Geez, guys! Sorry I've tortured you all so with my lack of updates, but I've been busy!! Remember, I was in charge of a show at the high school? Remember, I am in two weddings this spring (oh, maybe I didn't mention that!)? Remember, I just got another job (huh, maybe I didn't mention that either...)? Well... remember, it's finally spring here in Michigan and I want to sit outside on my porch swing?? :)

So, since I don't really have the motivation to write something about what's going on in my life, I decided to tide you over with this (in my opinion) hilarious way that my friend Dana and I came up with to confuse people. You know how much I like confusing people!

This is my friend Dana laughing. We have that in common- we both like to laugh!

One night she slept over my house and we stayed up until like 4am coming up with the following scheme and laughing. Well, I guess it's a lot easier to laugh at something at 4am, so take that with a grain of salt (I am acing these metaphors today!).

Earlier that night, we talked about how everyone misspells her last name and my first name and how people on the phone always spell things out to make it easier. For example, "Oh, my name is Don. That's 'd' as in 'dog', 'o', 'n'." Or sometimes people will just say words to clarify which letters they are using, like, "My name is Carl. That's cat-ace-ray-lime." You know, we've all heard it, right? And it's ridiculous enough as is.

(From now on, you might want to read this entry out loud. Go ahead, no one around you will think it's weird.)

Well, Dana and I thought it'd be even more ridiculous to spell names with words that wouldn't help clarify the situation at all. Like, "My name is Tom. That's 't' as in 'tea', 'o' as in 'owe'," etc. Here are some others:

‘b’ as in ‘bee’
‘j’ as in ‘jay’
‘p’ as in ‘pea’
‘r’ as in ‘R & B’

And that caused us a good chuckle, but we knew we could do better than that. :) So then we thought of spelling out names with words that don't sound like they are spelled with that letter. Like for me, "Oh, my name is Ciara, with a 'c' like in 'czar'." And we came up with a bunch more of those words:

‘a’ as in ‘aisle’ (also sounds like ‘isle’)
‘c’ as in ‘chaos’
'e' as in ‘err’ (like ‘air’), ‘e’ as in ‘eight’ ( like ‘ate’)
‘g’ as in ‘gnat’
‘h’ as in ‘hour’ (like ‘our’), ‘h’ as in ‘herb’
‘j’ as in ‘jalapeño’
‘k’ as in ‘know’ (like ‘no’), ‘k’ as in ‘knot’ (like ‘not’)
‘m’ as in ‘mnemonic’
‘o’ as in ‘one’ (like ‘won’), ‘o’ as in ‘opossum’
‘p’ as in ‘pneumonia’, ‘p’ as in ‘Phil’ (like ‘fill’)
‘t’ as in ‘tsunami’, ‘t’ as in ‘tsar’
‘w’ as in ‘wrench’
‘x’ as in ‘xylophone’

Ah, we laughed and laughed. But then we came up with the ultimate-confusing spelling technique. It all was inspired by Dana's name, which we decided to start spelling like, "'d' as in 'double-u', 'a' as in 'are',..." and after that we were so enamored with the bizarre way that that sounded that we decided to see how many letters we could do that with. And it's this many:

‘a’ as in ‘are’, ‘a’ as in ‘aye’
‘c’ as in ‘cue’, ‘c’ as in ‘cutie’ (like 'q-t')
‘d’ as in ‘double-u’
‘e’ as in ‘eye’, ‘e’ as in ‘ewe’, ‘e’ as in ‘elle’, ‘e’ as in ‘ex’, ‘e’ as in ‘eh’
‘s’ as in ‘see’
‘w’ as in ‘why’
‘y’ as in ‘you’

How can anyone NOT like the English language?? So amazingly illogical!

I like Dana so much! I recommend trying to spell out your name with one or more of these letters if you can. The reactions are well worth it!

Now that I think about it, another fun thing to do would be to use very long phrases to describe which letters you're using, like, "Oh, my name is Ted. That's 't' as in 'transcontinental railroad', 'e' as in 'everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten', and 'd' as in 'do you come here often'." Or you could use words that imply that you're thinking about something else, like, "My name is Rita. That's 'r' as in 'regurgitation', 'i' as in 'infectious disease', 't' as in 'typhoid fever', and 'a' as in 'amniotic fluid'.

Oh, man, I could seriously do this for hours! But I think I've given you all enough to use on your friends for now. :)

By the way, if you can think of any confusing ways to say any letter that I didn't think of already, please let me know!