Monthly archive: October 2006

Marked by or possessing a high degree of sophistication; refined.

Read more about couth at Answers.com

A woman regarded as scolding and vicious.

Read more about harridan at Answers.com

Something, such as a belief or institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion or to which people are ruthlessly sacrificed. An overwhelming, advancing force that crushes or seems to crush everything in its path.

Read more about juggernaut at Answers.com

A riotous disturbance; a noisy quarrel.

Read more about ruction at Answers.com

A quarrelsome, scolding woman; a shrew.

Read more about termagant at Answers.com

This is a picture of a dirty bowl. The worst kind of dirty bowl: day-old encrusted chocolate porridge made while waiting for the dishwasher service people to show up. You may click on the thumbnail to see the full size version of this picture of a very dirty bowl in all its mucky glory.

But the repair people did not show up at all, and Dr B. stayed at home from work from 8am to 1pm to wait in vain for them to grace us with their services.

So what does one do when one is told that the next available slot to have the dishwasher serviced is in six days? Why, one makes porridge and fails to soak the bowl afterwards, of course!

This time it is going to take more than a very lovely bunch of flowers to make me want to pick up a washing up brush any time soon.

A person who has special knowledge or experience; an expert

Read more about maven at Answers.com

Precisely meaningful; forceful and brief: a pithy comment.

Read more about pithy at Answers.com

When I was little we had a dishwasher, but crockery had to be hand-rinsed before sticking it in, and then the machine made so much noise that as far as I can remember I only ever saw it used to hide a spare set of keys to my parents' shop.

When we moved into the new flat last May I was amazed at finding that, thirty-odd-years later, there was this magic cupboard where plates would get washed overnight by a little team of industrious pixies. Since I always was the one volunteering to do the washing-up (give me that over hoovering, anytime), I can say that the quality of my life improved.

On Saturday I told Dr B. I was a little bit worried that I would not be able to cope if I had to go back to life without a dishwasher again. I was serious.

On Sunday afternoon the machine got stuck on rinse and we found no way to get it going again. Until an engineer comes and rescues us, we have a very expensive two-tier dishrack with a door.

On Sunday night we ate ready-made pizza slices out of paper plates.

On Monday night Dr B. came home with a lovely bunch of flowers for me.

I suspect the two things are not entirely unrelated.

To win over by coaxing, flattery, or artful talk.

Read more about inveigle at Answers.com

To anticipate and dispose of effectively; render unnecessary.

Read more about obviate at Answers.com

To avoid or neglect (a duty or responsibility).

Read more about shirk at Answers.com

To usurp the place of, especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics. To displace and substitute for (another).

Read more about supplant at Answers.com

A warning or caution. A qualification or explanation. A formal notice

Read more about caveat at Answers.com

Today is the six month anniversary of my switch to contracting. I signed up with an umbrella company that takes care of the administrative and tax issues entirely, for a monthly fee. It is more expensive that setting up my own limited company, but it made sense to me as I was not sure I was going to continue contracting for a long time.

If you think you might consider leaving your permanent position to go solo, here are five reasons why you should – and five reasons why you should not.

The pros

1. More money: higher gross pay than permanent staff doing the same job, and interesting tax benefits and relief, from a minimum of travel and substistence expenses, to ofsetting large and expensive equipment if it is believed to be vital for you to perform your work.
2. Freedom and flexibility to manage contracts around other professional or personal commitments.
3. Acquisition of a varied experience in roles and subject matter as you move from one contract to another.
4. A high level of immunity from office politics.
5. Exposure to advanced technology: innovative projects are often staffed with contractors rather than move permanent workers away from their duties.

The cons

1. No sick pay, holiday entitlement or pension contributions: it is up to you to save up for a rainy day.
2. Very little job security: you can often lose your contract at a moment's notice.
3. More paperwork in filing expenses and tax returns, submitting invoices, chasing payments.
4. More difficulty in securing credit, loans and mortgages as no long-term regular income can be guaranteed.
5. Additional unpaid time spent networking, looking for and negotiating new contracts.

Offensively flattering or insincere. Offensive to the taste or sensibilities.

Read more about fulsome at Answers.com

So my mother calls me today.

I find a missed call from her (I had gone down to pick up our new Window Wizard that had just being delivered: oh the excitement – yes, we are that sad, but how else are we going to clean our 2m50 x 2m50 windows inside and out?) and I worry. She seldom calls and we've only just spoken, like, about ten days ago.

Then a voicemail alert comes through. Surely she didn't leave a message? She hates that contraption, and you may very well imagine that you would too if you did not understand a word of English, and started speaking when you think 'that miss' (as she calls my T-Mobile recorded default outgoing message) has finished speaking, only to be interrupted by 'that miss' adding 'If you want to re-record your message, press hash'.

But a message she did leave, with her distinctive five-second pause and then mumbling to herself 'I wonder if that miss is done?', before finally saying 'Hello, just wanted to say – congratulations, best wishes, many happy returns, and from your brother too. Bye.'

Say what? I noticed time has been moving on kind of faster than usual lately, but surely it's not Christmas? Don't tell me I fell asleep on the train back from work, and it's now February and I have just turned forty.

Is she cruelly rubbing in the fact that I did not get the job I was interviewed for? That's it: the old woman has gone batty.

I collect my thoughts, start dinner, then pick up my phone to call her back and notice the date on the display. It's October 18th – my name day, a rapidly dying out European custom which is still fiercely maintained by eighty-year-old ladies like my mother.

Aah, bless her.

To drink heartily.

Read more about quaff at Answers.com

This book is not fun, and yet I enjoyed it immensely.

It deals with the ultimate taboo of a woman who does not feel any maternal instinct when her first born is placed into her arms, and the subsequent guilt as she raises a child with whom she develops an ambivalent relationship, and who as a teenager ends up killing several of his classmates in a Columbine-style massacre.

Rarely have I felt so drawn into somebody's life, and it is all the more surprising as there is absolutely nothing in common between the narrator (a woman, a mother with a murderer son in prison) and myself. I suppose that's what makes good literature.

I imagine We Need to Talk About Kevin is the kind of novel that splits readership in half, and it is not a pleasant read. Often one finds uncomfortably sucked in and does not manage to turn away but can only witness the car crash of a life that is portrayed. As a reader, you feel dirty, a bit of a voyeur, and at the same time touched and honoured that you have been granted the trust to look into this woman's shattered soul.

We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver, winner of the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction.

The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.

Read more about entropy at Answers.com

If you do not fancy joining me in gazing at my belly button, nobody is forcing you, so please look away now and come back tomorrow.

Now, how is it possible to put on half a pound after dieting for a week?

It is if you cancel all efforts by reaching Sunday afternoon craving bread so much that you tear into a whole large loaf of bread with cheese and houmous, and then have a tub of Ben & Jerry's Dublin Mudslide icecream, just to cleanse your palate. It was lovely, and recent reports of loaves being sabotaged with glass and needles only just made me restrain myself – and chew, for once.

Before that episode set me back, I had stuck to my original pledge to avoid gluten for two weeks, and I thought I had seen some improvements in, erm, the consistency of my output (we're talking texture), but I'm back at square one now.

I refuse to give up though, and I am absolutely positive that the effort I'm putting into this (the planning, and the food shopping, and the cooking and cleaning afterwards) is an investment in health.

Moreover, I feel that I am also taking care of Dr B., and I like that. It is now hard to imagine that he might one day end up like his father, who is overweight and suffers from diabetes, but when I looked at him on Sunday afternoon, lying on the sofa watching a DVD, an empty carton of icecream sitting guiltily on the kitchen counter and a pizza in the fridge ready to be cooked for dinner, I could see his nascent venter morph into his father's protruding pounch.

His dad jests that he can rest his cup of tea on his stomach when he's sitting in front of the telly. I say that's what coffee tables are for.

An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror.

Read more about dystopia at Answers.com

One who opposes technical or technological change.

Read more about luddite at Answers.com

An arbitrary order or decree. Authorization or sanction: government fiat.

Read more about fiat at Answers.com

Dr B. and I are looking for lunchtime ideas to expand our cooking repertoire, and are very keen to hear any suggestion you might have for us.

We are not too fussy about what we eat, but we have rather strict requirements concerning food preparation, storage and transport.

More precisely, we are looking for recipes that are

• made with easy to find ingredients
• prepared in ten minutes or less (excluding cooking time)
• suitable for home freezing
• easy to transport
• suitable to be eaten cold
• 600 kcal or less
• gluten, celery and anchovy-free
• nutritionally balanced
• under 5 pounds per meal

So far we have half a dozen that meet these requirements. However, they are starting to wear a bit thin, and I fear that lunchbox fatigue might soon drive us to stick our gobs under the ice-cream machine nozzle at the nearest McDonald's.

Can you help us?

Confused, rambling, or incoherent discourse; nonsense. A complicated, petty set of procedures.

Read more about rigamarole at Answers.com

I love words. Words make life sweeter.

I wish I knew every word. Unfortunately, I don't. I am told I do a pretty good job at using an extensive vocabulary for someone whose first language is not English, but I get extremely frustrated whenever I encounter a word I do not know.

So I usually make a note of it, then look it up – but very often forget what it means, unless I use it shortly afterwards. Sadly, with age this happens more and more often.

I recently noticed that I look up on average a word a day. That's when I thought I could put this website to good use and post them here.

A few points:

• some of the words you will see might look very ordinary to you. As I said, keep in mind that English is not my first language. Sometimes these are words I have never heard before, or everyday words I cannot get into my head;
• most of the definitions are taken from the Answers.com website. This is because I find the descriptions concise yet complete. They also have very nice semantic URLs that enable me to write handy scripts to code this section of the website;
• if you access bitful via an RSS feed reader, you will not see the Word of the Day. However, if you are interested, you can subscribe to the Word of the Day feed or bookmark the Word of the Day page;
• contrary to what the timestamp says, I do not get up in the middle of the night to publish. I'm a bit of a cheat: I do it all in advance and make it magically appear when I am in fact (most nights) sleeping.

I hope you enjoy flexing your vocabulary as much as I do.

Read more about Introducing 'Word of the day' at Answers.com

The combined sensation of good conversation, good company, good times etc.: great fun.

Read more about craic at Answers.com

I did not go to work yesterday. On the way in, I started dripping bucketfuls of sweat on my not very impressed fellow commuters, so I turned around and went back to bed.

I slept and sweated all day and I hope this time I finally got rid of the cold I came back from holidays with one month ago.

A whole month of sneezing and coughing and tossing and turning each night in bed because I can't breathe properly.

I must say I have so far been blessed with good health. A tiny weekend cold per year, usually at the weekend not to take time off work, and that's usually it. And that's just as well, as I think I'm not the best with illness.

I fear my Italian origins resurface the moment something is wrong with me, and an attention-seeking dramatic streak takes center stage.

However, it's not like I act on it. Illness will disappear by itself if you ignore it for long enough, won't it? So I wait until I have to be carried before taking anything any sort of medication or go to the doctor.

But guys, a cold that lasts a whole month? Surely I should be allowed to start worrying now? Right?

Oh, and while we are at it, it's ‘meter’ (ending in -er) for measuring devices (thermometer, gas meter), but ‘metre’ (ending in -re, in British English) for words related to length (100 metres, kilometre).

Cough.

If you've been following this weblog for a while, you will know that I have engaged in an ongoing quest for the perfect RSS feed aggregator.

When Attensa for Outlook 2.0 was released in beta, I thought that's what I wanted: have all my feeds delivered to my email inbox, filter them according to rules I set up and behaviour it learned, and sync the result with my mobile.

It sounded great on paper, but after using it for a few weeks I have decided to go back to Netvibes because:

1. I found out I do not like reading stuff on my mobile phone. Besides, the feeds with longer articles or posts I might want to read on the go only publish short excerpts anyway;
2. I have been using Netvibes alongside Attensa, to aggregate non-blog and non-news content, thus having to check two locations rather than one;
3. I have not found a way to synchronise Attensa for Outlook with Attensa Online (which I cannot even find on their website – do they still do that?) So if I read something, say, at work, I have to delete it again when I get home;
4. The attention monitoring engine that brings to the foreground feeds it notices you are keener to read first did not strike me for being more practical than having an overview of everything that's been updated and manually selecting what to read straight away and what to save for later;
5. Netvibes has a very useful Digg module that lets you configure the number of Diggs a story must have before being displayed.

Oh – sounds like there's a new and improved Google Reader out. I might give it another go then…