The Flood continues...

Okay, where did I leave off last night?
Ah, yes. Here.

Words, Words, Words
I love Etymology. I ended up as an English major in college, and probably should have minored in the Classics since I spent a great deal of time learning Latin and reading the works of many Greek philosophers and playwrights. As a result, I have a keen eye and ear for words. I pay attention to how people use them, I notice when they are used out of context or incorrectly. I sometimes agonize over the right word to use while writing, because I know the right word is out there, I just can't think of it.
Etymology is almost like history -- the history of words; where did they come from, who used them first, what did they really mean, and how did they come to mean what they do today. There is an interesting website that i have stopped at once in a while called http://www.etymonline.com/ where you can look up all sorts of words and learn about where they came from and why we use them today. Check it out sometime.
My friend SB recently posted on her blog about the history of a particular Christmas song, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas". In the same way i love words, I found this fascinating. It's hard to imagine that this song was actually intended to be sung as a sad goodbye, from one sister to another in the musical Meet Me in St. Louis. You can read more about this song's bitter origins at its Wikipedia article.

Speaking of Bitter...
I was a bartender for a few years before I moved to the Deep South, and during that time I learned quite a few things about mixing ingredients to make delicious beverages. I rarely ever drank the drinks I made, but I have been told that I was very good at the craft.
Tonight I found my bottle of Angostura Bitters and felt a rush of memories about family parties, watching my father create what seemed to be a witch's brew for my Grandmother. He would make her something called a Manhattan, and, if he had the right ingredients, he would even mix an occasional Old Fashioned. I was a little kid back then, and my Dad much older. My Grandmother, even older (imagine that). But these drink names seemed ancient. It was like my Dad was mixing up some part of the old world, and the secret ingredient was "bitters". "Only two dashes, son," he'd tell me. "Don't overdo it." By the smell of them, two were plenty.
And there they were. The bitters. In my refrigerator. I read the entire label. I learned some of the history of the bitters (created by J.G.B. Siegert), I learned that there is alcohol in the bitters (a whopping 45%), and I learned an interesting recipe for a non-alcoholic drink called the Southampton: juice of half a lime, two or three dashes bitters, tonic. I happened to have tonic in the garage and a lime in the fridge. I made the drink immediately.
Delicious.
Even better than Pirates of the Caribbean, and just as sour.

The Wonderful World of Wiki
I linked a reference to the Christmas song above to an article posted on Wikipedia, the open-source, community driven, free encyclopedia. This is a great tool. It's also great for an interesting read during the lunch break at work. Want to know something about Quantum Physics on a lark? No problem. Have a need to peruse a Glossary of Ballet terms? Piece of cake. Just head to www.wikipedia.com and search for it. What you get is an easy to read, easy to navigate page about everything I could possibly want to know about the subject.
The best part is that if you think you know something about the subject, and the page lacks the detail that you have to offer, you can submit edits to any page and teach the encyclopedia what you know. Brilliant. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything that I know enough about that I could help write. But I still like the site.

...and I'm still not done. But I need a break. More to come.