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Every so often, when I’m at work, I come across really cool words. Because I work in a patent firm, see, one of those big ones that deals with Big Auto and Big Pharma et al. (please don’t get me started on the guilt I feel over this…I’ll save that for another post…my principles had to be set aside in order for me to feed the fetus once it, you know, stops being a fetus and such…much like they had to be set aside when I worked for Starbucks, the Gap, Jacob Junior, and Microsoft in order to a) eat and b) pay for an education…that I don’t use now….because I work for a patent firm….sigh). And pharmaceutical companies in particular can sometimes have the niftiest way of outlining their latest inventions. Using excellent words like “equidistant” and “coagulate” and “orifice” and “amorphous” (which to my delight was followed by “blob” in one instance), words I know but never get to use in sentence. Words that roll off the tongue deliciously, like only truly great words can. And I thought, when I took this job, that I would be joining others like me who enjoy saying things like “enCYclopeeeedia…” or “discomBOBulate” or “BOISterous”, particularly in the shower for the echoing effect. Alas, this is not the case. My co-workers, while nice and all, don’t seem to get the same kick out of words that I do. Which is depressing in a job that deals entirely with the organization of words. Worse, not only do they not seem to appreciate spiffy words, but they lack the sense of humor to appreciate when said spiffy words are put into serious and yet silly sentences. Sigh. So today, when I came across a particularly amusing passage in a set of legal claims that I was reviewing, which included the aforementioned “amorphous blob” phrase, I had no one to chuckle with about it. Disappointing, really.