Paupers is only having its turkey dinner on the 24th and 25th so it was today or never. (Yesterday had too much snow to go out.) Crunched out over salt and/or untreated snow on twinging feet (feet do not like boots) and had a reasonable dinner with a lot of wine because wine is exempt in the HST holiday. Then discovered the wine store was ( Read more... )

Library holds continue to trot in with no regard for 'four weeks wait' notices. Thus Murderbot 3 appeared yesterday, which is a problem since my hold on Murderbot 2 was still showing umpty many weeks wait. But amazon gave me a credit for my delayed envelopes so I got 2 for about five bucks. At which point library tells me 2 is in transit. Oh well. ( Read more... )

Mh well, that was interesting. Clouds parted just enough at the beginning to make people believe they'd actualy see the eclipse and then rolled back in. Even so the err whatever you call the 99% point we got here was pretty Tartarean apocalyptic: sky went  a pre-serious storm purply grey, street lights came on, birds shut up. But it wasn't any four ( Read more... )

People are going on about how Korean is so easy to learn because it's so close to Japanese and hey it's got an alphabet! No kanji! Anyone can pick up Korean! And I'm over here weeping because I don't care how beautiful and elegant hangul is, I don't care that the letters show you what shape your mouth is (lies, all lies ( Read more... )

To the best of my knowledge David Wishart is Scots, so I was pleased with myself when my subconscious parsed the 'porkies', that people often tell Marcus Corvinus, as cockney rhyming slang: pork pies = lies. I still figured 'the whole boiling' for a Caledonianism until my subconscious suggested 'boiling pot = lot.' Ah well. It would appear to be ( Read more... )

The trouble with sleeping past 11 is that I can't roll over and go back to sleep as I can do if I wake at 9. Yes, well. Life is rough ( Read more... )

Oh yes. The first week of September was bloody hot too. Now I remember. No matter: slept with the window AC on and this morning, for the first time in a week, my knee didn't scream at me when I first bent it. Or stood on it, because mornings all week have seen me seriously considering going back to the zimmer frame to get me down the hallway. ( Read more... )

Once again, after a mere thirty years, I come across someone who thinks an 'access' of some emotion ought to be 'excess'. Which it isn't, but you might have to read French literature to know this. As in, I first encountered the construction in the translation of Claudine at School, where she has 'a sudden access of stupidity.' What was the French ( Read more... )

Yes, well, it's the Ides of March again. But the only reason that matters to the English-speaking and largely non-Latin-reading world is because Wully Shaxper wrote a play about Julius Caesar. Otherwise the Ides and Caesar himself would mean as little to us as, say, the Emperor Nerva and the Pisonian conspiracy. This strikes me as very odd somehow ( Read more... )

Do I want to read a translation of the Aeneid into 16th century Scots? It's prime Life is Too Short territory- I have enough trouble with Dunbar, god knows-- but I'm really seriously tempted. Though I'm sure the edition that's just come out is hideously expensive, libraries, solely, for the use of ( Read more... )