Nothing Lasts Forever!

I finally missed a day of posting on here! If you knew about my late evening last night, you'd forgive me. However, we'd have to be hanging out somewhere alone, with a couple of beers (or boxes of chocolate, or hours of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes, or whatever it is that works for you) under our belts before I'd delve into the details very much.

Suffice it to say, I thought the night was going to end much earlier than it did. No, really, I demand that you suffice it. Suffice, already! SUFFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE!

I have no idea what that was about, but it did lead to my looking up "suffice" at m-w.com...

But it has reminded me of another issue I had with language recently...

For some reason, the kids asked me the difference between two words. If I could remember the words, I could remember the reason. At any rate, I e-mailed our C.A. teacher to ask her the difference between "past of..." and "past participle of...", and she was going to send me a link that would fix me up, but her life was busy. Apparently she teaches during the day or something.

Anyway, anybody want to fix me up with an answer, I'd appreciate it! Now I just wish I could remember what the two words were... one was the "past of..." and the other was the "past participle of..."

And I just remembered: swam (past of swim) and swum (past participle of swim). The word "swum" appeared in a word problem, and someone raised his or her hand to say, "I thought 'swum' wasn't a word."

Idiot that I am, I looked it up.

Now I'm going to go do some research on my own. I know I should know what "past participle" means, and it's making me crazy that I don't.

As I read over this, I realize the world was probably thankful that I missed a day...