Cubicle Conversations

"It's smells like fried chicken by the copier."

I didn't smell anything out of the ordinary, but then again, I was about 15 feet away from the copier. I took Ray, my coworker, at his word, because I don't think he would be one to make up lies concerning certain miasmas hovering over the xerox machine.

Miasma isn't a word that I use a lot - mainly because I don't think that most people know what it means, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I really do either.

But according to dictionary.com definition #2 it means

pollution in the atmosphere, esp noxious vapors from decomposing organic matter

I learned the word my freshmen year of high school when my friend Kimberlee and I would sit in the corner of our English class and pick paint chips of of the wall. (For the record, in case you were concerned, no, we didn't eat them.) Miasma was one of our vocabulary words that we had to study and learn for some test, and for some reason, Kimberlee really like that word.

I ran track with Kimberlee (well, I didn't run with her, I ran several minutes behind her; she was an all-state runner and I was - well, lets just say I was slow.) Kim would occasionally yell out the word miasma just for kicks, but I'm also convinced that on our 4 mile runs that she would yell it out when she passed by roadkill such a raccoon or deer rotting by the side of the road. I can't say for certain if she yelled this or not, because like I mentioned before, I was a much slower runner than she.

Everyone once in a while I get inspired to increase my vocabulary. Most recently it was when I studied for the GRE....

(In works)

But I also was prompted to consider increasing my vocabulary after the time a man at the post office tried to hit on me, but I didn't know the meaning of one of the words in his pick up line...

(In works)