Xeroxes

"All of those notepads, and Xeroxes, and printed e-mails, and photographs of kids, and books, and dollar bills in wallets, and documents in files… All of them were fuel" (325)


Bill did not like his boss.  Bill used the xerox machine to make some copies for his boss, describing how he felt about him.  Bill got fired

Dirigible

"The dirigible mooring mast, now the base of the TV tower, was part of the original construction of the building" (249).

The blimp was dirigible, it was capable of being easily steered and directed.

Altimeter

"My backpack was already packed, and I'd already gotten the other supplies together, like the altimeter and granola bars and swiss army knife I'd dug up in Central Park, so there was nothing else to do" (315).
a sensitive aneroid barometer that is graduated and calibrated, used chiefly in aircraft for finding distance above sea level, terrain, or someother reference point by a comparison of air pressures. (dictionary.com) 

The planes altimeter let the pilot know that he was flying at 6,500 feet in the air 

Pessimistic

"...I was exhausted and frustrated and pessimistic, even though what I wanted was to be happy" (287).

pessimistic (adj): tending to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen

Steve knew that today was going to be sunny, but Johnny was being pessimistic thinking that it was going to be cloudy.

Matt "Philanthropist"

"Philanthropist"
a person who seeks to promote the welfare of others, especially by the generous donation of money to good causes.

"i read the lists of the dead people in the paper: mother of three, college sophomore, yankees fan, lawyer, brother, bond trader, weekend magician, practical joker, sister, philanthropist... (273)".

Upended VAP by Julia Goldsmith
"a navy blimp was almost upended, and nearly swept away the celebrities attending the historic affair" (250).

 The artist upended her sculptures to create an illusion that the people were the ones standing upside down.

incongruous

Hey Nick here,

"Like the peculiar fossil record of Central Park. Like the incongruous pH of the reservoir" (222)

The man on a dinosaur is unexpected and incongruous.

metamorphosis

metamorphosis is the process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages.

Subtle

Subtle- So delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyze or describe
Pg 143 "I was incredibly nervous, but i maintained my confidence,  and I was extremely subtle"

The kiss was so subtle which made it even harder to say goodbye.

Sorry this is late but here is my VAP word

Disheveled- untidy / disordered (mainly appearance)

Pg.126 "he was standing with a disheveled man whose curly hair sprang up in every direction"

Penitentiary

"Next I went to the penitentiary. My uncle was a guard there" (77).

The murderer got sent to the penitentiary, a high security prison for the worst criminals.

Shortwave

"I remembered him tucking me in, and us listening to a person speaking Greek on the shortwave radio, and him telling me a story about New York's sixth borough." (37)

Shortwave:  a radio wave of a wavelength between about 10 and 100 m (and a frequency of about 3 to 30 MHz).

I turned on the old shortwave radio to hear classical music playing on one of the stations.

Trivets

"I went though hundreds of books, thousands of them, they were all over the apartment, I used them as doorstops and paper-weights, I stacked them if I needed to reach something, I slid them under the legs of wobbly tables, I used them as trivets an coasters" (28).

The woman didn't want to ruin her nice granite so she put her hot soup on a trivet to protect the counter.