It will come as no surprise that I love words and language and the art of combining those two to create something out of nothing astonishes me daily.

One of the things I love about my job is that I am surrounded by words. There's not too many careers in which you can discuss suspensive hyphenation (as I did today) or the usage of a virgule (I still miss the reporter who spent hours tracking down this proper style) or when you uppercase City Council or Fire Department (as we do nearly daily in our office).

Those conversations go on all around me among Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millenialls. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

And there's hope for the future too as I was reminded tonight.

I had the opportunity this evening to be a judge at the Lake County Spelling Bee. How exciting to be among young people who share my fascination with words. I was in awe of their poise and certainly don't remember myself being as confident in my middle school years. It was nail-biting in those final rounds. I (sadly) could have spent the entire evening poring over the book of words, reading their origins and definitions, chuckling over some of the notations. (The book lists guitar as one of the words it is required to give the part of speech and definition for as it could easily be confused with another word. Huh?)

Alas, I could not stay there all night reading the dictionary. Duty called. There's a sink full of dishes, a mountain of laundry, a pile of bills ... Who am I kidding? There's "Your Heart Belongs To Me" by Dean Koontz sitting next to me ...

- Tricia Ambrose