Bucket O' Decoupage

You too can turn an ordinary plastic cheese ball bucket into a colorful container using some Modge Podge, cut-up magazines, and kids' artwork (or your own)! Is there anything cuter for markers and crayons?

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Derriengue

This is the word that will haunt 13-year-old Neetu Chandak for the rest of her life. She misspelled it during the National Spelling Bee Championship finals. But, if the word was pronounced as it should have been, with it's Spanish root, rolled double "rr," would she have gotten it right? The announcer even pointed out the lack of rolled "rr" in their pronunciation of derriengue, but dismissed it as an Anglicized form of the word. Really? It seemed like there were an abundance of French words in this round: blancmange, baignoire, Neufchâtel, and they were all pronounced with French gusto, er, flaire. I would think the "American" pronunciation of Neufchâtel would include a hard, audible "F." Same with the "C" in blancmange. Maybe the announcer was just using "Anglicized" as a euphemism for "lazy."

And what of all the Spanish-speaking newscasters who have no accent whatsoever, until they come to a Spanish word, at which point it's like we've switched gears, to Telemundo? But it's still Anglicized news, right? By these standards Cesar Chavez Street should be "See-zir Chavez," not "Say-czar." It will be interesting to see what is considered "Anglicized" pronunciation in a few years, if we continue on this bilingual route, in states with large Hispanic populations. Speaking of, what ever happened to Esperanto? Has that ever taken off?

Mardi Gras

Word cloud of my blog c/o www.wordle.net. Go see what you're talking about....

This Rocks

I love her quirky obsessive compulsive behaviors. These are rocks placed inside hairbands. Not as bad as the time she put matching colored beads in the hairbands, but still, pretty funny.

It's a cold, sad Valentines night and I have nothing better to do right now than gripe about it on my blog (and facebook). Grandma was supposed to come to Austin to babysit while Turner & I went out for a nice dinner. Alone. She got the flu yesterday, so had to cancel, understandably. I'm hoping that there's at least a movie-on-demand that can lift my spirits. Some cheesy romantic comedy. I may have to watch 30 Rock again - Thursday's episode was hilarious, speaking of CHEESY (stew).