Sigh

It's been a long while. I've posted almost 12,000 times on this blog for over 20 years, but I haven't felt like writing for some time. That makes me sad. I've gotten caught up with life and I'd been relying mostly on my phone for Internet interaction, and it was just harder to do that, for one.  I have a laptop though now AND I just got a folding table big enough to write, read, do crafts, etc., on, rather than having a computer on a stool and being uncomfortable in my chair because I had to put a leg on either side.

I do post a lot on Facebook, and that's for people I'm friends with, and almost all of them are people I know personally, with the exception of a few librarians.  I guess I feel safer there in some ways than over-sharing to the great world beyond.  I know, that hasn't stopped me in the past. But I'm 55 now and a little wiser than when I started.

So let's see...I think I last wrote in February.  We got a puppy then and she was so tiny at 8 weeks that she could go between the slats of the picket fence.  Now she's nine months old, and she's nearly 50 lbs.  She finally has a big girl bark, is very tall and long and lanky, and generally is getting very big.  My roommate thinks she's part Lab (that part is obvious, as she has webbed toes and Labrador waterproofing) and part Doberman, much like the dog he had when I first met him over 30 years ago.  I'm leaning towards part Great Dane with her build, but he is probably right.  She's a joy, very enthusiastic, loving, and a good companion to the other dog, who is a Lab/Pit cross and now much smaller than her.

Healthwise I'm dealing with ageing.  I've lost 50 lbs. since early November and 28 of that was from late December on.  (I was put on a different diuretic in November and I swear 20 lbs. came off because I am a sponge.)  I'm on medicine now called Ozempic for my diabetes, but it helps with weight loss and I'm doing pretty well on it, despite early side effects.  I just went up to the maintenance dose.

I do need to lose weight because I have chondromalacia, which is a loss of cartilage in the joint.  My knees are to the point of being bone-on-bone and I need a bilateral knee replacement, but I need to lose another 40 or so pounds.  They'd like my BMI to be under 40, but 45 is a hard stop and I'm 48 now.  So I need to work harder because I'm in a lot of pain and it's very difficult to walk very far.  I do have an ADA placard for out in the community.  I had one at the university but they only gave me a temporary one as they couldn't read my GP's handwriting. I had him redo it and resubmitted it, but they denied my request.  I have a couple of weeks to submit records, which I've requested, and perhaps I can get one on appeal.  You can't just park in a spot on campus without their specific hangtag, you see...my state-issued placard doesn't do a thing.  And they're pretty tough.  One of my former co-workers used a prosthetic leg and they made him send over records, and he finally got it. I've had it all summer, though, and it's been a godsend.  Without it I'm going to have to walk probably a quarter of a mile from my car to the bus stop and back, and that is very difficult and painful.

I'm also most likely going to have my gall bladder out soon. I go to a surgery consult the first week of September.  They'd found gallstones on an MRI of my liver but I was asymptomatic until I had fried fish and was in extreme distress for a week.  I'm a little leery of this. Even with the weight loss, I weigh about 280 lbs., so lots of visceral fat and higher mortality chances with any abdominal surgery.  Hopefully, it will be laparoscopic, as I don't want to miss much work.

Next week will mark the five-year anniversary since I moved in with my roommate.  All in all it's gone very well, surprisingly well, actually. Neither of us were particularly sure about the move and living together.

At work, headquarters took over my surgery and outpatient visit authorisations, leaving me without a position, but my boss (who's only been here a few months) really went to bat for me, and they did a lateral move into a position I've had before that is technically a few rungs down, but because of the way they did it, I didn't lose my pay, although I'm on the high end of the scale for this one.  I'm back in checkout.  One day before I moved I had a panic attack, because when I did it before, I was alone for the better part of a year, did the phone and e-mails, and generally had trouble keeping up.  Now there are two people at checkout (although my work buddy, who is very bubbly, is moving to registration, so they're trying to hire someone for the checkout position that's open), and one person who's job is to schedule phone and e-mail requests, letting me focus on the patients and families for the most part.  So it's actually been nice.  Not as much pressure and I get to interact with families and see the improvements in patients' lives. I do, being an introvert, get drained by too much interaction, but I also find it satisfying in this case.  So everything's going much better than it could have.

I've been working every day on a series of exercises to help keep my mind sharp.  There's Wordle and Latin Wordle, plus I'm studying languages on Duolingo.  I'm trying to brush up on my rusty Spanish, German, and Latin, plus I'm taking Irish and Welsh.  I was going to try to learn Modern Hebrew (I've studied Biblical Hebrew), but that wasn't going well, as the characters were very small, and it just wasn't clicking. I'm going to take my Biblical Hebrew and do some work on that instead and then go back to the modern after I get a grip on the ancient language.  But I'm getting through the ones I've studied before pretty quickly and understand more than I thought.  My grammar is actually still pretty good, it's just the vocabulary that I'm having to pick up again.  German is extremely easy, even though I haven't had it since 1985.  Latin is my most-studied language (5 semesters, including Mediaeval as well as the normal Classical, plus a little Humanist), so it's going well, although there are a lot of angry parrots in this one. (To be fair, Hebrew had a dove that liked warm wine--you can see why I was having trouble).  I've already used a little Spanish to check a person out at work without having to use the video interpreter, and I asked one of the in-person interpreters what the word for 'stickers' is and put it on my bulletin board because the kids love those.

Okay, I guess I'll sign off for now. I'm on vacation. No plans, not going anywhere, but I took the week off between now and Labor Day.  I'm hoping to get some rest and work on some new hobbies and actually do some reading.

And for some reason my neighbours are setting off fireworks for no discernable reason.

Tired

My rest of the day:

1. Got an oil change at Valvoline and a new air filter.
2. Went to the library and picked up a couple of books on orchids.
3. Got a call from my boss (I have a boss!) about bringing two forms of ID on Monday.
4. Picked up a friend for his appointment and took him there.
5. Picked up another friend from work, home, and to the pharmacy.
6. Stopped by Jin Jin with my friends and picked up dinner.
7. Dropped them off, came home, ate kung pao tofu and spring rolls followed by some ice cream. I am now very stuffed.
8. Spent some time on Facebook. Found an interesting article about Polari, the forgotten secret language of gay men, which I passed on to a friend.
9. Listened to Pandora (the Bastille station) for awhile.

It's not even 8 pm. I'm pooped. I'd like to watch something, but right now I'm going to just take it easy, maybe close my eyes for a few minutes, but not necessarily nap this late in the day. A has to be at work at 8 am, and I'm giving him a ride, but I don't want to go to sleep just yet.

Here are those interesting articles:

This is so cool--over 20 volumes of an Assyrian dictionary, worked on since 1921, and it's also available for free online. :) The language geek in me just wants to squeal in delight:

Dictionary of dead language complete after 90 years

Almost 90 experts from around the world took part, diligently recording and cross referencing their work on what ended up being almost two million index cards.

The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is 21 volumes long and is encyclopaedic in its range. Whole volumes are dedicated to a single letter, and it comes complete with extensive references to original source material throughout.

-and-

Archaeologists Unearth New Dead Sea Scrolls Cave

Archaeologists have unearthed a new cave associated with the famed Dead Sea Scrolls, filled with ancient storage jars and lids off the Judean cliffside, marking the first successful excavation of its kind in 60 years.

Until Wednesday, researchers assumed only 11 caves contained scrolls. But the discovery of a twelfth cave cements a longstanding belief among archaeologists that looters stole the artifacts in the mid-1900s, referencing pick ax heads found deep inside a tunnel at the new cave's rear as proof.

Hidden along the cave's walls, excavators found numerous broken jars and lids. Among the other findings were fragments of scroll wrappings, leather and string

So sad that it was looted. They were probably hidden away in private collections or possibly destroyed, and that is a tragedy in either case.

Oh, by the way, I took a quiz on Yiddish words and their meanings. It didn't turn out too badly, for a goy:

100% -- You Would Make Your Jewish Family Proud. Ay yay yay!! Your family would be so proud of your Yiiddish! You totally grew up in a Jewish family and know all of the primary Jewish-isms! You've seen your share of big bar/bat mitzvahs bashes and you use these slang words very frequently. You are NEVER shlepping and we are very verklemptov over your score!! Congrats!

Also...just in time for Valentine's Day--

The Rude, Cruel, and Insulting 'Vinegar Valentines' of the Victorian Era

The Victorians had the 'polite insult' down to an absolute art. Reminds me of someone I know. :)

-and-

Apparently I should look for romance in Alabama--I love Byron's poetry. But no, I live in the state of couples' tattoos. Really, that's a thing?

Most Popular Valentine's Day Gift Searches Per State

And finally, this made my day yesterday...

“Donaeld The Unready” tweets as if Trump is a mad medieval king

“Make Mercia Great Again!” The new Twitter account Donaeld The Unready casts Trump as a medieval king, obsessed with draining the East Anglian fens, building shield walls and the bad monk Bede.

One more reason to like Google...

Google launches Endangered Language Project: Google tries to promote info exchange on the world's 3,000 endangered languages.

Today, Google announced the launch of the Endangered Language Project, "a website for people to find and share the most up-to-date and comprehensive information about endangered languages." The project was built in conjunction with the Alliance for Language Diversity.

Google and its partners hope the Endangered Language Project will help by providing "an online resource to record, access, and share samples of and research on endangered languages, as well as to share advice and best practices for those working to document or strengthen languages under threat."

Although Google helped develop the site, they plan to turn it over to the First Peoples' Cultural Council and The Institute for Language Information and Technology at Eastern Michigan University.

One more thing...

Given the loss of indigenous languages to English, and the heavy borrowing that is sometimes the only remnant of those languages, I can't really argue with this:

A dead man fell from the sky...: The grammar thug
'English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.'

I'm loving this new schedule

It's just now about the time I would normally have gotten home a couple of weeks ago. But instead, I was able to:

1. Go to the bank and put in a cheque I forgot to deposit yesterday (yay for a later closing time on Fridays).
   
2. Eat at Taco Bell (okay, what can I say, I do about twice a year, so it's kind of a treat. I rarely eat fast food; I do eat a lot of cafeteria food, though.
   
3. Go to Kroger and get a couple of things I needed.
   
4. Come home and re-pot a plant into a larger pot so it could spread out.
   

Not bad. I must say, though, that I am glad it's Friday. This is my first full week of doing the additional tasks I've been given, and it's been a learning experience. I'm starting to learn time-saving methods, like where I can look for what I need rather than going through a lengthy process of obtaining it from other providers, or checking with the companies to see if we even need anything. I still have a ways to go to try to fit in what I'm beginning to think is at least a five-eight hour job in two hours, so I can also get everything done in terms of my data entry and, of course, the library. So I am a bit tired. I haven't been crashing like I was, but I'm really considering taking a bit of a nap, then getting up to do the game notes rather than waiting till the last minute, which I've been doing of late. No one's mentioned needing me tomorrow for anything yet, so if I can, I'm going to do the rest of the laundry, some stuff around the house, and a small grocery run. I'm also interested in doing some review of my ancient Greek. I never got past the aorist, dropping out in my first semester, but I have both semesters' books. I was thinking the other day how much I missed studying languages, so I think I'm going to try to spend a little each day (except for Sundays; there's too much to do on that day) to work on that, at least for awhile. I get these moods every now and again, and I usually drop things fairly quickly (the curse of an Aries, I suppose, they start things but sometimes have a hard time finishing them), so we'll see. Eventually, I'd like to really do well in all the languages I've studied, of which I am fluent in none but English, and some days that's questionable. I've studied Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, ancient Greek, Latin--classical, mediaeval, and Renaissance (probably the one language other than English I'm best with, and I'm getting rusty), Spanish, German, and also French (but only for reading), a little Welsh and Irish, a tiny bit of Cherokee, some basic hieroglyphics, and that's about it. So I'm very much a dabbler, and I want to be more fluent. (I did manage in all that to come one class away from a linguistics major--phoenetics never seemed to be taught when I could take it, and it was required. My favourite aspect was historical linguistics. They would give us languages we didn't know, so parameters, and we would be able to figure out how things changed over time. It was a great kind of puzzle. Government and binding theory nearly caused me to have a breakdown, on the other hand, and this from a person who absolutely loved diagramming sentences as a kid. I really regret that I didn't manage to finish the major.)

Hurrah!

Multilingual Shakespeare season planned for 2012

Each of William Shakespeare's 38 plays are to be performed in a different language to mark the 2012 London Olympics, it has been announced.

Stagings of Julius Caesar in Italian, Troilus and Cressida in Maori and The Tempest in Arabic will form part of the season at Shakespeare's Globe theatre.

Lithuanian, Spanish and Greek are among the other languages that will feature.

The six-week theatre season, part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, will start on 23 April - the Bard's birthday.

They'll be put on at the Globe Theatre, which has an open-air theatre but is planning to build an indoor Jacobean one, 'the most complete recreation of an English Renaissance indoor theatre yet attempted'. :)

It's a shame there's no way I'll see the plays performed. I've always wanted to go to Britain, but I'm not sure I'll ever get there.

What is lost when a language dies?

The death of language?

As globalisation sweeps around the world, it is perhaps natural that small communities come out of their isolation and seek interaction with the wider world. The number of languages may be an unhappy casualty, but why fight the tide?

"What we lose is essentially an enormous cultural heritage, the way of expressing the relationship with nature, with the world, between themselves in the framework of their families, their kin people," says Mr Hagege.

"It's also the way they express their humour, their love, their life. It is a testimony of human communities which is extremely precious, because it expresses what other communities than ours in the modern industrialized world are able to express."

This statistic saddens me: 133 languages are spoken by fewer than 10 people.

In some cases, a language may be spoken by a single person. With that person's death, the language dies. Just as our environment's loss of heterogeneity is a threat, so is the loss of unique languages, which should be studied and conserved before it is too late.

Yay for languages

If you notice to the left of the blog are many little flags of different countries, representing the languages you can translate this blog into. You have to have the correct fonts in place on your computer (I don't have any of the Asian ones, so they come out as little boxes), but it's great fun. It uses Google's translation system. I don't know how well it works (having a smattering of German, French, and Spanish, but not being fluent, and my knowledge of Greek and Hebrew is limited to the ancient forms), but would love feedback concerning the translations' validity.

Funny, I also only caught that I'd mistyped 'Alan' for 'Allan' for Edgar Allan Poe below when it was translated into German. I guess the name stood out that time.

Thanks to NiteCruzr of the Real Blogger Status blog for the code.

Mystery stones

I know of a lot of mysterious places in the US and the world, but this one slipped under my radar, perhaps because it is recent.

American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse

For more on the Georgia Guidestones, check out the Wikipedia article.

A fun test, although I suck at Slavic languages

but hey, I've never studied one, so I think I muddled along pretty well. And being able to read German and French does not mean you get Dutch or necessarily the Belgian spin on those.

62 Germanic, 66 Romance, 25 Slavic, 0 other

Look, it's your percentages! What do you think? Would you have survived Europe?

I think not, nobody survives Europe for very long. Unless you were born there, in which case you're going to live forever! No, sorry, that's wishful thinking I suppose.

Oh, here's a slight disclaimer: if you scored 100% on Other languages, you needn't be too proud of yourself: all you've done is know that Hungarian isn't anything like any of the other European languages. It's entirely my fault for including that nonsense category - I shouldn't have, I don't know a thing about non-European languages.

If you were expecting a serious test, by the way, I'm utterly sorry that you're such a downer. Get a life, and stop taking yourself so damned seriously! You're taking internet quizzes for Pete's sake.

Whoever Pete is. Probably a badger.

Link: The Foreign Language Comprehension Test written by frumpyqueen on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

And I should have gotten 100% in Other; I do know that Hungarian isn't like any of the other languages in Europe. Must have chosen the wrong gibberish. Sigh. Good night.

But I can't make the nasal sounds

You Should Learn French

C'est super! You appreciate the finer things in life... wine, art, cheese, love affairs. You are definitely a Parisian at heart. You just need your tongue to catch up...

What Language Should You Learn?

Okay, I stayed up way too late working on the taxes. Time to go to bed. 'Night.