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Beech Hill Sunrise

Wiser’s Wramblings-Some Days Wiser, Some Days Not

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Wroundabouts, the Wiser Jinz, and fun with words

I write the words to share what my eyes see and my heart feels

Not sure why you would, but if you read today’s title out loud or to yourself, be careful to clearly read and separate the last two words. If you don’t it ends up being one of those awkward sounding word linking’s. If that brought a smile or a groan out of you, I have served, or reached, my goal for today. In writing that headline, adding that word combination, it was not intentional, and it only entered my mind “pastconciously.” A few paragraphs later (in this) I thought of a secondary column title, that being, Wrambling About Wroundabouts, but I think I had already used that title once in the past. Pastconsciously of course.

And there, I now have created a new word for my Wiser Words Thesaurus. You likely know well what the words unconscious or subconscious mean. I couldn’t think of a word using the root of conscious, so I made up my own. Pastconscious means after regaining consciousness, whether having been in a state of unconsciousness or if from an unknowing state of consciousness as in subconscious.

I’d better conscientiously continue onward toward an intended subject for today’s Wramblings.

The subject of round-a-bouts hits the editor’s letters included in the almost daily publication of another written or media source in a neighboring Catt-County city. Most people addressing those “traffic circling wonders” are not ambivalent in their opinions. I, for the most part, have addressed the issue based on driving safety, and/or lack thereof. I have mentioned them herein a number of times, mostly favorably. On my most recent visit to Olean I experienced one common misuse and one negative experience. The misuse occurred as the person IN the round-a-bout ahead of me stopped while within its traffic stream, to let someone entering in from a connected street. The second experience, same day, same location, resulted from the direct opposite of the intended mission of the round-a-bouts, that being of maintaining a smoother traffic flow without stop lights.

 Driving east on 417/State Street in that same city I was caught in traffic several blocks west of the round-a-bout junction between North and South “Union” streets advancing only one or two cars at a time. After an agonizing stop and go passing about three side streets I got disgusted and took a left turn on the adjacent Northward heading side street and by passed the traffic tie up. Fortunately the “by pass” street I selected, ran all the way north to a connecting street one block from the North Union Street connection. After going around its round-a-bout much more cleanly. I had to sacrifice my intended drive through at Wendy’s, but I survived.   

Auto-defect doesn’t like my use of “its” in that previous sentence suggesting that it should be written “it’s.” Now I’m scratching my head as I had always thought that “it’s” is a contraction of “it is”. Oh well, it’s what it is. “Autodefect” doesn’t like the fact that I used “it’s and is together.

Last night at choir and “Praise Band” practice I used a malaprop word and some of the Alto’s and Soprano’s siting in front of me grinned and commented. I mentioned that I often make up my own words to make up for the shortage of words that really mean what you want to say. At the end of this piece I will attach a photo-copy of the last quiz I gave my college students prior to retirement. I had asked them to define the list of words I gave them, and then after, gave them my thesaurus.

When I served in the US Navy from August of 1963 until December of 1966 I ended up working primarily in what turned out to be areas dealing mostly in electronics, as a Gun Fire Control Technician. That field, and early career activities, bears and offers a multitude of stories all by itself which I may pursue at some later date. Why I mention it here is a segway into why I ended up going to Alfred State College pursuing and then teaching “mechanical” and “manufacturing” related topics. That later career choice was reaffirmed over the past few days when my truck started having apparent electrical problems with the dashboard lights not being lit. Coming home from Genesee Vally Chorus (GVC) practice Tuesday night was challenging as my dashboard indicator and back lighting was not functioning. I couldn’t see the odometer, speedometer, or lightometerometer. As I continued home I managed to get the headlights turned back on, after the light control switch was put in the correct position but I couldn’t get the dashboard instrument panel lights on. No big problem as I was traveling on streets and routes where I didn’t need infinite knowledge of my speed.

Wednesday (yesterday) I got the truck manual out and thinking perhaps a fuse had gone bad, tried to find the appropriate fuse to check and/or replace. The manual was useless in not specifically listing the fuse that I was interested in. I couldn’t find my fuse puller so a trip to Auto Zone enabled me to get a new one with some spare fuses that were included. I pulled and checked a few fuses but all seemed good. I still wasn’t sure if I was checking the appropriate fuse, so I consulted Dr. Google’s Car tips and found a post that mandated checking fuse # 14. That was a great suggestion if I knew which fuse was #14. I gave up, intending to take my car to Dan Fuller at Dry Brook Garage, as soon as I got a chance. Last night departing Grace United Church, the lights were still messed up. I reached down to the little stem protruding from the instrument panel display and turning it “one click” the instrumental panel light display came back to life. After the fact, I do recall having used that control “stem” to switch between the current milage status to the DTE (Distance Until Empty) status function, the previous Monday traveling back from Olean to see if I needed to stop at the “Reservation” in Cuba, for a gas fill up. I must have turned that control stem to the Panel Lights settings off, accidentally. The upside of doing something subconsciously making it not work, is that of repeating it subconsciously, making it work again.

I now have another example validating my mantra that “If you ask for something of questionable possibility, they might laugh at you and say NO, but if you don’t ask, they can’t say YES.

Our coffee “of choice” is Maxwell House Half Caff which has only half the normal amount of caffein. It has been disappearing from the shelves of many stores and upon asking at one, was told that their distributor said it had been, or was going to be, discontinued. That figures as it was part of the Wiser Jinx. Seeing some available online I ordered two canisters albeit at a higher-than-normal price. My impulse buying control monitor had let me down and I was so advised by her that it was foolish to spend so much on each cannister of coffee. And then…the package arrived via UPS. The packaging had obviously been opened and resealed, taped and scarfed together such that I was leery of even opening either of the cannisters. My “monitor” strongly suggested that I return them and get my refund. I attempted to do that as Amazon is pretty good about returns. No matter how many variations of returning the items I tried, I could not find a return solution. I called Amazon Customer Service, finally reaching a real person, albeit with language challenged.  I was finally able to get her to look into the possibility of returning the items.  After putting me on hold for several minutes, she finally re-connected with me advising, to my surprise, that they would reimburse me in full and I did not need to return the items. I haven’t, and they did. They “could have laughed and said No, but they said Yes.”  

A few “short notes” and then I’ll Wramble on to share my Thesaurus.

  • In a statement made in one of the books I’ve been reading lately, the stated that “to get a certain tool he reached into his toolbox for the ‘correctly sized’ Crescent wrench.” A Crescent wrench is adjustable in size, but only regarding the opening and closing spacing of the jaws. Now, he may have meant whether to get a large wrench or a small wrench, but I doubt it. Note: I don’t often get to “nest” parantheticable statements like mathematics equations but I’m just showing off.
  • Recently listening to the QVC show running in the background, the sales associate said that an item was “appointed” with various features. That use of “appointed” is not heard often but I had heard it before. I’m not going into detail, but double checking the description of the word was interesting. Appointed can be a verb if an action, or an adjective if descriptive.

The following “word picture” is a listing of the words I gave to my last class of students at ASC prior to my retirement. I received some interesting, often humorous, definitions from the students, recognizing the humor or irony intended. I got some answers rivaling my own list. One student gave me one derivation of one of the words, which I don’t recall, and I have tried many times to recall the word and his explanation, which was priceless. I had written it down somewhere but haven’t been able to find it despite looking for it a few times since 2008 when I retired. One of these days I will find it and share it.

Foliage status checked out today on a Hornell Walmart visit via Jericho Hill headed East and Rte. 86-Vandermark headed West. It seemed that only about 10-15% have changed color on the Easterly (not Eastery) route, and 30-40% have changed on my Westerly Route. Not sure why the significant difference.

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