Free Haunted Mansion fonts are available and great for holiday decor.

Really this post was an excuse to show off my “decorated name plate” at work. Our organization has a name plate decorating contest each Halloween to give us a chance to decorate but in limited quantities. On a side note, before we had rules limiting decorations for Halloween, staff would construct monstrous sets that would take half a day to complete. One year our team erected a large circus tent in the office with a gypsies theme and “stole” other items from people’s departments to sell back to them later. Over the top.

Anyhow, I have mostly received positive comments from others about my simple decorations, with only one person who indicated that I cheated by not actually using my name plate. Whatever.

So to make this all happen, I decided to go with the Haunted Mansion theme since I had the frame hanging around (someone had left it on the freebie table months ago).

After a bit of searching I found the original Disney’s Haunted Mansion font, Mansion  by David Occhino Design. But I am not one to pay for my fonts (especially for these types of things) so I found the font for my name at a scrapbooking website. HERE you can download several free Disney fonts including the knock off of the official Mansion font called Gracie’s Curse.

The crows actually did come from David Occhino Design in a free font called Mansion Crypt Bats. This Webdings type font gives you a variety of Disney’s Haunted Mansion characters and designs. You can download it for yourself HERE.

Now that I have finished my name plate, my boss wants me to do hers. Sigh.

Neologism is a newly coined word or phrase. Often a neologism is in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language.**

After a few exchanges via Twitter with Grant Barrett from A Way With Words and Voice of San Diego about the origin of the word “porkfest,” I came across the word “neologism.”

I was actually trying to find examples of news media created words similar to the aforementioned “porkfest.” But as you know, the internet sucks you into its vortex.  So after stumbling on this very useful word, I forgot about my quest to find examples of other words that media has made up (I know there must be a number of them).

Anyhow, one of my favorite neologisms is “strategery”. Originally coined in an SNL skit mocking George W. Bush in 2000, “strategery” became a Bush catchphrase as he attempted to embrace the satire. Currently the word is used in the roller derby world in game play instead of “strategy”. I like it’s silliness and in the crazy derby community, it seems to fit right in.

On a side note: While Grant deemed “porkfest” a form of “journalese,” I never did find a written definition of the bacon-loving word. Sadly, my first vision related to “porkfest” was the correlation between pork and the police. Although politics seems to be at the forefront of this word, I understand the cops really have no involvement.

**Definition of neologism taken from Wikipedia.

Greek yogurt tastes better with fruit (but only a little bit better).

I never tried Greek yogurt until today. It was the Chobani plain non-fat kind. The only things I had heard about the product was that it had lots of protein (a plus) and is kind of like sour cream. I don’t like sour cream at all so I don’t know what possessed me to buy a container of something that tastes like it. After a few bites, I realized there was no way I was going to finish it. So I decided to add some banana to the mix. Better, but I still don’t think Greek yogurt will ever show up in my cart again.

On the other hand, you should really try Trader Joe’s French Vanilla Mint for $0.99. Now that is some good yogurt.