Steve Taylor @ 35 When I have to communicate with anyone who's not an English speaker I have to supress the urge to speak to them in French.
When I moved to Germany, the Danish I took years ago in college started trying to bubble up, along with bits of high school Spanish.
Someone told me that when you learn a foreign language as an adult it goes into a folder in your head labelled foreign language. When you end up someplace where English isn't the default language, your brain tries to pull words from that folder.
In 1985, I was 31 years old, living in Columbia, MO, working fulltime at the University Library as a Library Clerk, taking classes for my Master's in Library Science on my lunch break (mostly) and working a very part-time job(2 Sunday afternoons a month) at the public library to pick up some public library experience. I didn't have a TV, because the old one had broken and I figured I didn't have time to watch it anyway. I moved to my 4th apartment in 5 years. I was mostly reading romances, because my supervisor had a never-ending supply and they filled my printaholic need to read with meals, without being impossible to put down when I needed to study.
It was some time during the grad school years (it took me 4 years to finish) that I decided that the only house work that "had" to be done was take out the trash, do the laundry and do the dishes. Everything else was optional, at least until the end of the semester.
On being re-roofed:
The contractors who worked on my house were supposed to use a heavy magnet to find all the roofing nails on the ground, but I still found roofing nails, and even a few gutter spikes (if that's the right term), in my flowerbeds after I had the old shingles torn off and new ones put on. But it was the nail my tire found in the driveway that made me wonder just how diligent they were with the magnet.
Oops! Those two links weren't supposed to go to the same place.
Hamster races canceled due to ordinance
I'm seriously behind in my Making Light reading, so my apologies if this news from Albuquerque has already been mentioned.
Hamster races canceled due to ordinance
Mayor allows recreational hamster racing
The gist of it being that even if you killed your kid's hamster by sucking it into the vacuum cleaner, you weren't necessarily a bad mom.
If it's the same advertisement I've seen, I don't think the hamster dies. At least, there's a hamster staggering around at the very end of the advertisement that I always thought had just been released from the vacuum cleaner.
Happy Birthday, Patrick!
I woke up at 7:30 New Year's Morning, ate breakfast, and fell asleep in the recliner for most of the morning. Read and picked up a few things the rest of the day.
No work today because of the National Day of Mourning for President Ford. I'm watching the funeral right now.
Happy New Year!
Paula, if you think too many of your neighbors had fireworks, try New Year's Eve in Germany where they sell them in the grocery stores the week between Christmas and New Year's. Last night it seemed like there were fireworks going up from almost every house in the neighborhood. I just kept reminding myself that these houses have tile roofs and are generally made of stone or concrete. I know that fireworks precations developed for the Mid-West US in July don't really apply to Germany in winter, but still.....
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Merry Christmas from Heidelberg, where the temperatures have finally become seasonal. I scraped frost off the car windows before I drove to church last night - and again before I drove home in the fog. (Thankfully, a short drive over familiar city streets)
Peace and good will to all.
I'm a big fan of the gift bag with tissue paper stuffed on top. I generally end up wrapping gifts after I get to Mom's and this takes less time and requires less space to work. Just as soon as I take over the dining room table to wrap presents, someone in the family decides to drop by - generally while their upwrapped gift is sitting on the table waiting its turn.
And gift bags also silence the Grandmother ghosts who insist that we carefully unwrap the presents and save the wrapping paper to be used next year.
Not sure if this is the most appropriate thread or not, but NBC News is saying that Secretary Rumsfeld is stepping down.
#9, Jesse
New Emma Bull. 2007. Can I get an Amen!
I'll give you an Amen - just as soon as I finish my small Happy Dance.
I logged into Amazon just now - to look up the Charles Vess "Ballads" book - and the first recommended title on the page was Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Recommended because I had purchased Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, and Making Book by Theresa Nielsen Hayden.
Congratulations to all!
#219 but bugs in a car. Lots of them in a huuuuge yellowjacket nest
Rhandir - At least a double shudder. Yellow jackets are nasty, because if a couple of them start to sting a person, most of the group may try to join in.
I was never stung, but I've had them build nests in my compost heaps if the summer was too hot/dry in Leavenworth, KS. The heavy clay soil meant the ground would get hard and crack - and my compost heap was just too soft and loose. (I've never managed to get a "hot" compost heap going. that might make it less tempting.)
Since insect spray would seem to defeat the purpose of a compost heap, I tried to avoid the yellow jackets until we had a freeze. They never seemed to survive the winter (thank goodness). The guy who cut my grass did get stung once, and we agreed that the grass in that corner of the yard wouldn't be cut until late fall.
And if we were flying between DC and London, I wouldn't even be allowed out of my seat to pee or change an overflowing diaper on the last part of the flight.
I'm pretty sure the rule that required passengers to stay in their seats for the last 30 minutes of the flight into DC was a) only for Reagan National, while most international flights land at Dulles and b) was lifted in 2005.
Someone in the Heidelberg military community owns a bright yellow Hummer. Whatever advantages they may or may not have in other civilian settings, I do not understand why you would want one here, where most parking spaces are too tight for my Ford Focus hatchback.
And then there's the ongoing discussion in the Stars and Stripes about not standing out in Germany. There's a schedule to change us all to authentic German license plates so our license plates won't mark us as Americans. My Focus blends in, but there's a lot of cars that shout American even if they've got a German plate. I don't think a German plate would help the Hummer at all.
Happy Birthday from Heidelberg, Teresa! I turned 50 just before I moved here in 2004 - and I keep forgetting to add the time since then, so I'm always surprised when I realize that I'll be 52 in just 72 more days.
I am not a writer. However, I am a printaholic, and my favorite fixes are science fiction, fantasy and mysteries.
I don't want writers who are low bidders. I want creative people to make enough money to be able to keep providing my fixes. In fact, I want them to make enough money to stay healthy and live a long time (just not enough money that they stop writing wonderful stories that provide my fixes)
And I think that they (and their heirs) should be able to control what happens with that work for the author's lifetime plus a fixed period of time. I don't believe in eternal copyright, but I find this "low bidder" language disturbing in the extreme.
When I lived in Carlisle, PA, we had 28 inches one March day. (I think that was the anniversary of the blizzard of 1893, but I'm not positive) Two guys in my apartment complex shoveled a path just big enough for one car out of the parking lot, so that the lady on dialysis could make it to the hospital. I wish I'd had a digital camara then.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2007 | 9 |
| 2006 | 13 |
| 2005 | 4 |
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