I wish I could write.

No matter what I do, I can't seem to write.  If I sit with a pen and paper I doodle, make some useless list to add to all the other useless lists I have lying about, or just sit and stare.  At my computer I end up playing some mindless game or reading/looking at random web pages.  I haven't even been blogging lately.  I'm working on it, though.

No internet access

I haven't been able to post lately because I currently have no internet.  Its frustrating, but that's the way it is.  I'll get back to this more often when I have internet again.

Y is for Youth -- Day 25 of the "A to Z Blogging Challenge"

Everything today seems to be about youth. Trying to get a job after 50 is difficult, at best. Nevertheless, I wouldn't trade my experience for youth. I'd hate to have to learn all those lessons the hard way again.

When I decided to make this blog entry about youth, I decided to search for a quote or two to use. Below are a few interesting quotes about youth. They all come from www.thinkexist.com. It never occurred to me when I started looking up quotes about youth that the best one of all would be from Sophia Loren.

"Youth is wasted on the young." George Barnard Shaw

"You can only be young once. But you can always be immature." Dave Barry

"An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young." Oscar Wilde

"It takes a long time to become young." Pablo Picasso

"You are never too old to become younger." Mae West
　
"In youth we learn; in age we understand." Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

"Youth is easily decieved, because it is quick to hope." Aristotle
　
"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age." Sophia Loren

X is for Xyresic Xanthochroid Xanthippe -- Day 24 of the "A to Z Blogging Challenge"

I am a xyresic xanthochroid xanthippe. There, I said it! Its out in the open for all to see. I'm not the least bit ashamed, either.

What, you ask, is a xyresic xanthochroid xanthippe? The following definitions are from my favorite source of obscure words, the Grandiloquent Dictionary (http://www.islandnet.com/~egbird/dict/dict.htm)

Xyresic: Being as sharp as a razor.
　
Xanthochroid: A blond haired and blue eyed person with fair white skin.

Xanthippe: An ill tempered woman.

Therefore, I am an ill-tempered woman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, and I like to think I'm as sharp as a razor. Ok. So my hair isn't completely blonde, it has a lot of red in it, and I do have freckles now, though as an infant my skin was as pale as porcelain. Oh, and some days I don't feel so sharp. But I still think I qualify.

I'll bet you didn't think I'd come up with even one legitimate word starting with X for today, no less three.

Blog on, friends.

W is for Weddings -- Day 23 of the "A to Z Blogging Challenge"

Weddings are a hot topic these days for many reasons, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon with this one. No, I'm not talking about the William and Kate wedding. That is irrelevant to me. I never got the Charles and Diana thing. Why should I care? I am, however, talking about weddings in the form of nontraditional marriages - specifically same-sex and transsexual unions.

Why do I care about this topic? I care because I hear every day about people who truly care for each other who are penalized for their sexual preference or gender identity, especially in the area of marriage. This came to mind when I saw a TV news item about a proposed law in Texas that reverses the right of transgender people to marry using their post-surgical gender on the marriage license. Aside from preventing couples from getting married, this law could be used to retroactively and forcibly annul previously approved transsexual marriages. Shades of California! I hope Texans come to their senses over this travesty.

V is for Verbivore -- Day 22 of the "A to Z Blogging Challenge"

A verbivore, according to the Grandiloquent Dictionary (http://www.islandnet.com/~egbird/dict/dict.htm) is a person who devours words. I'd say that is a good description of me, as well as many of my acquaintances who love to write. Few things give me more pleasure than finding just the right word for a situation.

I chose this word because, to be perfectly honest, I couldn't come up with a unique topic for the letter V. Since I love words so much, I decided to fall back on my old habit of just looking through lists of words to find the one I wanted, and found verbivore.

U is for Unhappiness -- Day 21 of the "A to Z Blogging Challenge"

I've spent far too much of my life unhappy for various reasons -- loss of loved ones, pain, bad relationships, depression, etc.... I've been working on that, though. My wake up call came many years ago when I chatted daily on IRC. That's Internet Relay Chat, for those of you who don't know. IRC was (and still is, to some extent) text-only chat - No GUI, no premade smileys. A plain smile was :) and the permutations were endless. My personal smiley was @>;^> That is a devillish smile on someone whose nose has been broken (for one too many mischievous remarks), winking, with horns holding up a halo with a bun on top of the head in the middle of the halo. I used ascii codes to color the various parts, too -- red for the halo/bun and the lips, black for the horns and nose, and blue for the eyes.

Anyway, back to my wake up call. I was chatting with a long-time friend on IRC and he told me that I was too negative, that conversations with me were depressing and made people feel bad at times. I logged off and cried for a while. Then I started reading some of the messages I had sent and realized he was right. Almost everything I said was negative. Since then I've tried to turn it around. That's not to say I'm always successful in my efforts to be more positive, but at least I try. If I find myself in Eeyore mode, I stop, take a breath, and look for something positive to focus on.