Chole, more Belgian (Flemish) than Dutch actually, was a cross-country pastime in which each side used one ball and played to a prearranged target--a church door, for example--at a considerable distance from the starting point. The Scots, however, can certainly lay claim to a strong golf lineage. The game's actual existence during antiquity in Scotland is beyond question due to physical documentation. It seems that way back in 1457 the Parliament of King James II decreed that both "Fute-ball and Golfe be utterly cryed downe" as they interfered with the practice of archery, something which was necessary for the defense of the realm. Similar decrees were also enacted in 1471 and 1491; the latter, issued during the reign of James IV, indicted them as "unproffitable sportis." Obviously, golf had become a popular obsession in Scotland even before the mid-15th century. Ironically, this same King James IV later became the first golf player of authentic record. His Lord High Treasurer's accounts early in the 16th century include payments for the King's equipment--"golf clubbis and ballis." The Stuarts gave the game its first woman golfer, too-- Mary, Queen of Scots, who was charged with playing in the fields beside Seton only a few days after the murder of her husband, Darnley. In the end, James VI was actively promoting the game as well. When he succeeded to the English throne as James I, he took his courtiers and his clubs with him, sealing golf's place in history.
Cool word: Lilliputian [n. or adj. lil-uh-PYOO-shun]
If something is Lilliputian, it is miniature or undersized. Example: "The dining room table in Jane's doll house was set with Lilliputian plates, cups and silverware." The word can also describe something trivial or petty. It is not always capitalized, particularly when used as a noun. The word is from English satirist Jonathan Swift's novel "Gulliver's
Travels" in which Gulliver finds himself the giant prisoner of the six-inch-high inhabitants of Lilliput. The Lilliputians refer to him as "Man-Mountain." Swift also coined some other words in his book. The Yahoos were a race of sub-humans Gulliver encountered, and a Yahoo is a brutish or boorish person. Brobdingnag was a nation of giants, and something
really huge might be described as Brobdignagian.
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ARIES
The start of the cosmic new year sees the full moon in Virgo promising you gains and growth these coming months from being responsive to what people need and want for their welfare and sense of purpose in life. You are able to contribute to the common good and to your own good by making more of your talents and perceptions. Changing your diet to a more healthy and wholesome menu will also benefit you this year.