Mood indicator

As of fifteen minutes ago:

Me: Why is this campus so filled with freak-ass numbnuts?
Esteemed colleague: I don't fuckin' know.

ARGH!

When I look at my own journal, the text wraps so that it fits to the browser window. On my Friends page, it doesn't and I end up with half the text off screen and a scroll bar on the bottom.

Why can't I do something about this? Why is the Exploder help completely useless when it comes to helping me find a solution?

Busy Thursday

Yesterday was about as crazy as a day gets for me. It would be child's play for a salesman, nothing special for a lawyer, but, lemme tellya, it's hell on a librarian.
( Skip the work bitching if you want. )

I escaped from that as soon as I could and tried to tie up loose ends before my inspection--like why my attorney hadn't sent me any of the information he'd promised me by that morning. After ten minutes for lunch, I swept into the florist on the way to the el and schnagged a very handsome double begonia which was sold to me by a twelve year-old. Totally worth it. When I got to the condo office, the business manager was chatting with a middle-aged man who was putting together the entertainment for the upcoming association barbecue. She thanked me for the flower and said, "Why don't you come? After all, you'll be living here." Plus, I got my first look at the declaration, budget, maintenance plan, rules and regs, and so forth. It all reeks of professionalism and good planning; I am so relieved.

The inspector and I got along so well that the seller's agent immediately asked, "Do you two know each other?" Within seconds, we were talking about Art Deco, plants, and Latin declensions. He was thorough, took copious notes, and gave me suggestions on what improvements I should and shouldn't attempt. I am very glad he insisted on viewing the electricals: irregular, custom-built breaker box (which he endearingly referred to as "jerrymandered"). The letter from my lawyer demanding they fix that--potentially a $1000 job--went out this morning. Most interesting discovery: All the doorways are metal! Just try to burn my apartment down!

I called monshu about meeting up with him and the nice couple just back from China who had a passel of scrolls to show him, but I happened to pick the one ten-minute block all afternoon when he was away from his desk. It gave me time to gulp down some dim sum at Chiu Quon before heading to the lawyer's. Despite that I've never learned the fucking lake streets in River North, I found his office on Ohio without much difficulty. He was great, spending almost a full hour talking me through the process and referring me to resources for fighting my tax assessment and other homeowners' hobbies. (Turns out he had tried to send me everything, but an underscore instead of a hyphen in my e-mail address had resulted in a bounce.)

At that point...well, meeting up with monshu was out of the question. Rush hour was approaching and I didn't relish trying to head north. So I went west instead, planning to hop on the 54/Cermak at Grand and ride right up to the hospital. Unfortunately, the walk to the station was more of a hike (and in full sun at that), though it did take me past an Office Despot where I picked up much-needed files for my growing sheaves of purchase-related documents.

That's how, at five p.m., I stumbled into Nuphy's new room with a bag of condo docs, a bag of files, and a bag of leftover Vietnamese dumplings. He's out of the ICU into intermediate care, less one trach tube and other annoying attachments. First the first time in seven weeks, he finally sounds like himself again. I may go into more detail later about the dream world he now realises he was living in and which he recalls in surreal blocks.

Nemuci left about an hour after I arrived; in the meantime, the Swiss Miss had arrived. I admit to feeling relieved when he left at quarter after eight, since he had gotten snippish when Nuphy asked him not to sit on the air conditioning unit. Jesus, God, man, how hard is it to humour the old man in the hospital bed? It was the first time I'd been alone with Nuphy in two weeks or so. Having witnessed him eat his first solid food in two months, I couldn't stop repeating how happy I was.

Unfortunately, the food caused him worry and I felt compelled to stay well past the end of visiting hours to reassure him. Everything came out fine the other end and he promised to try to read himself to sleep. Before I left, he thanked me profusely and I told him what I've been telling everyone: That no matter how much I do for him, I couldn't repay him for everything he's done for me.

There's was no way public transit could have gotten me home before 11 p.m., so I rode only as far as Space Mountain and caught a cab. I'd planned to go straight to bed, but found, when I got in, my third phone message from spookyfruit in three days, this one ending with the tip that it'd be okay to call late. Knowing that no call to him is a short call, I rang him up and talked for at least a half-hour. At that point, I was too wound up to sleep and had to resort to reading more about homeowner's insurance in order to sack out before midnight.

The horrible Chinese language

Thanks to aadroma for his link to a humourous article about the pitfalls of studying (written) Chinese. It's good to know I'm not alone in that sinking feeling that occurs when I look at a Chinese text and think one of three things:

1. I should know those characters. They look so familiar, but--for the life of me--I can't place them.
2. Yay, I recognise every character--except the one on which the entire meaning of whole bloody phrase hangs!
3. I know every character, but I still haven't the slightest clue what they mean in combination.

I'm specifically studying Classical Chinese and yet, Moser's stammering description of looking at a scroll and saying, "Um...I think it's something about a phoenix..."? That's me all over.

As it happened, I was going through and correcting a file of suggested seal engravings for monshu when I saw the entry. He's been trying to put them together using the results he gets from searching online English-Chinese dictionaries. While it's certainly better than throwing darts at a copy of the Shanghai Daily, I don't know that it's an approach I can particularly recommend. Trusting dictionaries is a risky business at best and, to make things worse, the ones he's found are intended for readers of contemporary Mandarin when seals are usually in Classical. It's rather like using a Spanish dictionary to construct Latin phrases.

Nevertheless, I absolute salute his endeavour and praise him for trying. How, except by plunging in, do you ever learn anything about anything? Earlier in the week, I sat him down and gave him a lesson in using a dictionary. (Again, to quote Moser, "Imagine a language where simply looking up a word in a dictionary is considered a skill like debate or volleyball!") It was hard to strike the right balance between telling him enough to be informative and not so much that he would recoil and never attempt to employ the blasted thing again. A lot of my advice was of the "The radical will always be on the left except when its not"-sort.

But it's good for me. Nothing clarifies something in your own head like trying to explain it to someone else. And the thrill I get from demonstrating my pathetic, hard-wrung handful of knowledge gives me the encouragement to try to squeeze more our of the dessicated scholar's stone of wenyanwen.

Because they're Swiss

Oh, mollpeartree's recent attempt to raise Canadian awareness reminded me that this is Switzerland's national day. I know because the Swiss Miss mentioned it yesterday. He asked Nuphy to observe a moment of silence sometime today and think of the Confederatio Helvetica.

"Yeah," I said, "think of some time when you knowingly received stolen goods...and then don't tell anyone."

Alternately, I suppose you could strike a blow for freedom by shooting something off a close relative's head with a deadly weapon. Or recall some time when a friend of yours was savagely and unjustly abused or insulted and brag about how you remained steadfastly neutral during the whole thing.

Nitt für unguat, Ihr Schluchtscheisser!