Hautnass!

If I'd left for lunch when I should've instead of sitting here dithering, I'd having nothing to gripe about. But I had the luck to leave in the midst of a innocuous sprinkle that soon became a full-fledged downpour, which is how I ended up eating a mock-reuben in a deserted Einstein Brothers. Fortunately, it was nothing a sugar cookie and a hot spice tea couldn't fix, and with any luck my trousers will finally be dry before I have to leave for home.

It's a strange day at work. The system is down, so there's an almost eerie stillness over the room (or was until La Vache breezed back in a half-hour ago). I've got enough to do--evaluations, documentation, policy review, etc.--but, of course, nothing I really want to do. The real challenge, however, is going to be keeping my student busy tomorrow. If only I could bring in the last year's correspondence from home and put him to work filing it!

These books won't be flat for long!

When I got asked a couple weeks back some leading questions about what books I wanted, I expected to see one or two show up last weekend. I got five. I say I feel spoiled would be an understatement. In no particular order:

1. Baldi, Philip. The foundations of Latin--I fell in love with this book when I cataloged it many years ago now. In traces the development of Latin from the earliest attestations up until the twilight of the Classical Period with a clarity and readability that most specialist writers can only dream of.
2. Abley, Mark. Spoken here : travels among threatened languages--This got consistently good reviews from my philoglottic peers and it's not hard to see why. Already my eyes have misted over twice reading it, and I've barely completed one chapter. monshu confessed to sneaking more than a peek while it was squirreled away at his workplace.
3. Ostler, Nicholas. Empires of the word--Finally, a work that slices through all this "English is the world language because it outcompeted the others on its merits" bullshit and presents the real reasons why some tongues became linguas francas and others faded into oblivion.
4. Pulleyblank, Edwin G. Lexicon of reconstructed pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin--Exactly what the title says it is. In other words, a book only a geek like me could love.
5. Tyler, Royall (comp.). Japanese Tales--Just the thing to provoke a few shivers among the dog days of summer, in the time-honoured Japanese tradition.