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One of Those Annoying Catch-Up Entries
Because I was hosting a story swap last night, I spent much of the day going through the scraps of paper that seem to accumulate on my dining room table and, alas, the floor of the study nook. I was trying to be good and actually handle them, instead of just tossing them in the box of shame to deal with later.
So here are some odds and ends from things I scribbled down for some reason or other.
1) I have no idea why I wrote down the word "perissodactyla." I just looked it up and it refers to odd-toed ungulates, e.g. horses and rhinoceroses and quaggas. Was there something in the news about them roughly a year ago July?
2) I also have no idea why I wrote "Bellhorn 2004" in my planner a few weeks ago. Yes, Mark Bellhorn played for the Red Sox starting in that year, but I can't imagine why I was thinking about him. (He was an interesting player - led the league in strikeouts that year, but became a real hero in the World Series.)
3) I have become a big fan of Christoph Niemann's Abstract City blog in the NY Times. His August 3rd visual diary of a flight from NY to Berlin via London is brilliant.
4) I missed seeing Red Green talk in Frederick a couple of weeks ago, but I was amused that he also made an appearance at a hardware store in Bethesda, where he autographed rolls of duct tape.
5) Most of the strange, unexplained numbers in my planner are phone numbers. Some are not. I am fairly sure I wrote down 16,000,000,000 because one of my colleagues could not figure out how many zeros there were in billion.
6) I was reviewing a document (having to do with an international joint project) recently that included a requirement to "repatriate data." I understood what it meant, but I found the usage to be a bit odd. On the other hand, I'm not sure I could think of a better way to say that the country that provided the sensor should get the data from that sensor.
7) I have completely lost control of my calendar. (Admittedly, that assumes that I ever had control of it). Does anybody know why I have blocked off the weekend of April 8-10 next year?
8) Speaking of the absurdity of my calendar, I need to find a weekend in November to go up to New York so I can see The Language Archive at Roundabout and The Scottsboro Boys. The former is about a subject (saving dying languages) I'm interested in. The latter is a Kander and Ebb musical with John Cullum.
9) Here is a language related link - the OED in limerick form. That the "O" stands for "Omnificent", not "Oxford" does not lessen the charm.
10) Moose can get arthritis. I have no idea why I think that is interesting, but I do.
11) I am not sure whether the credit card lightbulb is absurdly brilliant or merely absurd. It would probably need to produce more lumens than it does to be absurdly brilliant.
12) Lori Berenson is back in jail, the Peruvian government having bowed to public opinion. I'm okay with that, but her son is apparently with her for the remaining five years of her sentence. I admit that I don't really know how Peruvian prisons work, but what about the boy going to school?
13) I had this rather amusing conversation with Alaska Air (abbreviated AS below) this week:
Me: I'd like to make a partner reservation on Air France.
AS: Where would you like to go?
Me: I'd like to do an open jaw. I want to fly from Washington Dulles into Bamako, Mali and return from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
AS: Are those both in France?
I explained that, er, no, they are both in Africa. (And, yes, I got the tickets on the dates I wanted and am well on the way to making my land arrangements. I am actually going to Timbuktu, which is something I have wanted to do my entire life!)
14) The Wall Street Journal had an interesting obituary on July 16th of the traditional mariner / navigator, Tau Pilau. Unfortunately, I can't find the article on-line.
By the way, the story swap went well, despite a phone problem meaning I had to go downstairs to let people in. (The buzzer system is tied to the phone, which hangs up after about 3 seconds.) Ten people is not a huge number, but is just about what is comfortable in my living room. There was a good mix of traditional stories and personal stories. I told "Why I'm Not a Millionaire" which went over well. One person left his backpack behind and I had to make a quick call for him to return for it. I only just now realized that another person left a tupperware behind and I'll have to see what she wants me to do about returning it.
So here are some odds and ends from things I scribbled down for some reason or other.
1) I have no idea why I wrote down the word "perissodactyla." I just looked it up and it refers to odd-toed ungulates, e.g. horses and rhinoceroses and quaggas. Was there something in the news about them roughly a year ago July?
2) I also have no idea why I wrote "Bellhorn 2004" in my planner a few weeks ago. Yes, Mark Bellhorn played for the Red Sox starting in that year, but I can't imagine why I was thinking about him. (He was an interesting player - led the league in strikeouts that year, but became a real hero in the World Series.)
3) I have become a big fan of Christoph Niemann's Abstract City blog in the NY Times. His August 3rd visual diary of a flight from NY to Berlin via London is brilliant.
4) I missed seeing Red Green talk in Frederick a couple of weeks ago, but I was amused that he also made an appearance at a hardware store in Bethesda, where he autographed rolls of duct tape.
5) Most of the strange, unexplained numbers in my planner are phone numbers. Some are not. I am fairly sure I wrote down 16,000,000,000 because one of my colleagues could not figure out how many zeros there were in billion.
6) I was reviewing a document (having to do with an international joint project) recently that included a requirement to "repatriate data." I understood what it meant, but I found the usage to be a bit odd. On the other hand, I'm not sure I could think of a better way to say that the country that provided the sensor should get the data from that sensor.
7) I have completely lost control of my calendar. (Admittedly, that assumes that I ever had control of it). Does anybody know why I have blocked off the weekend of April 8-10 next year?
8) Speaking of the absurdity of my calendar, I need to find a weekend in November to go up to New York so I can see The Language Archive at Roundabout and The Scottsboro Boys. The former is about a subject (saving dying languages) I'm interested in. The latter is a Kander and Ebb musical with John Cullum.
9) Here is a language related link - the OED in limerick form. That the "O" stands for "Omnificent", not "Oxford" does not lessen the charm.
10) Moose can get arthritis. I have no idea why I think that is interesting, but I do.
11) I am not sure whether the credit card lightbulb is absurdly brilliant or merely absurd. It would probably need to produce more lumens than it does to be absurdly brilliant.
12) Lori Berenson is back in jail, the Peruvian government having bowed to public opinion. I'm okay with that, but her son is apparently with her for the remaining five years of her sentence. I admit that I don't really know how Peruvian prisons work, but what about the boy going to school?
13) I had this rather amusing conversation with Alaska Air (abbreviated AS below) this week:
Me: I'd like to make a partner reservation on Air France.
AS: Where would you like to go?
Me: I'd like to do an open jaw. I want to fly from Washington Dulles into Bamako, Mali and return from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
AS: Are those both in France?
I explained that, er, no, they are both in Africa. (And, yes, I got the tickets on the dates I wanted and am well on the way to making my land arrangements. I am actually going to Timbuktu, which is something I have wanted to do my entire life!)
14) The Wall Street Journal had an interesting obituary on July 16th of the traditional mariner / navigator, Tau Pilau. Unfortunately, I can't find the article on-line.
By the way, the story swap went well, despite a phone problem meaning I had to go downstairs to let people in. (The buzzer system is tied to the phone, which hangs up after about 3 seconds.) Ten people is not a huge number, but is just about what is comfortable in my living room. There was a good mix of traditional stories and personal stories. I told "Why I'm Not a Millionaire" which went over well. One person left his backpack behind and I had to make a quick call for him to return for it. I only just now realized that another person left a tupperware behind and I'll have to see what she wants me to do about returning it.