What I Learned Today

In the process of reviewing some helpfully provided word lists, in preparation for the spelling bee, I encountered some new words (a nice side effect!). Here they are:

• cenacle: a group of people, as in a discussion or literary group (hey, like my book club!)
• ballottement: a palpatory technique for detecting or examining a floating object in the body
• gallimaufry: a confused jumble of things (can be applied to food, e.g., hash or ragout) — this one wasn’t from studying pre-bee, but from Tim post-bee. Awesome word!

I also came across a few words I probably would have misspelled, prior to this refresher. I’m recording them here in hopes this will help me remember them correctly in the future!

• barbiturate: for some reason, I didn’t know it had an r in it
• bellwether: not -weather
• bouillon: not boullion
• cantaloupe: not -ope
• cemetery: not -ary
• corollary: one r, two l’s
• correlate: two r’s, one l
• dispensable: not -ible
• guerrilla: two r’s, two l’s
• minuscule: not miniscule!
• mischievous: apparently mischievious is not a word!
• occasion: not occaison (I still don’t get why I always misspell this one. I guess it is my occasional heel)
• perseverance: not -ence
• sacrilegious: i and e inverted from their placement in “religious”, likely because the word doesn’t actually derive from “religious”, but instead stealing-of (legere) sacred things (sacri-).
• sergeant: not sa-

Today I visited the brand-new Monrovia library to interview with their volunteer coordinator. We discussed their various volunteer needs and settled on what could be a good fit for me: sorting, mending, and pricing donated books (“We need people with good research skills for this”), greeting visitors at the door (“The library is brand-new and no one knows where to find anything”), and possibly helping in their computer center (“We have such a need”). I’m absolutely thrilled to get a chance to work with library books behind the scenes. The idea of helping people use computers gives me flashbacks to my time as a computer lab assistant as an undergraduate, but hey, I have no doubt that the need is there.

Satisfied with our discussion, the coordinator gave me an application to fill out. She glanced at my educational history and said, “Ah, so you finished school last year?” Without thinking, I replied, “Well, unless I decide to go back again,” and she laughed and said, “Yes, it’s always good to be open to more schooling!”

I think I’ll fit right in.

There is a volunteer orientation to attend next Tuesday, during which we’ll work out scheduling and all of the volunteers will get to meet each other. It might take a while before I actually get to dive in, though, because the Human Resources department apparently needs about a month to process my application. This not only involves calling my references but also getting my fingerprints and testing me for drugs, alcohol, and TB.

Note: the library’s grand opening is next Saturday, May 16, and Ray Bradbury will be attending! He’s giving a speech at 3:30 p.m. I’m so there.

On May 3, I drove down to Long Beach to enter the (a?) National Adult Spelling Bee. Many of the contestants gathered at a local coffee shop beforehand to socialize, which was fun and helped everyone relax a little. (It also made for some unusual entertainment, because in this crowd, as soon as I introduced myself, they all wanted to see if they could guess the spelling of my name. About half could.)

At 2 p.m., all 45 contestants filed into the choir seats at the Bay Shore Church, and the rounds began. The words initially were reasonably easy, then noticeably jumped in difficulty after rounds 5 and 10. I spelled words… and more words… and somehow managed to make it all the way to the final round, over two hours later, in which it was just me and a guy who’d flown in for the Bee from Arlington, Virginia!

Here are the words I was given to spell (plus 3 more I can’t recall):

• incubate
• analyze
• influenza
• septic
• connoisseur
• espalier
• malefic
• arrhythmia
• vitriol
• salmagundi: a new one on me! It’s a kind of French salad, but can be used metaphorically to describe a miscellaneous collection.
• portmanteau
• misprision: another new one for me (whee, I guessed right!). Literally, an error or mistake (or misunderstanding); in legal circles, it refers to a deliberate deception.
• louche
• lactiferous

And in the end, my final word was “latkes” (round 18). I probably should have known this word, but didn’t process the fact that it was plural, and guessed “latkis” (which was how it was pronounced). And then I was out! My competitor got “cumshaw” (?!) and spelled it correctly, and thereby won the Bee, quite deservedly. By that point, I’d gotten farther than I’d ever hoped, so I was thrilled anyway. They took our pictures and posted them at the Adult Spelling Bee website.

Aside from the two new words above, I also learned several words while listening to others either spell or fail to spell. These included abomasum (the fourth stomach of a ruminant), anthophilous (flower-loving, as in insects), spavin (a swelling; I thought it ended in an ‘e’ since I’ve only seen it in adjective form, spavined), petiole (stalk), colcannon (Irish dish with potatoes and cabbage), deuteragonist (second place to the protagonist), carnassial (carnivore tooth), banausic (mundane, for technical work — I am totally adopting this one for use on the job), and risorgimento (Italian movement for independence in the late 1800’s). Any of these (except deuteragonist) would likely have taken me out earlier, reminding me of the element of luck in this game!

After the Bee, I also got a chance to visit the beach, and see kite-surfing for the first time, and sample exotic Lebanese food, including raw lamb, chicken kefta, salty yogurt, a grape juice/orange blossom/pine nut concoction, and the Lebanese version of baklava (baklawe?). All in all, it was my favorite kind of day: one full of new words and new experiences!