A summer meme is here! I got it from feMOMhist’s blog which you’ll have to visit to see where she got it.

1. What is your favorite part of summer?

That my time belongs only to me and I can manage it in any way I choose.

2. What’s your favorite quintessentially summer food? Least favorite?

My favorite is watermelons and peaches. And least favorite is everything grilled. That isn’t because I dislike grilled food but because we are the only people in our street who don’t have a grill. For some reason, the idea of getting one scares N. He associates the process with the need to prove one’s traditional masculinity, and as everybody here has probably guessed, he is not into that at all.

3. Best beverage to beat the summer heat?

San Pellegrino mineral water.

4. Least favorite/most annoying thing related to summer?

Heat and the incredibly annoying sun that just wouldn’t go away.

5. Pick one: the lake /the beach.

The beach, of course. Hopefully, in a tropical location. That’s the only place where I see the point of heat and sun.

6. Most amusing summer vacation trip you’ve ever taken?

When I was 15, my mother, sister, aunts and cousins took a vacation where ten of them slept in one tiny and horribly stuffy room. I didn’t go. Instead, I went to a pioneer camp in one of the Black Sea resorts. It was very amusing to imagine the rest of the family on their weird overpopulated vacation. I still laugh whenever I think about it.

7. Most ridiculous/cringe-inducing/blush-provoking summer outfit you have seen?

Once, I went to Cuba with my sister and her boyfriend. The boyfriend is the nicest, most polite guy in the universe. He is also completely faithful and never notices any women other than his girlfriend. Next to us on the beach, there was a Russian family. A husband who would get slobbering drunk by 10 am (yes, in the morning), two constantly bickering children, a perennially vicious mother-in-law, and a very beautiful but extremely downtrodden wife who spent the vacation in the state of extreme desperation.

Every morning, the woman would give her completely disconnected drunk of a husband a nasty stare and turn to my sister’s boyfriend. Her face would acquire the expression of an extreme concentration on the task in hand. As her eyes bore into my sister’s boyfriend, she would start to undress. The poor guy isn’t the kind to stare at any women other than my sister, so he wouldn’t notice her until the desperate lady would remove every piece of clothing except an almost invisible G-string and start moving slowly in his direction. Then he’d look terrorized and escape to the sea. The woman would go into the water and start circling him like a shark. In the meanwhile, my sister and I would keel over with laughter on the beach.

8. Your absolute dream summer afternoon would be. . .

I’m an extremely boring person, so lying on the beach with a novel is my answer. And I will get to my dream beach resort in exactly one month and 11 days.

Danny asks:

Is there a movie out there that centers around a guy that has no fortune in the realms of relationships/dating/sex and tries to do something about it without said efforts being presented in a comical manner?

I can’t think of anything, which is not surprising since I watch very few movies. Can anybody think of a movie like that?

What is it with the strange habit of offering dictionary definitions of very simple words in academic writing? One student after another informs me that “the dictionary defines ‘good” as morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious and ‘bad’ as not good in any manner or degree.” Is this a way to pad an essay or an act of condescension towards the reader?

I have a feeling that this is yet another writing practice promoted in high school English courses.

A blogger I really like writes:

I grew up in a home where “heck” was a bad word. And “dang.” And “gee.” And “gosh.” Heck, after all, was just code for “hell,” and dang was code for “damn,” and gee was code for “Jesus,” and gosh was code for “God.” And thus they were all off limits. Shoot was about the only word that was okay, which is weird because I’m pretty sure that if the other words are really code, that one’s code for “shit.”

As a philologist, I always find it very curious how people invest clusters of sounds with a lot of power over their own psyche. Words scare them, make them cringe, traumatize them to the point where they don’t allow themselves to pronounce them even when they are at home alone.

Which words were considered “bad” in your home when you were growing up? Do you have any forbidden words in your home now?