A.Word.A.Day–scraunch:

scraunch or scranch

 

PRONUNCIATION:

(skrawnch)

 

MEANING:

verb tr.: To crunch, crush, or grind.

 

ETYMOLOGY:

Of imitative origin. Earliest documented use: 1620.

 

NOTES:

The word scraunched is the longest one-syllable word in the
English language.

 

USAGE:

“Sancho fell to, without invitation, and champed his bits in the dark,
as if he had scraunched knotted cords.”
Miguel de Cervantes (translation: Thomas Shelton); Don Quixote; 1620.

See more usage examples of scraunch in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

I attended the school event of a child of my sibling. The event was a lot.

They — the parents and kids and teachers and administrators and staff — are a tight knit bunch. Coming in as an uncle does not convey much status in the social fabric. This is not to say anyone was impolite or rude to me per se, but more that rudeness and impoliteness existed adjacent to the awkward space I occupied.

For example, in the intermission I needed to stand up as the folding chairs did a number on my back. Padding is mounted on the walls of the theater/gymnasium, and against one pad at the end of our row I leaned and read the news on my phone. Two people started chatting next to me. Then a third joined in, and a fourth. I moved down. Then more joined in. I shuffled stage-ward as the conversation grew. I ended up relocated about ten feet or so from where I started.

This is not to say no one outside of my family talked to me. While we ate spaghetti and salad from Styrofoam containers another family sat down at the round table. We discovered through idle chit chat that their child and my sibling’s are in the same class. They live not too far away from us. And the husband works in the same industry as me. That so rarely happens that I was unprepared when it did.

I was already a bit socially overwhelmed by then after a rough day at work, so talking shop was not something I was remotely interested in. The fellow dropped hints about his social network and a colleague of mine that he also knows and how there’s a kind of tech circle that meets every now and again for drinks and shop talk.

He seemed a nice guy, as I said, and under normal circumstances I would have engaged. I did not. On the ride home my disinterest was a brief topic of conversation. I was told that I was not rude or brusque but signaled that I was not keen to chat.

That is a fair assessment.

What is my point in telling this story?

It’s largely a reminder to me that this was an ok series of interactions. There is no law or contract mandating camaraderie or inclusion, nor should I have expended energy to integrate myself into an environment I enter for about ten hours per calendar year.

Also, that seeing a parochial elementary school perform High School Musical The Musical while retaining secular elements and innuendo was an event I’m not likely to forget anytime soon.

Farscape and the Narrative Beauty of Screwing Up | Tor.com:

There’s a simple selling point I trot out when trying to get anyone to watch Farscape, and I think it still hits the mark nearly twenty years after its finale: “Imagine you were watching Star Trek, but this time, instead of your intrepid spacefarers helping people wherever they went, the crew of the Enterprise ruined everything all the time.” …

A perfect example of this dynamic is encapsulated in the episode “…Different Destinations,” an early entry in the show’s third season. Right on the heels of losing a very dear friend, John Crichton (that’s the human astronaut) and several of his cohort are visiting a planet shrine while their ship is undergoing repairs. Said shrine contains these weird temporal goggles that allow visitors to see back through time to a very important battle where thirty Peacekeeper soldiers died to defend kids and nurses from the Venek Horde, and eventually created terms for a ceasefire. This is already awkward on the propaganda front as the Peacekeepers of the current era are a purely fascistic force bent on galactic conquest, but things get trickier when their pal Stark has the goggles forcibly jammed on his head—they thought he’d enjoy a look at peace, you see—and Stark’s unique empathic spiritual abilities wind up shoving his friends back through time to the battle itself.

Farscape was fun. The first season was clunky and janky, especially where Moya’s crew individually looks at a junction node or something while an annoying alarm sounds in the background. It gets better fast.

Throughout, they fuck up. It can be glorious and intentional. It can also be horrible and intentional.

Use Story to Change Your Life:

By Leo Babauta

Most of us don’t realize how powerful stories are in our lives, because we don’t even notice that we’re telling ourselves a story. But stories shape everything.

For example, the stories you tell yourself is the reason you feel:

• Resentment toward a loved one or coworker
• Guilty about what you haven’t done
• Overwhelmed by all that you need to do
• Anxious about the uncertainty of the world
• Stuck in your old habits
• Avoidant of your difficult tasks
• Bored or lonely

Nothing in the basic reality of life makes us feel these things. It’s our stories about our reality that creates the feelings.

Leo nailed this. I strongly recommend reading his post.

I cannot tell you how often I’m driving or in the shower or doing dishes or something else equally mundane where I find I’m doing this very thing. Part of my therapy is using this in my favor.