On randouvites

In my endless venture to convince the rest of the world that spiffing* up and merging existing words in the creation of new ones is absolutely necessary for human happiness, I have decided to introduce you to a new one. Very new, in fact, since I made it up not ten minutes ago. Randouvite is a merge of the word “random” (not so surprising, considering the writer of this post) and the word “favourite” (which I always spell with a U, since this is one of the few relics of what used to be my “NorwBritish English”. With time, however, it inevitably turned “American English with Norwagisms [-ismes?] in the mix”. Ah, well…).

See, I was going to write a post about current favourites, and then I realized they (like the rest of me) were pretty random. Consequently, a new word was born. Randouvite (note how I also spell that with a U. If you’re American, you might want to drop the U, though, or people will think you are pretentious).


Despite the linguistic twist at the beginning of this post, however, I intended to present said randouvites without too much hurdy-gurdy. (Ha! Hurdy-gurdy is a word! I love it! Of course it doesn’t mean at all what I hoped it would mean, and thus the above sentence makes NO sense, but I don’t care. Hurdy-gurdy!)



I love my fingernails. I realize that sounds a bit icky, and it would have been, but what I love about them is the nail polish on top of them (if you’re a guy and/or still think this is icky, just skip till the next point, won’t you?). Looksie!

(I'm keeping my fingers permanently crossed for several reasons, so I'm the go-to person if you need some extra luck. In case you were wondering)

I love wild flowers. I love picking them, I love keeping them in a regular kitchen glass since I don’t have any vases at the moment, and I love cleaning them up again after two days when they have died a most cluttery death with leaves and petals everywhere. Actually, I don’t love that latter part, but everything else – love it! If I could lie in a meadow of wild flowers all summer, I think I would.

I love giraffes. I know, I know – where’s the surprise in that, right? Well, I love them extra much today, for several reasons. First of all, my friend Powdered Toast Man at 'Just the Cheese' wrote a blog post about them the other day in celebration of his birthday (what a GREAT birthday present to himself, ne?), and he mentioned ME! Yay!

Secondly, I love them because thanks to stumbleupon.com (which is another randouvite – and this one is TRULY random) I found a nifty little website I really wish I had bookmarked so I could share it with you guys, but Cruella must have had the day off and Mari simply isn’t clever enough... The website I didn’t bookmark, though, allowed me to blow up and print out one of my giraffy images, and make a poster of it. So now I have 47 + 1 (which is another poster entirely) giraffes on my wall. Yay!

Finally, I love giraffes extra muchly today because of my continued love for onemilliongiraffes.com. My head have been growing each time one of my giraffes have been mentioned there, and now I think it is about ready to burst (which is a really disturbing mental image, by the way. Eugh!).

What made my head grow, though, was the fact that once again the brilliant blog on this even brillianter (yes, that is a word too. Word!) website brought out one of MY giraffes from the archives. This time it is even one of my favourites – the map of Giraffenland was drawn in a Borders on 14th and F street in Washington D.C. (I even know the date – it was on Sunday the 27th of September 2009, and I was supposed to be at the National Book Festival in D.C., but ended up having my own personal festival a few block away). I feel like I just won the lottery - twice - in just a few weeks!

I love alphabet crackers and tea. They (the crackers, not the tea) were out of production for a few years here, but now they are back. How brilliant is a snack that can both be eaten and used for Scrabble?

(And the word was very randomly spelled, I swear. As was the one below. Any idea what a Peligooz is?)

I love salad art. I wish I was one of those people who could make sculptures out of fruits and vegetables (I saw a picture of a watermelon rosette the other day – it was amazing), but I’m not cut out for that (oh, how clever...). I do have a pretty cool calendar, though, and my friend who was over for dinner the other night made this lovely cucumber man:

Finally, I love blogging, blog comments, blog followers, the blogosphere, the whole shebang (I also love that shebang is a word, but I don’t feel the need to abuse this one by using it in a completely nonsensical sentence, like “Shebang carrot pickle normal allusion forward.” Oops, I just did...)

Anyway, blogging – you guys – you ROCK! Lately I have had such wonderful things happen to me as emails from across the globe from people telling me about their job offers (and an awesome job, but it is not for me to share, I think...); I’ve had friends take on imaginary personas for a laugh; I’ve had people telling me of weird company names that sound Norwegian; I’ve had people pop by just to tell me they share my (weird) sense of humour. It’s such a wonderful place, the blogosphere, that I feel like cramming you all into one, big squishy group hug! Group hug!!!



Those were a few of my randouvite things. (I had to google that song to write the following side comment: ) Maria To-Be Trapp clearly had a glitch in her vocabulary! (In my head it was Mary Poppins who sung it. Extra points to those who know the common denominator... Actually, no extra points. It’s too easy!)





*I just learned of a new randouvite through the making of this post. According to thefreedictionary.com, the word spif (not spiff – we all know and love that one) is:

(Non-sporting Hobbies / Philately) a postage stamp perforated with the initials of a firm to avoid theft by employees Former name perfin.

[from s(tamp) p(erforated with) i(nitials of) f(irm)]




(Yay Canada! Or, Canada, eh!)