random bit of word thinking

 I was looking about the etymology for the word 'saint' and it was pretty boring. It was just some Latin word for sacred that sounds like saint.

But then I found the Old English version 'hallow' which shares the same root as 'holy' and basically in Old English the word for holy, 'halig' was derived from the word for 'whole' which was 'hailaz' and so a connection is made between things being sacred and divine and things being complete and healthy and whole. 

That's kinda cool I think. The Greek word 'hagios' also means divine and sacred but its connotation is 'different' or 'set apart from'. 

I think that's a very different sense of divine and I think the Greek sense is how most people interpret the word holy. The Old English version feels much more earthy and worldly. 

Which would you prefer? A divine that is separate and set apart or a divine that is healthy and complete and whole?

story from coaching at a climbing comp

 Today I was standing with this kid I coach and he's a great kid who got into climbing a little over a year ago and now he's competing in his first season and today was his third competition and it was at a gym that tends to set notoriously hard climbs. So we're standing there in front of this climb watching other people do it and making a plan and this kid I'm coaching is a good climber and he works really hard and I know he's going to be great if he wants to stick with it but there are still some moves that he's not as comfortable with and this climb looks like it's going to be a challenge for him. But he's got a great attitude and he's open to failing at things because he knows it's going to make him better in the long run.

This other kid is right in front of his, about to get on the climb, and the kid looks back and receives some directions from his coach and then he walks up to the start and sends the climb with relative ease. He looked good. He drops down to the mats and gets his scorecard from the judges and calmly walks back to where we are and his face immediately turns red and he begins sobbing uncontrollably. He sits down right in front of us and pulls his shirt over his face and keeps bawling. His coach walks over to comfort him and me and the kid I coach both kind of tastefully look away and act like we don't notice and after about 10 to 15 seconds of us standing in dead silence the kid I coach says, dry as a bone, 

"Well, that was encouraging."

I lost it. But then I had to quickly regain it because it looked like I was laughing at the crying kid which I wasn't.

one month of 2026 DOWN!

ha! easy work!

I could handle 11 more of these before this year gives up

just like all the others

Years I've Felled:

2005. 1998. 2013. 1994. 2020 AND 2021!

1994 was so easy for me I don't even remember anything from it. Barely a challenge at all.

I also still contend that I have a strong case to be considered The Baby That Toppled The Soviet Union.

All it took was exactly 8 months of me being alive and it was officially dissolved. 

"I am a time fish that swims through time at a rate of one second per second"

 when I was a kid I would go down the street to the neighbor's trampoline and jump around for what felt like hours and have really elaborate daydreams about what the world would be like if it was all snow and ice all the time everywhere. In the daydreams I would slide and zoom around and hang out in these cool underground snow tunnels. 

Today I got to live out that fantasy in real life and like most things my stupid child mind came up with, it was actually terrible. I couldn't take two steps without almost slipping and busting my entire self. Took me like an hour to do my normal walk. You see all the car exhaust on the snow and think 'dang we really live like this huh?'

No but actually it was pretty fun. I've never seen a large clear field of smooth shining unbroken ice. 

things that played on repeat in my head while I was digging my car out of the ice yesterday

 he has songs of wildebeests and angels. he has soared on the wings of a demon...

are you really letting a MAN block your shine right now? a MAN block your shine?

don't pop your tire with the chisel don't pop your tire with the chisel don't pop your tire with the chisel

and if you don't love me now, you will never love me again, I can still hear you saying I would never break the chain

One way you could think about the weather is that every day there's a new weather-related challenge for you to overcome but usually in Central Virginia the challenge isn't very hard. nearly non-existent even. So it's not a very good way to think about the weather.

who named the school buses?

 the age old question. which came first? the school or the bus?

let's ask the answer to all of life's questions: ETYMOLOGY!

The word bus, surprisingly enough, is a shortened version of the word 'omnibus' which is latin for 'for all' and means a collection of stuff published all together that was previously published separately. An omnibus was also a horse-drawn vehicle--the precursor to the modern bus, some might say. Google traces the first uses of 'omnibus' to the 19th century. 

It is not too far of a stretch, in my opinion, to say that the word 'bus' is a shortened version of a phrase that essentially means, 'THE FOR EVERYONE WAGON'

And I think that's really great.

Meanwhile, the word school comes from the Greek word for leisure?! Like the ancient Greek word referred to where you would go after working to discuss philosophy and hang out with the boys.

MY DREAM! MY DREAM! If only we lived in a world where 'school bus' meant 'the for everyone wagon that takes you to where you can hang out with the boys after work'.

See what they've stolen from us!? See what they've done. 

Not the metal tube that takes children to the place where they're molded to provide value for shareholders and/or end up in prison. Not that! Not like that!

aw geez. aw geez.

I'll tell you who named school buses. The wrong people. How could you take those two words that are great in their source and nature and make them into what you did. Oh geez.  

this is a new character I've come up with

 one time, my father came home very late and he told us that while he was at the 7/11 a man hit his truck with his car and drove off. for he was possessed by the great googly mooglies. and he did not know what he was doing. I was glad my father was okay. My mother was mad that my father had been out so late. Why were you out so late anyway? Searching for googly mooglies?

And then later, years later, I went to that 7/11 at three in the morning with my friends. And we went inside and no one else was there. The door was unlocked and we walked around for a few minutes and no one came out and we got scared and left. There were googly mooglies out and about that night for sure.

My father doesn't go out at night anymore. The only time he goes out is when my sister is home and can drive him. He says he is going to see "the night people." The people out at night. 

The one time I saw night people was in college when my friends and I tried to drive to Richmond but we went the wrong way on the interstate by accident and drove to Virginia Beach instead. Walking along the boardwalk. Those were night people. They moved on a different plane of existence and we could see them but they couldn't see us and we didn't want them to see us. 

In the Bible Adam gives names to all the livestock, the birds, and the beasts of the field. But he never named bugs or shrimp or slugs or school buses.