Adventures in English by episod | English, baby! Blogs

Taylor's English, baby! Advice.

episod — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 03:51:33 GMT

Taylor's English, baby! Advice.

Hello to all of our friends across the world! Every day I'm amazed and enlightened by all of you English, baby! members. Working here is a great blessing!

Sometimes I hear that some of you have problems making the site work to its best abilities! We try really hard to make the site totally functional for everyone, regardless of their browser and computer, but sometimes things don't work for some people.

I HAVE SOME RECOMMENDATIONS! DON'T FEAR!

Mozilla Firefox is my favorite webbrowser! It's available for Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linux, Sun, BeOS -- you name your operating system and it works!

Macromedia Flash Player - latest version! This is so you can listen to our lesson audio!

Hope&nbp; ya'll find the advice useful!

Taylor (episod)

Taylor Hicks Wins American Idol 2006!

episod — Thu, 25 May 2006 19:33:37 GMT

Taylor Hicks Wins American Idol 2006!

It was between these two, and my favorite Hicks won!

I just got Taylor Hicks' EP Album from before he was an American Idol and it's great!

Wisdom Teeth Operation

episod — Sat, 20 May 2006 22:07:34 GMT

Wisdom Teeth Operation

A few days ago I had my wisdom teeth taken out.

Practice your English by trying to follow my story about what it was like to have my oral surgery.

The picture is of me on the day after surgery. I've got a cut on my lip!

Prior to the operation I was forbidden to eat or drink. Even water. I got dehydrated. I threw up on the bus into a cup. I was naseous.

My wife, Marissa, took me to the place where they do the surgery. She waited for me during the procedure which apparently only took forty minutes or so.

They laid me on a table and had me take my shirt off. I also took my shoes off.

I laid down and they put a warm blanket over my chest which was nice. They then hooked me up to a blood pressure monitor (I’ve got very low blood pressure) and put a mask over my face with “laughing gas.”

The laughing gas began to take hold. I was already nauseous, and the gas was only making me more so. Luckily, I was able to suck in some of that real air stuff through my mouth in secret. This stopped me from vomiting there in the room.

Some more nurses came in. They turned on the stereo with an iPod. It sounded like Prince. I didn’t know this was a rock n’roll oral surgeon’s office.

They decided it was time to inject something in my arm. It felt like when Marissa plucks my eyebrows. I think I heard then use the word ketamine, but that can’t be true. They wouldn’t be giving me ketamine would they? I did hear the doctor say to give me a double dose of whatever they were going to give me.

And all this, with zero-interaction. At some point here I just passed out. But before that, this familiar sensation began to wash over me, the kind of euphoric body high that makes you feel on the brink between two worlds. It was somewhat familiar and I smiled to myself when I recognized it.

And then there was light. I was outside in a wheelchair with a nurse and Marissa. She was being very sweet. We were waiting for the cab. I was delirious. Apparently, I had been “awake” for awhile, but I have no memory of any event before being outside. I am told I tried to put on my shoes myself, but threw up when I bent down.

The taxi cab took about 45 minutes to arrive. All that time I’m in the 95-degree weather outside. But I can’t really tell what’s going, or whether I’m hot or not. The nurse brings me an ice pack for my neck which gets some weird stuff all over my shirt.

The cab comes. Marissa takes care of me. There are sometimes in life when the happiness of having a wife just overtake you. This was one of those times.

At around 7pm last night (my operation was around 2:30pm) I began to feel normal. I had stopped vomiting. The vicodin had kicked in. I could even talk to Marissa on the phone.

I’m still in a lot of pain. Five teeth missing from the head is weird. Dull aches and pains.

I’m off to Rite Aid to pick up some Perocet, Mouth Wash, and an anti-nausea medicine.

American Idol Finale

episod — Fri, 19 May 2006 23:16:28 GMT

American Idol Finale

The American Idol finale is next week! I want Taylor Hicks to win!

Read what the Kat and Taylor have to say at USAToday !

Bush Drives in a Dune Buggy

episod — Fri, 19 May 2006 20:45:12 GMT

Bush Drives in a Dune Buggy

Learning is Fun

episod — Fri, 19 May 2006 20:38:25 GMT

Learning is Fun

I like learning. I'm always interested in the what, why, and how of reality. And the way we communicate with and define reality is with language.

Those of us over here in America define reality with the English language. By learning new words I learned new ways to identify and explain reality.

Words to a certain extent are reality -- without them, we're at a loss to explain what we see, feel, and think about the world around us.

Sometimes we learn "secret words" that we keep to ourselves that describe an aspect of reality that we are familiar with and want to keep on our own terms.

Every language and language speaker must have their own "secret words" to describe the world. What are yours?