Highlights from last night's bottomless carafe

Thanks to febrile, in my mind Monday begs for bullet points. Herewith with have ( Quotables from a Drunken Owlet )

Words, words, words

At Meinl yesterday, I babbled something to princeofcairo about discovering two new Greek "words for love". Everyone knows about ero:s, agape:, and philia, but who knew there was also storge:? Liddell & Scott define it simply as "love; affection", though they do note that it's especially used "of parents and children". The source where I originally saw it (and whose title, naturally, has fallen out of my sieve-like brain) defined it as "family love", that is, the non-sexual affection of close kin for one another. The other term I had in mind was probably either himeros or pothos, both of which are defined as "longing". One source defines the first as desire for the humanly obtainable and the other as yearning for the unobtainable, but I'm not sure how deeply to trust that.

I also babbled something to granuaile about the Austrian word for "sour cherry" being Weichsel rather than Sauerkirsche. Other sources (including Meinl itself) define this specifically as a morello cherry, in case that means anything to anyone. (It didn't to caitalainn, who was the one searching for the stuff in the first place.)

I also babbled the name of a Greek cheese which is commonly used to for saganaki, kefalotiri, but no one besides princeofcairo seemed to parse it. The name literally translates as "head cheese", but is made from sheep milk, so maybe, as with tetilla, this refers to the shape or something.

Speaking of cheese, at Tizi Melloul, I struggled to remember the name of the maggot-infested Sardinian cheese that appeared in News of the Weird not long ago. Casu marzu was one the tip of my brain, though it appears that casu modde (goddamn ASCII! there should be dots under them d's) may be the more "echt" Sard name.

Incredible Sunday

Yesterday was damn near perfect.

I slept in. The sun woke me up. I had two epiphanies about Korean historical phonology. ( Technical details lurk here. )

I got a ride to Meinl from welcomerain. There I met a lot of fun people, talked about food and languages, ate ham and cheese and gugelhupf, and drank two large mochas. mollpeartree gave me a fantastic scarf. She, princeofcairo, caitalainn, and I went shopping. I bought some silly pretty things. We went out to Tizi Melloul, met more good friends, ate steaming bacalao croquettes and drank red wine. The featured Middle Eastern pulled me onto the floor to dance with her and told me she was "impressed" with my moves. I got an enthusiastic round of applause from the room. caitalainn had us all pissing ourselves laughing. When I got home, I felt melancholy, had a satisfying wank, and sank into sleep, exhausted.

The only thing missing was monshu!