Mild, with occasional storms

Thanks to my lingery cold, this weekend was something of a bust. The plan was, admittedly, ambitious:

• Friday: Meet monshu for dinner in Lincoln Park after the orchid sale.
• Saturday: Go furniture shopping in the morning; in the evening, hit kmon's May Party.
• Sunday: Art Chicago at Navy Pier with ottr4bear and Rubeus, followed by drinks and dinner with them and Nuphy

Dinner Friday turned out to be soup at home. Saturday morning, I rested up while monshu did orchid research online for his new babies. As for the evening, I figured if I'm not well enough to shop for beds, I'm in no shape to trek out to an unfamiliar location on the Northwest Side for revelry. So it turns out I frightened the hosts at Bear Night for nothing. Sunday, I felt better, but I was still in no mood for the shopping mall-like environment of a major art exhibition. So no culture for me!

I did, however, make it to Sidetrack for showtunes with the gang. Nuphy had view of some Latino twinkie vertical puppy pile at the bar whereas ottr and I could cruise the bear daddies with their personal otters at the next table. Fun for all! twnchicago even breezed by at one point, but paid me all the attention of a grease slick in the gutter. SOB! Then, dinner at the inevitable Las Mañanitas. Everyone was fascinated by the blue drinks but NO ONE WOULD ORDER ONE! Cobardes!

Sunday's weather was extraordinarily fickle. Gulf moisture blowing up from the South couldn't decide whether it wanted to precipitate on our heads or traipse into Canada. As I was waiting for the bus, a cloudburst. When I got out, full sun. At the bar, rain while the sun was shining. After it stopped, we walked a few blocks north and got to the restaurant just as it started pouring again. At night, I scampered back from monshu's in fear of an iminent storm, but the lightning blew out over the lack and I ended up on my roof, admiring an evening star so bright I could've sworn it was artificial.

A tentative entry about language

Right now, there is on my desk a book entitled A tentative grammar of the Efe or Mbuti language. I love the notion of a linguist so uncertain that he can't even decide what to call the language he's describing. It led me to expect sentences like, "Well, you could use the instrumental case here, but, uhm, I'm not sure I would; I mean, it wouldn't be wrong, but would it be the best way to express what you have in mind?" Of course, nothing really distinguishes the style from thousands of other descriptive grammars.

I searched the title and found that we also have a "tentative grammar" of something called Kipsigis-Nandi (mind you, that could change) and Mycenaean Greek. It makes me want to start my own popular series to compete with Routledge's "Colloquial" and the English Universities' "Teach Yourself". After all, I hate giving definite answers when people ask, "How do you say that in X?" I mean, seriously, it depends, doesn't it? How many ways are there in Engish to imply that someone's statement is false? Or even state it outright?

Oh, though I do feel a responsibility to post a bit more about my attempts to learn Mandarin Chinese, if only in order to reassure teapot_farm that this is a not a hopelessly quixotic task. I've learned how to say quite a number of things over the past two months. Statements, questions, requests--simple, but basically unambiguous. Yes, it may be highly "idiomatic" to say "Precious surname, huh?" when you want to know someone's name, but it's not confusing after you've done it a few times. We're also lucky to have a teacher who's very responsive to our curiosity about variations and distinctions.