Bill W

Just in case any of you were wondering, pluck is not an abbreviation for pot luck.

The word "pluck" comes from Old English pluccian, meaning "to pull off", from Proto-Germanic plukkōną. It is related to words in other Germanic languages like German pflücken ("to pick"), Dutch plukken ("to pluck"), and Norwegian plukke. It potentially stems from Vulgar Latin piluccare, related to Latin pilus ("hair"). Meanings evolved from physically pulling (feathers, hairs, strings) to metaphorical senses like "pluck up courage" or the noun for animal organs (heart, liver, lungs) removed by plucking, which led to the slang for "guts" or courage. It also is used in euphemisms such as "Pluck a rose" for going to the necessary house (toilet) in the garden, attested from the 1700s. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the verb "pluck" ("to pull or tear") appeared in Old English (pre-1150), while the noun "pluck", initially meaning "pulling the heart/viscera from an animal", first appeared in Middle English (1150-1500), with the earliest known use around 1440 in Promptorium Parvulorum. The noun meaning "courage, boldness" in a figurative sense into boxing slang around 1785. Examples of "pluck" in a sentence: "I plucked a lemon from the tree." "He plucked a stalk of dried fennel." "I have to pluck or wax my eyebrows." "He plucked the baby out of my arms." "I plucked off a little crunchy chunk of meat." "Jill rose, plucking bits of straw from her clothes." "She was plucked from the corps de ballet to take on Juliet." "After you kill the chicken, you must then pluck its feathers." "It must have taken a lot of pluck to walk along a path that was marked “Danger." "The agency plucked her from obscurity and turned her into one of the world's top models." "After being pummeled throughout the entire fight and knocked down five times, the boxer showed a lot of pluck by finishing the the ten round match."

It may not kill anybody, but it can sure distract them during class so they miss out on what the teacher is saying or what they're working on. That could end up affecting their grade.

Sorry, I guess I overlooked Baxter at the end of the list.

From what I've heard from my grandchildren, students don't shower after gym classes and many, if not all, of those playing sports don't shower after practices or games. I find that to be both concerning and unhealthy, and I wonder how many students have to sit near a smelly classmate who had PE during a period earlier in the school day.

If you like Sci-Fi and don't mind wading through a fair amount of technical information, then this story should be a must read for you. As usual, you'll find @Lee Wilson's tale creative, with well developed characters, an interesting storyline, and his usual wit and zany outlook on life. This means you won't be disappointed if you're familiar with his other stories, so sit back and enjoy, because I know I did!

I loved this story Lee, but then I love Sci-Fi stories. However, you did confuse me at one point, so I have to ask you to explain. You wrote: Cashman was the largest. We figured the doctor was the most important of our little family. Schmidt was the second largest, Turner and Haas were next. Due to his prohibition of leaving the ship, the smallest was named Baxter. Gold and Cooper were the fifth and sixth largest. Now, if Cashman was 1, Schmidt 2, Turner 3, and Haas 4, shouldn't Baxter have been 5? That would have made Gold 6 and Cooper 7. I thought I could check the list that followed to clear this up, but Baxter wasn't listed in the list. What happened to Baxter? Just clear that up for me, if you will. Thank you.

@Summerabbacat, I'm 77 and don't have a problem reading the European dates, such as 30 September (30/9) or 4 July (4/7) to American (although when both the day and month are less than 13 it can get a little confusing if I don't know which system is being used). That's why I always write out the month in my stories, but other than that, I'm not sure why you find it so confusing.

I thought of the same thing, @drsawzall. No matter how much time the earth has before the sun envelops it, those in charge of these missions better check out potential future home planets better than what was done of this mission.

As someone who spent the summer of 1973 in the UK, this article helped me understand a little better why so many of the older shopkeepers had difficulty making change when someone purchased something. They had spent their entire lives working with the old system and couldn't figure out how to covert the new coins to something they could understand. It was definitely a challenge dealing with any of them, and I found this not only true in London where I spent most of my time, but also all around the entire UK. Not only did I take short trips away from London while I was there, but I also spent the last few weeks I was there renting a car and driving around and exploring the rest of the UK. Thanks for the enlightening and humorous explanation.

I was in England during the summer of 1973 and many of the older shop owners in London were still having trouble with the new decimalized monetary system. When you purchased something and paid for it, those older shopkeepers would look at the money you paid them, and if it wasn't the exact price of the item, they'd look at it for several second and then reach for the coins they thought you should get back. Sometimes they gave back too much and other times not enough, but they would never listen to complaints either way. I tried to tell one shopkeeper that he had given me back too much money, but he kept flipping his wrist upward, indicating that he wanted me to just go away, so I did, and that wasn't the only time it happened. I just hope none of them went bankrupt because they couldn't understand the change in the monetary system.

It's not my body's furnace or metabolism, it's how the cold weather affects my body. To turn up my body's furnace I would have to exercise, and that makes me hungry too, so that wouldn't be much help either. I think my body feels the cold is telling it to eat more and build up fat to insulate itself, because fat/blubber is a good insulator.

There are two problems with that idea: I still have to go outside, and raising the thermostat exceeds my budget for heat on a fixed or limited income.

As summer progresses into fall and the weather starts to get colder, I'm like a bear getting ready to hibernate, because I suddenly have a voracious appetite.

The word voracious comes from the Latin vorax ("greedy, ravenous), which derives from the verb vorāre, ("to devour" or "to swallow"), ultimately stemming from the Proto-Indo-European root \*gwora- ("food" or "devouring"). English adopted the term in the 17th century, initially through its noun form, voracity, meaning extreme greed or appetite, often used for food, but also for activities like reading. This root appears in other words like omnivore, carnivore, and herbivore. Often mixed up with veracious (truthful), but voracious relates to "devouring" (the 'o' sound), while veracious relates to "truth" (the 'e' sound, like 'true'). According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and other sources, the word voracious was first used in English in the mid-1600s, with the earliest known evidence from 1635, appearing in the writings of poet John Taylor. It's formed from Latin roots related to devouring, and its first recorded use shows it meaning "greedy in eating" or "intensely eager". Examples of "voracious" in a sentence: "Joseph Smith was a voracious book collector." "One reason is the voracious world demand for timber." "The magazine's readers had a voracious appetite for more." "He has passion for movies and a voracious appetite for the genre." "Moles have a voracious appetite and can eat 70-100 percent of their weight daily." "The one thing handed down by my father and father-in-law is a voracious love of reading."

For anyone who hasn't read it, this short story is definitely worth a read.

Pungent comes from the Latin word pungere, meaning "to prick", "to sting", or "to pierce", describing a sharp pain or something emotionally piercing. It shares its root with words like point, poignant, and puncture, all relating to sharpness or piercing. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the adjective "pungent" was first used in English in 1598. The earliest citation found by the OED is from A. M.'s translation of Frenche Chirurgerye by J. Guillemeau: "The dolour not so pungent and sharp." At that time, the word was used in a figurative sense to describe pain as "piercing, stabbing" initially for sharp feelings. The meaning "having a powerful odor or taste" was recorded later, by the 1660s, and later sharp writing or remarks in the 1850s. Examples of "pungent" used in a sentence: "Each slice of her pound cake is full of the pungent green herb." "The air was still, bracing; pungent with the smell of pine." "If the aroma isn't bold and pungent, the spice is past its prime." "I could smell the pungent flavors coming from the kitchen" "Most of the world's humans are accustomed to the pungent smell of body odor." "The wood gave off a pungent, earthy smell and the wind moaned through the tall oaks and pines."

I had a quiet New Year's Eve at home with plenty of eggnog and watched football on TV. As soon as the game ended and it was time for the ball to drop, the neighbors began setting off their own fireworks and every few minutes another rocket would be set off, intermixed with a few cherry bombs and other things that go boom in the night, so I didn't get to sleep until they finished, which was well after 1:00.

From his teenage years, Matt always seems to be causing trouble. It's never anything serious, but it's constant, After college, his father tries to help him out, but he screws that up as well. Fed up, his father tosses him out, so now Matt has to find a place to live and a get a job! Out of the street, Matt needs to get his act together and quickly. He finds a place to live, and then he gets a job, but he finds himself surrounded by gays! What on earth can possibly go wrong?

Could Matt's deeply buried sexuality be the reason he'd been such a screw up all of his life, because it was easier than admitting the truth? Could it be the reason he only had sex with girls but could never come to fall in love with any of them? This was a wonderfully crafted story, Chris, and even though I think we all knew where it was heading, it was an enjoyable roller coaster ride with a happy ending. Thank you for this wonderful story.

Doug and Lee started out as childhood friends and have spent many years in a very close friendship. They've experienced many things together, although they've never done anything sexual with each other, but the best was yet to come.

If I knew there could be love in a snowstorm I would have tried it on Tommy when I was younger. Tommy was my straight slightly younger friend who I was very attracted to.

If you like stories about tickling, then check this one out. It has a cute storyline.

I'm not really into Tickling stories, because it brings back memories of my uncles torturing me like that when I was little. They were only a few years older than me and we shared a bedroom, so they used to tickle me to get their way or keep me out of their hair. With that aside, it was a cute plot - a syndicate organized like the mob that uses tickling as their go to tool to maintain control and for payback.

The word shrill comes from Middle English schrylle, shirle, likely from Old English scrallettan (to sound loudly) or scill ("sonorous"), with Germanic roots, possibly imitative of a piercing sound and mimicking the sound itself, and related to German schrill and Low German schrell, meaning piercing or sharp, and Icelandic skella. The 'r' may have been added by analogy with other words like skrike (shriek) to differentiate it from scill (shell), and it entered English as an adjective and verb in the late 14th century to describe high-pitched, piercing sounds, with cognates suggesting a shared origin for sharp, loud noises. The word shrill was first used in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), in the Middle English period (1150-1500), with the specific date varying depending on the part of speech. The OED's earliest evidence for the different forms of "shrill" are: Adverb: Circa 1330, in the text Gregorius, Adjective: Circa 1400, in the poem Cleanness, Verb: Before 1400, in the text Floris and Blauncheflur, and Noun: From 1591, in the writing of Edmund Spenser. Examples of "shrill" used in a sentence: "Rebecca's voice was shrill and tight." "Anna Maria was still arguing in shrill tones." "When the disciples do answer, their voices are shrill and defensive." "Shrill voices on both sides of the Atlantic are advocating protectionism." "You couldn't drive down the road without incurring their shrill warning cry." "Shrill cries and startled oaths flew up around us as pandemonium broke out."