Speaking in Russian or My New Career

i recently started communicating with my good friend renee again. and, as it turns out, she is now a personal trainer. after much thought, i've decided that i, too shall become a personal trainer. here is why. when i asked renee what exactly it is that she does, she said:

Renee: really i get to make people cry and they pay me for it and then rave to their friends about how much they love me for torturing them i think this is the perfect career.

i agree. this DOES sound like the perfect career. i know what you're thinking.

You: but erin, you hate any physical activity and you don't like to be in any space that in any way resembles a work out area.

you have a point. but i've thought about this, and, really, i won't have to do any of the work. i will get to boss people around without the physical despair. i get to say LUNGE! and they have to lunge. i say one more rep, and then they have to do four more because that's the kind of sadist that i am. HA! also, i like to watch people cry:





isn't that funny?

renee thinks i can make just as many people cry by writing. but then i don't get the joy of causing them physical pain. so we'll see.

speaking of things that will make you cry, i'm going to israel, and therefore i won't be blogging for awhile. awkward, i know, but lucky for you, i may have a couple of guest bloggers to fill in whilst i'm away.

and while i'm segueing so sweetly, let's talk about awkward for a second. i was eating with izzy last night at this place called caracas, which was pretty damn tasty. i had the arepas de pabellon because the special sounded good, but she used the term beef chunks, which izzy so sweetly mentioned reminds her of vomit, and seeing as how i've been followed around by my hangover friend of late, i wanted to steer clear of vomit. so i had the shredded beef instead.

what was i talking about? oh. right. awkward. so, obviously i think everything is awkward. i mean, just the way it looks is TOTALLY awkward, but izzy asked about the etymology of the word awkward. awkwardly enough, i had no idea about its origins. she said it seems like a sort of modern idea, and i concur.

lo and behold, i got this email today:

Erin, The World Wide Web tells me that:

"When awkward was coined, in Scotland and northern England, it meant `turned in the wrong direction.' Middle English had an adjective awk, which meant `the wrong way round, backhanded,' and hence `perverse,' and with the addition of the suffix -ward this became awkward. Awk itself was adopted from Old Norse afugr, which is related to German ab `away' and English off. The suffix -ward, which underlies toward(s), forward, and a host of other English adverbs and adjectives, comes from a prehistoric Germanic *-warth. This in turn goes back to the Indo-European base *wert- `turn' (source also of English convert, version, etc.) -- so etymologically, awkward denotes `turn the wrong way round.' Awkward follwed a similar semantic path to awk, via `perverse, ill-adapted' to `clumsy.'" First recorded 1530. I wonder when it took on its less physical meaning and started being used to describe emotional clumsiness...

What else was I going to look up? Oh well ... have fun in Israel.

so, it turns out, izzy is a "follow-up" person. i should've know, as the only time she's ever flaked on me in the seven years i've known her is when she sliced her finger open and had to get stitches. i know, lame, she still should've come to see me, but whatever.

anyway, leah is arguing in russian behind me and i really need to turn around and see her facial expressions in order to get a good sense of what she's saying. not that she's saying it to me, but i want to eavesdrop.

awkward.