teacher2b, I enjoyed the fun. I misspelled it in another way once before.

Actually gazettefan, I had to look that word up to see what it meant, which is when I noticed you spelled it wrong. Just having a little fun with you!

John Doe...."Six feet high and risin'"

Whew, thanks for that clarification...thought I was losing my mind...wait, that's been long gone. Someone mentioned something about hitting a bottle? Who needs to destroy more brain cells (I need the few I have!)...

Catherine, you might want to lose the bacon and eggs and go with the oatmeal with a dollop of plain yogurt, some cinnamon, a little honey, and a sliced banana. And yes, save the bottle for the evening times.

Wow, it's the Catherine W. Idzerda school of mathematics! I spent lots of time on deadline trying to describe the numbers in an imaginative way. Then, one of the copy editors, a nice young man to whom I am eternally grateful, pointed out that it wasn't .15 inches, but .15 of a *foot.* He changed the story for the paper, taking out the descriptions. Unfortunately, the descriptions weren't taken out of the on-line edition, leaving readers to wonder if A)I had been hitting the bottle with my bacon and eggs, or B) was a complete moron who needed to retake fourth grade math.
The correct version is up now (I hope). Perhaps readers can come up with their own comparisons.
Thanks for reading,
Cathy Idzerda
PS: Just for the record, I like my bacon and eggs with a nice glass of milk.

SmithJones, nice polysyllabic verbiage. But apparently your word processer ran out of commas, here's some: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

ms...sassy, there you go getting clinical again. The real world remains outside the customer garnering claptrap of psych-biz.

This is the best I could come up with...
.
Walking slowly through the tall grass, her thoughts drifted to an earlier time when there wasn’t a brisk procreation of crepuscular culiseta longiareolata.

Get Mad

I don't have much of a synonym to use; however, I did discover that a class clown may act as they do because s/he has a temperament that demands a lot of stimulation.

ahhh. That should make gazettefan relax a little bit, huh? LOL

class clown=ADHD going through television withdrawal/DTs. fabulous.

How is it that I get sucked into going so far off topic in these posts?!

well, I see we have the smart, yet sarcastic ones in class today...I think class clown is the appropriate term...unless the Thesaurus has a better word...I'll be back in a moment..

SmithJones, how's this?:

Walking slowly through the tall grass, her thoughts drifted to an earlier time when she left town in a huff riding high astride a galloping palimino, her fervent fingers flailing atop a hard but obedient keyboard.

How high's the water Momma?

Does the logistics of water measurement of the Rock River really matter that much? I mean, the water levels barely moved... watching the water levels decrease here are about as exciting as watching grass grow.

Can we just be grateful that some fields are dry enough to plant. God forbid if a 1st world couldn't have their corn chips!

Flood water measurements differ from the way we tend to see it if you look at the heighths at flooded locations and the flood measurements stated it is way higher. The floodstage is Afton is 9 ft they crested at 13.5 yet the amount is over 5 1/2 feet if you were to stand in it.

In the serenity of the warm calm evening, listening carefully between the occasional croak of a bullfrog, one could actually hear the river level drop. Walking slowly through the tall grass, her thoughts drifted to an earlier time when…
.
I’ll be back to finish this story after I consult the thesaurus to find a big word that I don’t understand.

hey, I do what I can to please the people. ;)

Ouch! You got me, teacher2b. Thanks for the correction.

it's sesquipedalian

ms...sassy, I'm impressed.

You're a sesquipedelian!!!

Cathy:

I beleive you missed it on this one. Your measurments seem to be based on 0.15 or 0.12 inches, while the article is speaking of 0.15 and 0.12 feet.

I do admire the creativity though!

infinitesimal...wasn't anyone impressed by the big word used?

I sure was! I'm actually "pleased as punch" to see the writers using different words.

The thesaurus is a wonderful, yet underused tool for many writers.

Thanks! :)

I think they're making a comparison. 1.44 inches of the 5ft over flood stage is comparable to a fork tine in the big scheme of things. It's kind of a between-the-lines ratio comparison to get the point across that the amount the river has receded is very small.

Okay, I'm confused on the "perspective" the Gazette lists here. How can 1.44 inches (the level the floodwaters have receded in Indianford) equal the width of two toothpicks? 1.44 inches is longer than the length of my thumb knuckle to the tip of my thumbnail, yet the width of two toothpicks is approximately an eighth of an inch. Am I missing something here or is this listed incorrectly?