Tonight I discovered, thanks to Languagehat, Franz Kafka's wee fiction "Odradek." I also discovered the amazingly over-labored interpretations that exist -- many times more words than the story itself ( Read more... )

I was complaining that online fashion historians were horribly vague about class and in fact seemed to be only talking about the aristocracy most of the time, and personheaddel_c suggested searching instead for images of people in the particular jobs I am interested in, in years that are equivalent to my story time.  Thanks to this strategy, I now know ( Read more... )

So this year Frank has to start taking the long-acronym licensing exam for US physicians, in order to be licensed in the US and countries which recognize a US license as well as being licensed in the Eurozone and countries which recognize the Eurozone license.  We went through a lot of twists and turns in the spring to find out what he needed to do ( Read more... )

So last night was Live Music Night at folk dancing. It went well: the music was great, I got really sweaty, it felt good ( Read more... )

So apparently what happened to my Frank was this. His visa had been on hold because the foreign police misplaced a document. They finally got around to asking him to bring it in. He brought it in to the office and stood in line for 5 hours after which they arrested him because he was walking around without a valid visa. They kept him eight ( Read more... )