Fun and Important Words - Whopperjawed

Whopperjawed is a awesome word that really does roll of the tongue.  It's not a common word (yet).  You won't find it listed in any printed dictionaries.  However, there are some great entries for whopperjawed on Urban Dictionary. Whopperjawed describes something that is disheveled, askew, crooked, stuck in an awkward position, or any combination thereof.[1][2][3](1)(3)    One of the difficulties with establishing a common usage of the word is that it has many regional variations, such as lopper-jawed, wapper-jawed, whomper-jawed and others (with a hyphen or not).  Of these, "wapper-jawed" seems to be the most historic, with a recording as early as 1825.  "Whopperjawed" appears in a letter by Mark Twain in 1863.[4](4)   Although I don't use this word everyday, I do use it regularly, as situations arise.  It's is a fun word to say.  It's also fun introducing "whopperjawed" to others who haven't heard it before. Sometimes, but not always, the word may appear with the intensifier "all", as in "all whopperjawed".[5](5) Based on an ngram chart, "whopper-jawed" variant seems to be the most common.  "Whopperjawed" without the hyphen is the second most common.  Arguably these are the same thing since compound words often start out with a hyphen that is eventually dropped.  Whomperjawed/Whomper-jawed is the next most common variant.   Photographic example: Whopperjawed house

Boondocks Fussbudget Gobbledygook Highfalutin Malarkey Newfangled Roust Twitterpated Whatchamacallit Whopperjawed

Fun and Important Words - Gobbledygook

Gobbledygook is a great sounding word that almost rolls of the tongue (for English speakers).  According to Oxford, it's a word used to describe words, phrases and speech that are "unintelligible by excessive use of abstruse technical terms".  In simpler language, it's hard to understand or nonsensical jargon.[1][2][3] (backup links 1, 2, 3)  It's ironic that the Oxford definition for gobbledegook sounds like gobbledygook itself.  The word is derived from an onomatopoeia of a turkey sound, though the use of gobbledygook is technically not the turkey noise itself.   Typically I do not have the need nor opportunity to use this word in every day language, but it does come up once in a while.  As far as I remember, my first exposure to the word is from normal family conversations while growing up (1970s/80s).  For me personally, that says a lot about the commonality of this young word.  Despite it's recent entry into the English Language (1944), the word has found its way deep into our common lexicon, often in politics or government-related rants.[4](4)     Weirdly, there's a blip on the ngram usage graph for gobbledygook from 1921.  Without any way to see the source referenced by Google, it's hard to tell if this is an earlier coining or if it's a false-positive.   Gobbledygook is sometimes mentioned along with gibberish when discussing lexicon.  However, gibberish is a more general term used to describe nonsense speech, regardless to reason.  Gobbledygook is more specific, referring to technical language that is nonsensical.

Boondocks Fussbudget Gobbledygook Highfalutin Malarkey Newfangled Roust Twitterpated Whatchamacallit Whopperjawed

Trail 3 - Hike, Hiking and then something else

I recently purchased a book called 60 Hikes within 60 Miles for Denver and Boulder.  The book includes 60 parks and paths for hiking, including various skill levels from Easy to Moderately Hard.  It's not a comprehensive book of every hiking or walking trail in the Denver region.  What I like about the book, though, is that many of the trails are full loops, with little to no backtracking.  I prefer loops.

Sixty is an achievable number.  I could conceivably hike every trail in the book with a reasonable effort.  I'm not going to try to hike 60 trails in 60 days.  Instead, the attempt will be to hike all 60 trails over the next few years.  I've already hiked some of the trails before.  For those, I'll only count them if I hike them again.  All hikes will be journalled here, on my blog (at least the first attempt for each), with the assigned label of 6060Denver.

Today was the first day of this journey.  Allie and I hiked the trail at Bluff Lake Nature Center.  It's a very easy trail, listed as trail #3 (not a ranking), within the Denver (Including Foothills and Plains) section.  Though we are in Spring, the area is still a bit bare.  There are no leaves on the trees; and the grass and shrubbery are still brown.  The day was partly cloudy, with plenty of sun.

We did see a few prairie dogs, including one critter that vocalized very clearly that we should leave him alone.  We obliged, though we did take a couple of photos from a distance.  

There were also some geese, including this watchman on the side of the trail.

Afterwards, we explored Stanley Marketplace, about a mile West in Aurora, CO.  For lunch, we tried the restaurant Annette for brunch.   Though the food was good, there were some distracting quirks, such as very small portions for beverages (like, smaller than what one might expect for "child size"), and no refills for iced tea.  Main course prices were about right for the quantity and quality of each dish.

Exploration of the Milky Way Galaxy - Elite Dangerous

 Out and about, exploring the galaxy by hitching a ride on a fleet carrier that is ready for anything.

Avoided disaster - active shooter in Boulder

Though Monday's mass shooting in Boulder, CO was 15 to 20 miles from our home, our vet is located in that same shopping center.  Joie had an appointment for a checkup at 5PM.  Sometime before 4:30PM, Allie received a call from our vet.  They had to cancel our appointment because of an active shooter in the shopping center.  Everyone was ordered to shelter-in-place.  Even under such stress, our vet rescheduled Joie's appointment for another day.

This isn't how we found out about the unfolding crisis.  At first, we didn't think too much of it.  Active shooter alerts happened before.  Sometimes, it's a mistaken report, or just someone wielding a weapon in public, or targeting a specific person, such as a love quarrel gone bad.  

We quickly found out that this was so much worse.  There's really nothing I can say to sum things up or even make the story more personal.  The worse we had was a rescheduling of an appointment, avoiding the situation ourselves by a couple of hours.  Allie and I are OK and unaffected by the crisis.

Of course, Allie had a couple of family members contact her within minutes of the incident making international news.  Several coworkers also checked with me the next day during meetings that I attended.  

Thankfully, we avoid the whole situation.  Others were not lucky.  Their families are suffering, such as one Erika Mononey, who gave a tribute to her father on Twitter (backup link).

Here's the link to the Wikipedia article for sourced information about the horrific event.

Elite Dangerous: Rescuing inhabitants of Lave Station after the Nine Martyr's Attack

 

Full walkthrough of one mission to rescue inhabitants Lave Station after the Nine Martyr's Attack. Runs from launch at the rescue ship all the way through collection of rewards for successful mission completion. Includes some pointers a long the way for an easier journey.