Words of the day (with lots of vowels)

According to a Mexican friend of mine, murciélago (bat) is the only Spanish word with all five vowels.

In English, we have facetiously, which has all 5½ vowels (y is the half) in alphabetical order. I also like the words vacuum and aardvark for the unusual double vowels.

The coolest French word may be jouaient (third person plural imperfect of jouer – to play), which has all five vowels in a row!
And créée (feminine past participle of créer – to create) with its triple E.

Any other vowel-laden words?

Hickory Horned Devil

Check out this amazing creature – it looks like something you’d find in the jungle, but apparently it’s a harmless giant caterpillar, known as a hickory horned devil, that is looking for a place to burrow so that it can re-emerge as a royal moth. Be sure to click on the photo to see the full-size image.

Incredibly, it only took me about 10 minutes to find out what it was called on the internet, using such search terms as light green, spikes, and giant insect. How did people ever find out stuff like this before? I guess I would have had to go to the library and look through reference books – it would have taken days!

Travel will never be the same

I thought the shoe bomber’s legacy was bad, but after last week’s foiled terrorist plot to blow up planes with liquid explosives, it’s official: travel will never be the same. Not being able to bring liquid in your hand luggage means no beverages… will airlines now offer an endless supply? And the flight that was diverted from DC to Boston – it’s hard to imagine how a claustrophobic woman could be that disruptive. If she had been acted exactly the same two weeks ago, I wonder if the same emergency procedure would have been followed. I hope things have calmed down a bit before I go to California in October.

Online Savings Account

I recently opened an online savings account which is linked to my “brick and mortar” checking account. After my initial deposit, I got a $25 bonus, which was nice, but even better is the interest rate, which at 4.35% is higher than many CDs. Money is easily transferred between my regular checking and the online account, and the interest really adds up. If you’re interested in learning more about an account like this (not to mention the free $25), respond to this post or email me at lklawless AT hotmail and I’ll send you an invitation.

Tony Shalhoub and Monk

My new favorite TV show is “Monk” – I’m watching the first season on rented DVDs. (I often do this, rather than watching the show during its TV run, because I hating waiting a week to find out what happens next.) I’ve always been a huge Tony Shalhoub fan, from when he was the only reason for watching “Wings,” to his hilarious roles in “Galaxy Quest” and “Cars” – he never ceases to amuse me. And yet he can be serious too – he played a victim in an early episode of “The X-Files” that stayed with me for a long time. The role of Monk is a great one for him – I hope it stays on air for years to come.

Back up software

I’ve been looking for decent back up software forever. They always seem to want to compress all of my files into a single huge file that can only be used to restore the hard drive, or keep dozens of revisions, or other nonsense. All I want is a program that automatically, quietly, three times a day, updates a mirror of my documents and settings on my external hard drive, and I finally found it earlier this week: Backup4all. It has all of those “advanced” features that I don’t want, but it also does just what I do want. I highly recommend it. (And I didn’t find it a moment too soon – I had a computer scare on Wednesday. It turned out to just be a loose component in the CPU, but for a while there I thought the motherboard was shot.)

� Previous Page Next Page �