A belated Wednesday Hodgepodge for 6/1/16

Wednesday's Hodgepodge is brought to us courtesy of Joyce at 

 From this side of the pond 

I'm posting late this week as we had a bit of family drama going on but as I'd prepared it I thought it would still be worth doing.

Pop over to Joyc'es blog to see other posts and if you want to join in add the link to your Hodgepodge blog post to the Linky List at the end of Joyce's post and don’t forget to visit at least your neighbours on the list.

Have fun!

1. Are you ready for new? Is 2016 likely to be very different than 2015? Do you want it to be?

I’m ready for 2016 and yes I think it will be different from 2015.  The beginning of 2015 was not a good time for me but the year got better as it went along.  I want that to continue in 2016 and with new babies expected in the extended family and another family wedding in August we have lots to look forward to.  It will be a time of change though as our son and his wife return to the nest in April for a while and hubby is considering partial retirement.  Thankfully without the stress of a job I hope to be able to take it all in my stride. 2. January 6th is National Technology Day. Currently, what is your single biggest struggle or frustration when it comes to technology?

That it changes so quickly and I’m struggling to keep up. 3. It's that time again...time for Lake Superior University to present a list of words (or phrases) they'd like to see banished (for over-use, mis-use, and general uselessness) in 2016. You can read more about the decision making process here, but this year's top vote getters are-
So (at the start of every single sentence), conversation (as in hotly debated topics where we're invited to 'join the conversation'), problematic, stakeholder, price point, secret sauce, break the Internet, walk it back, presser, manspreading (common in larger cities where some men take up the entire bus or train seat by sitting wide), vape, giving me life (refers to anything that may excite a person or make them laugh), and physicality
Which of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word not on the list you'd like to add?

I would like to see most of those disappear although some of them can be useful and I suppose if you’re not exactly smoking an e-cigarette it had to have a name attached to it.  I just feel that for most of those expressions we already have language that could be used so why invent all these new expressions that lots of people will not understand.  (Walk it back?)

I must confess to being guilty of using “so” but now I have more time on my hands I do try and edit my posts to avoid doing things like that.

 4. Share one of your current health related goals.

I’m trying to lose weight and get fitter.  I have a step tracker now and will be working on increasing my steps.  5. Let's talk fifty shades of grey. As in the colour. Grey is currently a popular colour in home decor, paint, wardrobes, hair, wedding party attire, and more. Are you a fan? Do you have the colour in some variation in your home or wardrobe?  Grey hair, the old grey mare, grey matter, grey area...which grey idiom can you most relate to right now? 

I’m not particularly a fan, especially if everyone starts using it in home décor.  I do have some grey clothes, although mainly ones I used to wear for work.  I do also have lots of grey hair.  I just keep it well hidden thanks to my lovely hairdresser.  Grey matter is the one that concerns me most.  Having had two relatives (my Mum and her sister) develop Alzheimer’s I’m constantly trying to keep my grey matter exercised. 6. Certain foods are considered 'lucky' if eaten on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Cooked greens to bring economic fortune, black-eyed peas or lentils also symbolize money, pork which symbolizes progress, fish for good luck, and if you're in Spain 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight. Did you eat any lucky foods on the first day of the year? Is that a tradition in your home? Of the foods listed, which most appeals to you?

Well I didn’t know about eating lucky food at New Year but we had fish on both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day which was very lucky!  Given the choice of food without the associations I would have chosen pork.

7. What's the single biggest time waster in your life and what, if anything, will you do about it this year? Electronic games and random TV watching.  I’m already making adjustments so that I limit my time wasting.  Switching the TV off if there is nothing that I really want to watch rather than channel surfing and setting time limits for gaming.  I don’t want to stop playing altogether because it’s another way of exercising my grey matter.  I also want to make my multi-tasking productive.  I’ve been guilty of working on my laptop while watching TV.  I just end up missing bits of the TV programme and having to rewind plus whatever I’m doing on the laptop takes longer than it should.  Sometimes things need to be focussed on one at a time.

8.  Insert your own random thought here.

I’m glad I don’t live in a flood plain.  Areas in the north of the UK have had terrible flooding.  The weather seems to be all over the place.  It has been really mild for winter but very wet.  Our seasons don’t seem to be following the right patterns recently.