I won't bother to explain my silence yesterday. I had Icelandic homework to catch up on, the federal election to check on and another Blue Jays game to cheer on.

Today is another day and I've been noticing the esoteric additions to fast food, for example, Subway has a sandwich made with with ciabatta bread.

"Ciabatta (Italian pronunciation: [tʃaˈbatta], literallyslipper bread[1]) is an Italian white bread made from wheat flour,water, salt, olive oil, and yeast,created in 1982 by a baker in Adria,Veneto, Italy, in response to popularity of French baguettes. Ciabatta is somewhat elongated, broad, and flat, and is baked in many variations. While panino indicates any kind of regardless of the bread used (whether slices or a bun), a toasted sandwich made from small loaves of ciabatta is specifically known as a panini (plural of panino) outside of Italy." (Online Dictionary)

We didn't have that in my day. Of course, it's still my day, I mean, some of it is and I'm still here, and that's why I'm trying to keep up. Next: chipotle.

"A chipotle (/tʃɨˈpoʊtleɪ/, chi-poht-lay;Spanish: [tʃiˈpotle]), or chilpotle, which comes from the Nahuatl word chilpoctli (meaning "smoked chili"), is a jalapeño. It is a chili used primarily in Mexican and Mexican-inspired cuisines, such as Mexican-American, Tex-Mex, and southwestern dishes."

I had to learn how to pronounce it by listening to my daughter Kate. Also Sriracha:

"sriracha |səˈräCHä, ˈsēräCHä, a spicy sauce made with red chili and garlic, served especially with Vietnamese and Thai cuisine, e.g., I like pho with a generous dose of sriracha. ORIGIN Thai, from the name of the city in which the sauce originated."

Kate made me a quickie ramen soup (there's another one) and squirted some Sriracha in it to spike it up. Good!

I can't remember now when I had my first taste of guacamole, only that I had to learn to say it with a hard g (like Guatemala). When I first cooked paella I didn't know the double l was pronounced with a y-sound. The people I invited to share our experimental (at the time) dinner thought they were coming to play Rummoli.

I still find it difficult to pronounce or spell edamame. What about quinoa?

The world keeps changing and getting smaller and smaller. I'll tell you something, though: Spel-Chek didn't flinch from any of these words. It knows them all.

Now I do too.

Does anyone remember that movie, "Just Like Heaven", starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo? The spirit of a woman in a coma appears to a landscape architect who has rented her apartment until she recovers or dies. Well, of course, she recovers - that's part of the action - but she doesn't remember him. She meets him when she returns to her apartment where he has created a rooftop garden for her. They touch as she shakes his hand to thank him and she remembers, recalling in swift flashbacks some of the nicer moments they shared. I bought the DVD part of the bonuses included similar flashbacks of her memories, but bad ones that could have turned her completely off.

That happens to me sometimes at night.

I'm lying awake and some of the bad memories float up, dispelling sleep. Does that happen to you? Does it depend on what you had to eat, or drink, or on how hot or cold or tired or worried you are? Did the wind change direction? Did someone walk on your grave? Ah, what's that line: "There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so"? Oh dear, I have to look it up...

Well, what did we ever do without Google? Actually, we got along. I missed only one word: either. "There's nothing either good or bad..."

It's true, though, and it seems to depend on my mood at the time of recall, whether a good memory comes up, or a bad one. They are all in there, in the movie of my mind (just like heaven).