This happens all the time, but it’s always interesting to note. I can safely say that never in my life before Wednesday had I read the word “avoirdupois” – have you? I came across it one of three books Aimee’s Grandma has written, as I was studying up (ok, not really) in preparation for her 95th birthday party this weekend. It seemed like a word I should know, all un-italicized and looking like it belonged, but I certainly hadn’ t seen it before. Aimee translated it for me, we figured out what it meant, and I moved on. Flash forward to this afternoon, as I lay out on the sun-dappled grass under the cloudless skies, soaking in the 66? temperature, reading the latest New Yorker, ignorant of the rapid approach of “avoirdupois” for the second time in three days. But -boom- there it was, in an article on the super-productive writer A.J. Liebling. And so now I won’t forget it, and have since learned that not only does it mean “excess bodily weight,” but it’s also the name given to a system of measurement “by which coarser commodities are weighed, such as hay, grain, butter, sugar, [and] tea.” Interesting stuff.