I'm here

I'm very fond of my Belarusian colleague. Even though I can't recall ever having denied permission to rearrange her schedule, she still comes to me to explain the details of any proposed modification, and always ends with the question "Is it okay?" Every year around January 1st I find a bag of atrocious Soviet-style "chocolates"[*] from "Father Frost". And if she's not feeling better after an illness, she'll never say so; when I ask, "How are you doing?" the most negative reply I get is, "I'm here".

So if you asked me how I feel today, I'd tell you "I'm here". I feel pretty much exactly the same as I did yesterday morning when I decided to call in, but I decided that since I'm going to be cranky, uncomfortable, and unproductive whether I'm at home or at work, so I might as well be getting paid for it. Ironically, yesterday was our annual Health Fair, so now I have to find someplace else to get my flu shot.

But of course what I'm really bummed about is missing princeofcairo's thing at Third Coast. I mean, he comes all the way to the neighbourhood where I live for a signing and I still can't be arsed to come. I thought maybe I could be there in spirit by reading a bit more Lovecraft but "The Dreams in the Witch House" just isn't grabbing me. Oh, well; I suppose Tim Powers is a reasonable substitute.

Now I'm just hoping me and monshu (who's also in his second day of blorginess) will recover in time for our weekend plans. I had a full course of fun, starting with iBAM at the IAHC on Halloween afternoon followed by the parade down Halsted with a carefully selected coterie of bearish buddies. Then Sunday was to be our annual pilgrimage to Pilsen for sugar skulls and Mexican fine art. Could still be, but we might need to break at the obsidian knife just to be sure...


[*] No idea if there's any actual cacao in them.

More idle lexical speculation

To keep myself entertained during my day-and-a-half of malingering, I turned to YouTube. Y'all know I love them books, but when I'm already half asleep, even a good 'un is likely to finish the job. Seeking comfort, I didn't spend much time discovering the novel and exciting but instead rewatched the funny and familiar, such as the classic Peter Kay biscuit routine. [Warning: May be unintelligible to those who have never been north of the Trent.]

In any case, I began to wonder if his frequent use of "brew" to refer to "tea [the drink]" is a direct consequence of the lexical shift in his dialect whereby "tea" has come to mean "evening meal". Unfortunately I've got no real data on the extant of this use of "brew" nor its history, so I'll I can do is wonder.