A is for...

I received notification from NaBloPoMo the other day that April's blog theme was "letters".

"...the daily blogging theme for April is going to be LETTERS.

For writers, this can mean letters to the editor, love letters, fan letters, ransom notes -- I'm not encouraging illegal activity, but the list is endless.

For typography lovers, it's a month full of fonts!

For photographers, it's license to go out and shoot things both manmade and natural that resemble a member of our beloved alphabet."

While I doubt I'll keep up the blogging everyday in April, its nice to have someone hand me a theme so I don't have to put a lot of thought into it what I'm going to write. This month is going to be a craptacular month with school and I must learn to master the art of time management to survive. I'd rather avoid turning April's theme into me bitching about how much I hate school and my fuckwit team members.

Being the non-creative person that I am, I'm taking letters to be letters of the alphabet. I'm going to post about a word that begins with the letter that I find interesting. Try to contain yourself, readers.

Today's word is amalgam. What the shit does that mean? According to dictionary.com is means:
a·mal·gam –noun
1. an alloy of mercury with another metal or metals.
2. an alloy that consists chiefly of silver mixed with mercury and variable amounts of other metals and is used as a dental filling.
3. a rare mineral, an alloy of silver and mercury, occurring as silver-white crystals or grains.
4. a mixture or combination: His character is a strange amalgam of contradictory traits.

One of my favorite things to do when I'm writing documents at work (or even for school) is to use Word's handy dandy Thesaurus tool. It keeps me from using the same words over and over again (leverage, ensure, utilize... oy) and sometimes, it helps me look smart.

I was working on something with my manager a couple of weeks ago and he wanted a better word than combination. I told him my magic trick and Word gave us "amalgam". Its been one of my favorite words ever since... and I find myself hearing it (or derivations of it) daily.

Was my ignorance to this word making me turn a blind ear to it everytime someone said it? Was I selectively hearing only words I understood? Maybe that's why I walk away from most conversations with software developers not knowing what we just talked about.

I am an amalgam of ethnicities and eccentricites.

How fun. You should use amalgam in a sentence today and dazzle your co-workers, friends and family with your smarts. It'll be amalgam-tastic!