Nettled.

Annoyed. Peeved. Hacked off. Irritated. I like the word nettled. Has a good mouth feel. It could also mean the state of having been stricken by the “weedy plant of the temperate urticaceous genus Urtica, having serrated leaves with stinging hairs and greenish flowers” (Harper Collins).

Them stinging hairs…

So why “nettled” today? Well you’d think I’d be delighted at having a two-hour delay from school, but I am not. Too much to do, and delays totally whack out my class schedule, not to mention wreak havoc on any evening rehearsals — like the ones I have tonight — in the event school is closed.

Nettled.

But it’s January in Ohio, so it’s not like I’m surprised, having lived here for going on 38 years. I will use my two hours wisely. Or not.

Update: School is now canceled. No likey.

New year, new category. Word of the Day! I’m excited.

I could conceivably do this post *every* day, but I imagine I already annoy too many of you with the whole werd-nerd penchant. I also considered “Word of the Week,” but I don’t want to be chained to any particular subject on a regular basis. So this is my compromise: “word of the day, whatever day it happens to be.”

Today’s WotD: uncanny. According to Harper-Collins, it is “characterized by apparently supernatural wonder, horror[.]” American Heritage lists the definition as “Peculiarly unsettling, as if of supernatural origin or nature; eerie.”

It’s a fun one because of its openness to context. It can be used in both positive and negative lights:

She was a girl of uncanny beauty.
He bore an uncanny resemblance to Jeffrey Dahmer.

I personally like 19th-century psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch’s take on its meaning: a psychological instance where something is familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.

Uncomfortably strange. That sums up my feelings about how short was the time span from the last time I had to put on tap shoes, to the current time. Uncanny, I tell ya.

Happy Monkday. Pretend you’re fine with it.