[And I have a new "tired" icon.]

[hermionesviolin]

I did weight room this morning and was distracted, so I wasn't being particularly intentional -- but I did do my usual machines, and I don't think I was particularly sloppy.  I've done something at the gym every workday morning since the day after Labor Day.  I'm impressed by me.  And fully intend to keep this up.

Man, I miss having reading comprehension.  I totally put a 3pm meeting on Prof.B's calendar for 4pm.  *fails*  (Thank God he was already in the office.)

I am so blessed.  Seeing various LJ folk struggling to pay for going back to college or just stay on their feet, having fucked-up families and/or mental illness of their own, and so on . . . I am so grateful for all that I have.

I keep bumping into A.S. (the prof I worked for my second temp gig at HBS) recently, and he's always happy to see me.
    Today:
A.S. (showing up on my floor by accident): "I'm pathetic -- but you already knew that."
me: "You're wonderful."

***

via friendsfriends . . . copperbadge writes:

I found FreeRice.Com on del.icio.us the other day and it seems to be not only a simple and soothing exercise but completely legit -- for every word you get correct, one of the site's sponsors will donate ten grains of rice to those in need through the United Nations World Food Program.

While the definitions are not always 100% accurate and I can't seem to discover who is behind the site and thus have no way of verifying their claims, there is no registration, no request for money, and no pop-up advertising; the sponsors' logos simply appear at the bottom of the vocabulary box. It is one of the loveliest fusions of corporate culture, education, and social responsibility that I've ever encountered.

And hey -- even if there is no rice donation, you're still getting a vocabulary workout that can't possibly hurt. :)

Much like the SATs, I often just guessed, so when I got a guess right it wasn't like I actually learned the word.  I did retain alate [Level 45 -- mostly I was around level 40,41] = winged.  I knew "cataract"="waterfall" from The Blue Faience Hippopotamus.

I do wish they were phrased as "best synonym" rather than "means" -- "violin" doesn't mean "fiddle," for example.  (Yes, I told them so on their About/feedback page.)  Okay, I noticed later that when you first begin, the "How To Play" sidebar says "Click on the answer that best defines the word."  But still.

Comments

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

I, too, guessed a lot at FreeRice, but I tend to think that I was learning because of the type of guessing I was doing: parsing words through recognized roots and suffixes. And even then when I got it wrong, I would be able to figure out why I had gotten it wrong.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when I took the time to be attentive I did learn some stuff. Like "reniform" is "kidney-shaped" largely because none of the other synonyms seemed quite the right . . . part of speech isn't the phrase I want, but you know what I mean? But I was curious as to whether I was correct (whereas a lot of the words were so far out there that I knew I wouldn't retain them and thus didn't even try), and after it said I was I realized "oh yeah, 'renal' . . . " -- which was a word I had known in a previous round.

[soundingsea.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that Free Rice site is fun! I whiled away some time there. Neat!