I am confident that you will notice two things missing from the title of today’s post. First, it doesn’t include the word Controlled. Second, it is not numbered!
Here’s why: I’m simply providing a revelation that even Wired-Researchers need vacations, and I’m away on one! Or, as one of my esteemed friends (also a lover of language) would say, “I’m away on vay-kay.” Here’s her take on the word:
I mostly deplore the ‘evolution’ of the English language, because it’s going the wrong way. Down and ignorant and sloppy and ugly. It’s the ‘ugly’ that really depresses me.
But every now and then a phrase or word pops up that takes my fancy and I like to use it. ‘Vay-kay’ is one. It is so funny to say it out loud.
It is funny to say it aloud, and I must say that I hear it from time to time. It has made its way to various Urban dictionaries, but, thankfully, it has not made its way to our beloved Oxford English Dictionary!
In case you’re wondering where my “vay-kay” has taken me, I’m in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, located in Southwest Virginia.
If you’re into biking, then the 34 mile Virginia Creeper Trail connecting Damascus and Abingdon must be on your list of things to do.
If you’re into hiking, then the trek to the top of Mount Rogers, the highest point in the Virginia with a summit elevation of 5,729 feet, is a must-do.
Or, if you want some less strenuous hiking, explore Grayson Highlands. You can’t go wrong.
Next week, I’ll be back with a Controlled Revelation! In the meantime, I’m on vay-kay.
The Wired Researcher 
Well, I don’t know about vacationing in a place called Virginia Creeper Trail. It sounds dangerous. I prefer “stay-cations” myself.
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Thank you, Miss Sukebind Triffid, for your comment! It confirms, once more, the associative meanings of words and our individual reactions to them! I find it intriguing that the word “Creeper” sounds dangerous to me as well. When I first heard “Virginia Creeper Trail,” I thought of a concluding passage from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper“: “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! I don’t want to go outside. I won’t even if Jennie asks me to. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my should just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.”
I came to discover–just as I am sure you did–that the Virginia Creeper was the nickname given the Abdingdon Branch of the Virginia & Western Railway because it moved so slowly over the mountainous region of Southwest Virginia. You can read all about it at Virginia Creeper Railroad.
So, you prefer “stay-cations.” I understand, fully. Your preference reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s Poem 236: “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church“. Here are the first two lines: “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church — / I keep it, staying at Home –“.
After my Dickinson association, I was reminded of the Oxford English Dictionary’s third meaning of the word “stay” as a verb: “A coming to a stand; a cessation of progress or action; a stop, pause, halt.”
Within that context, then, my “vay-kay” last week was in reality a “stay-kay“!
Finally, I appreciated your comment because it sent me once again to the Oxford English Dictionary. (I seem to go there a lot!) But I had to make the journey to see whether your name had any significance at all, and, indeed it does. SUKEBIND: “Name given by Stella Gibbons (see quot. 1932) to an imaginary plant associated with superstition and fertility, hence used allusively with reference to intense rustic passions.” TRIFFID: “In the science-fiction novel The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham (1903–69), one of a race of menacing plants, possessed of locomotor ability and a poisonous sting, which threaten to overrun the world. Hence used allusively of vigorous plants, or transf. of anything invasive or rapid in development.”
I’m not sure what to make of it, but Virginia is for lovers, so perhaps you are writing a passionate and tragic Virginia love story!
Let me close my response by offering up a link to a web site that will help you generate your own fanciful flower names: Scientific Flower Name Generator. Enjoy!
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