Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father

[venta]

Some time last year, I bestirred myself to look up what, exactly, is meant by the phrase "dog days". Wikipedia tells me that it "refers to the sultry days of summer[citation needed]". It seems we get this from the Roman diēs caniculārēs, the hot weather associated with the dog star, Sirius

Comments

[huskyteer]

I recently saw this period referred to on gerald_duck's LJ as 'Crimbo limbo'.

I answered the phone once this morning and once yesterday. I suspect that's all the work I will be doing this week.

[venta]

That would be a good phrase, were it not that "Chrimbo" always makes my teeth curl.

I am doing some actual programming, and it's rather fun. Most people don't believe how little programming programmers get to do in the general run of things :)

[huskyteer]

Me too, a bit. Except there's a poem by I believe Kit Wright which rhymes it with 'Rimbaud'.

[venta]

That almost makes it ok :)

You know the scene is very humdrum

[ringbark]

When the indolence, nothingness and boredom, boredom kicks in, I always like to remember that the Buzzcocks recorded Spiral Scratch in the gap between Christmas and the New Year.
If they can do something worthwhile during the dead week, why can't I?

[venta]

Did they really? I didn't know that. That is a Good Fact.

I shall have to try and find time to dig my vinyl out and give it a spin before the end of tomorrow :-)

[deborahw37]

I'm liking your idea! I love this quiet hinterland between Christmas and New Year .. every day is like Sunday.

Sorry you're out of leave but at least work sounds relaxed

[drdoug]

More the dog-end days than the dog days, then?

I quasi-independently invented a calendar 12 months of 30 days with a 5 or 6 day festival/holiday period as a precociously mathy child. I also thought a five-day week would be much neater as part of that scheme, since it would fit neatly and you wouldn't have all this awkwardness of not knowing what day of the week a particular date happens on. I tried and failed to come up with a better approximation for leap year frequency than the Gregorian calendar rules, and was duly impressed at how well they'd done.

Some time later a teacher trolled my class with the old 'decimal time' thing, and I was briefly elated but then bitterly disappointed.

[venta]

I'm willing to take the awkwardness of not knowing which day of the week things will fall on in exchange for not dooming someone to a lifetime of Monday birthdays!