<p>SluggBugg - if I wore mink mukluks where I live the animal rights activists would be after me, so I stick with trainers.</p>
<p>Maize&Blue - I thought of UCLA (I was a bruin, too) but couldn’t figure out the “maize” bit (that’s what I have to ask for to get corn meal over here). I have been reduced to looking for omens in the college search as well, but your omen was major compared to any we have found so far.</p>
<p>“As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the COURSERS they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.”</p>
<p>Greyhounds AND reindeer</p>
<p>Boy, there are a lot of interesting origins for poster names here…</p>
<p>As for me, it’s Op-tee-my-zer Dad. I’m an applied mathematician, and I design algorithms to optimize schedules.</p>
<p>SoozieVT was Soozie-vet to me
USmomInUK, Ell-em-en-o-pe : got those
AChat: Short for ‘A CHATterjee’? (Chatterjee is a common last name in West Bengal, India.)
PbN2Au: Loved the ‘Pb into Au’ explanation. Reminds me of a T-shirt message I saw during the Goldwater<em>for</em>President days, ‘Au H2O’ (Au = gold, H2O = water)
Maize&Blue: blue corn, I thought…</p>
<p>Maize$blue: lots of schools may have blue and yellow or gold colors…</p>
<p>…but only one is maize n blue!!!</p>
<p>This is so helpful. inca had me fooled too. And I’m happy to know that cangel is not like a can of gel. My favorite story is the weenie story! lol I’m ashamed that I have the least imaginative of all. Had I been a lurker I most likely would have paid some attention to the names but I was intent on solving some college decision questions and logged on with my real nickname. Not only is it boring but I’ve probably given away my identity to anyone who knows me in real life. I never realized that I’d still be logging on months later…</p>
<p>We have yet to hear from Emeraldkity and Northstarmom, right?</p>
<p>Backhandgrip a stage hand! Very good!</p>
<p>I hear there’s speculation about my name.
It has nothing to do with hockey. I hate sports!
It has everything to do with the North star and its importance in the Underground Railway, and as the name of Frederick Douglass’ newspaper.</p>
<p>As Malcolm X said, "“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today”</p>
<p>cheers:</p>
<p>Could “Paradise” be British West Indies, or something like that?</p>
<p>Now that’s interesting!-I thought Northstarmom meant you were from the Northstar State which I think is Minn.</p>
<p>All I could think of was Northstar at Tahoe, but I knew she was east coast…</p>
<p>Maize & Blue ought to be blue corn. Maybe raised by Mom’s 2 Incas?</p>
<p>Mine is boring. If I had only known, I would have thought more about it. The 137 is a physics constant.</p>
<p>wow, Northstar I finally got one right. I was beginning to think I was too out of it to belong.</p>
<p>Me too, lamom…I knew the “follow the dipper” history of the Railroad…
I thought usmominuk was an Alaskan…backhandgrip referred to his (Is it him or her?) tennis hobby…optimizerdad made the most of everything (an optimist).</p>
<p>Never occurred to me that anyone would think corn!</p>
<p>garland: Go Blue! Can a Bruin adopt a Wolverine? My Trojan H (we make quite a rivalry combo) has gone bonkers over Mich football and hockey (my S’s two big loves during his time there). My D’s maize & blue are the Knights, which was another omen as that was her high school mascot.</p>
<p>Maize&Blue–I picked up on the Ann Arbor reference–the ‘mazin’ Blue (my M got her master’s there), but very clever tying into your own (and my S’s) alma mater as well as Carleton.</p>
<p>well ive got the email asking to explain my name so I must say it was spur of the moment, no nicknames or anything like that
I live in Seattle, and for a while some promoter was advertising Seattle as the Emerald city ( the evergreens I suppose and all the lovers of Dorothy 
so emeraldkity is just a play on words cause at the time we had two elderly cats :)</p>
<p>Kir, my favorite drink, rhymes with beer.</p>
<p>I like Northstarmom’s name even better now that I know what it signifies. My husband is an astronomer, so I just thought of the scientific connotation!</p>
<p>emeraldkity - so you pronounce it “emerald-kitty?”</p>
<p>As you can see from the rest of this thread, we’ve been WAITING to hear from you!!</p>