Today has been a rough day. For no real reason in particular I haven't been sleeping all that well and today was definitely a result of the four hours of sleep I've managed to wink in over the past two days. It's not a case of the Mondays but rather, as the rest of the working world calls it, a case of the Humpdays.
No. I'm not talking about anything pornographic or icky (I hate the word hump with as much passion as I do the word horny. They both just sound so gross).
Allow me to pull some definitions:
Ala Urban Dictionary:
1. The middle of the work week; used in context of climbing a proverbial hill to get through a tough week.
2. Wednesday, the middle of the week, implying you have to 'get over the hump' before you can anticipate the weekend.
3. The middle of the week or the beginning of the weekend, depending on your level of addiction to alcohol.
Ala Dictionary.com:
1. The middle of the work week, usually Wednesday.
Sadly, since I no loner have access to the Oxford English Dictionary since I graduated UP 13 months ago, I can't dive into the serious etymology of Hump Day.
So I Googled instead (Yes, I know...I am indeed a giant dork).
Apparently Wednesday is just a mediocre middle day in most worlds...real and fictional.
There's AE Bray's nursery rhyme, "Monday's Child," that decries Wednesday's child as full of woe (IF...yes, big IF, I ever have kids, I'm sure my mom will hope I have a Wednesday child since, as she and my father have told me numerous times, if I were the first child, I would have been the only.). Solomon Grundy was married on a Wednesday, fell ill on a Thursday and was buried by Sunday (I DO plan on getting married someday but definitely NOT on a Wednesday).
In Winnie the Pooh, the cruddy nature of the "Blustery Day" is attributed to it being "Windsday" (a play off of Wednesday, just in case you didn't catch that). And in Richard Brautigan's "In Watermelon Sugar," Wednesday is the only day the sun shines gray (Considering his troubled life and eventual suicide, it's probably best he was a Montana boy who didn't know that in Portland, the sun shines gray every day).
But it's not even in literature and poetry where Wednesday is a crappy day (PS as I write this the once-sunny day is vanishing under a sheet of heavy, heavy rain). In astrology, the planet Mercury represents Wednesday. Mercury, a/k/a Apollo, is simply the messenger (Maybe there's a reason for that adage, "Don't shoot the messenger" because it sucks to be the proverbial bearer of bad news.), noted for his swiftness and speed...a flat out lie considering the length of the modern day Wednesday. I think that the first century poet Manilius probably had it right when he called Mercury inconstant and vivacious.
If we shoot over to the Bible, we get Ash Wednesday (Caveat: This is all coming from a non-religious individual who attended a private Catholic university so take the commentary with a grain of salt). Yes, of course, it's a wonderfully spiritual day on the whole but it comes with the confessing, fasting and the promise to not eat meat for FORTY WHOLE DAYS. Plus as it was at my college, most people are hungover from going nuts the night before on Fat Tuesday.
So, as one can see, Wednesdays are blah all around. For me, Wednesday's few saving graces are all modern-day guilty pleasures like the Willamette Week (Of which I only read the Dish section. I pick up the free weekly paper solely because it means I get a THIRD crossword puzzle to work on), America's Next Top Model (WGN is rerunning the Petite Model season, fyi) and no boyfriend until later at night to make fun of me for indulging in either (Quarter Orange duty calls). On my cross country team in college Wednesdays were always an easy training day; no practice and either a light run, cross training or a total day off.
Considering my lack of sleep and the fact that my body feels more zombie-like and less humanoid, I'm going to pay homage to my cross country team training schedule and take the day off from running (I've gone a solid 12 days in a row!), kick back with an IPA and watch ANTM while doing the crossword puzzle.
Of course, that's after I finish this ginormous internal project that's due...oh...today.
Hump Day indeed.
No. I'm not talking about anything pornographic or icky (I hate the word hump with as much passion as I do the word horny. They both just sound so gross).
Allow me to pull some definitions:
Ala Urban Dictionary:
1. The middle of the work week; used in context of climbing a proverbial hill to get through a tough week.
2. Wednesday, the middle of the week, implying you have to 'get over the hump' before you can anticipate the weekend.
3. The middle of the week or the beginning of the weekend, depending on your level of addiction to alcohol.
Ala Dictionary.com:
1. The middle of the work week, usually Wednesday.
Sadly, since I no loner have access to the Oxford English Dictionary since I graduated UP 13 months ago, I can't dive into the serious etymology of Hump Day.
So I Googled instead (Yes, I know...I am indeed a giant dork).
Apparently Wednesday is just a mediocre middle day in most worlds...real and fictional.
There's AE Bray's nursery rhyme, "Monday's Child," that decries Wednesday's child as full of woe (IF...yes, big IF, I ever have kids, I'm sure my mom will hope I have a Wednesday child since, as she and my father have told me numerous times, if I were the first child, I would have been the only.). Solomon Grundy was married on a Wednesday, fell ill on a Thursday and was buried by Sunday (I DO plan on getting married someday but definitely NOT on a Wednesday).
In Winnie the Pooh, the cruddy nature of the "Blustery Day" is attributed to it being "Windsday" (a play off of Wednesday, just in case you didn't catch that). And in Richard Brautigan's "In Watermelon Sugar," Wednesday is the only day the sun shines gray (Considering his troubled life and eventual suicide, it's probably best he was a Montana boy who didn't know that in Portland, the sun shines gray every day).
But it's not even in literature and poetry where Wednesday is a crappy day (PS as I write this the once-sunny day is vanishing under a sheet of heavy, heavy rain). In astrology, the planet Mercury represents Wednesday. Mercury, a/k/a Apollo, is simply the messenger (Maybe there's a reason for that adage, "Don't shoot the messenger" because it sucks to be the proverbial bearer of bad news.), noted for his swiftness and speed...a flat out lie considering the length of the modern day Wednesday. I think that the first century poet Manilius probably had it right when he called Mercury inconstant and vivacious.
If we shoot over to the Bible, we get Ash Wednesday (Caveat: This is all coming from a non-religious individual who attended a private Catholic university so take the commentary with a grain of salt). Yes, of course, it's a wonderfully spiritual day on the whole but it comes with the confessing, fasting and the promise to not eat meat for FORTY WHOLE DAYS. Plus as it was at my college, most people are hungover from going nuts the night before on Fat Tuesday.
So, as one can see, Wednesdays are blah all around. For me, Wednesday's few saving graces are all modern-day guilty pleasures like the Willamette Week (Of which I only read the Dish section. I pick up the free weekly paper solely because it means I get a THIRD crossword puzzle to work on), America's Next Top Model (WGN is rerunning the Petite Model season, fyi) and no boyfriend until later at night to make fun of me for indulging in either (Quarter Orange duty calls). On my cross country team in college Wednesdays were always an easy training day; no practice and either a light run, cross training or a total day off.
Considering my lack of sleep and the fact that my body feels more zombie-like and less humanoid, I'm going to pay homage to my cross country team training schedule and take the day off from running (I've gone a solid 12 days in a row!), kick back with an IPA and watch ANTM while doing the crossword puzzle.
Of course, that's after I finish this ginormous internal project that's due...oh...today.
Hump Day indeed.
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