Words, and why I don't like the circus

(Thanks to my cousin Jenna for inspiring the flog today!)

Words that really get the job done for me because they're fun to say or spell or because people stop and listen when I use them:

• captivating (a perfectly snarky use of "captivating" in Jenna's clip)
• lugubrious
• hazy
• deoxyribonucleic
• Xerxes
• streusel
• carabiner
• peptide
• jack

You could say that I'm easily amused. I'm not ashamed of that. One of the things that I really loved about taking Anatomy & Physiology in college was all the new vocabulary.

I remember that when I was a kid we went to the circus. Twice. I didn't care for it too much. With the three rings I felt like I couldn't see everything and it was all too far away to really tell what was happening. It was loud, too, with the music and all the people. I really want to like the circus. I do. It's silly. I want to go to it, and like it, and take my little cherubs to the circus. It seems like such good, wholesome fun. But it isn't. It's over-stimulating and you can't see what's going on and all those clowns running around. The clowns? Don't get me started on clowns.

I occasionally have circus-themed nightmares complete with line-dancing grizzly bears wearing red shirts (what the heck?) and a background thud Thud THUD noise that upon reflection I believe might be my nightmarish-ly galloping heartbeat.