Toponym of the Day

Quoygrew (Westray, Orkney, UK)

Quoygrew is a Viking Age archaeological site that was continuously inhabited up until 1937. According to what I can find online (i.e. this PDF in Norwegian) the local pronunciation is /ˈkwaigroː/. The first element descends from Old Norse kví "[cattle] enclosure" and is found in other placenames such as Quoyloo and Cumlaquoy. The second element is more obscure, representing either ON grjót "rubble" or grǫf "grave".

Paralinguistic

I feel a need to balance out the spate of linguistical posts with some of my other fixations, such as food, family, and weather. So here's a ramble that embraces all of those (albeit not in that order).

At long last it's gotten proper cold, although to get there we had to pass through the misery of a feuchtkalten Sunday. Fifteen minutes of shivering and stomping in the dank while waiting for the bus had us making a mental inventory of what food was in the house so we could avoid having to go out again for supplies. Today it's remained below 0℃. There was even ice on the lake this morning--not a lot, but enough to reassure me a bit that the environment hasn't been completely ruined yet.

As a result, dinner on Sunday was defrosted cassoulet and monshu put off making his lasagne bianche with kale, mushrooms, and pancetta until last night. Apparently he's inspired by blank space: he said the work I'd done to clear out the refrigerator and freezer (and, to be fair, the efforts we've both made to consume as much of our leftovers as possible) had prompted him to make "enough for ten", so I froze half and refrigerated the rest.

Before dinner, the Old Man referenced the song I posted yesterday, expressing curiosity as to whether his "strange powers" would have me dreaming about him. As it turns out, not so much. What I remember best was a long chase sequence featuring me and several companions in an indestructible white van racing through a city full of zombies. (Two chases, actually, as at one point we lost one of our number over the side and I paired up with another survivor to go back and find him, which should've been as simple as going once around the block but which dream geography conspired to make even lengthier and more convoluted than our first race through the streets.) I'm choosing to blame that on heavy cheese intake.

Between the lasagne and the crazy dreams, I had a surprisingly good conversation with Crazy Brother. We spent the better part of an hour talking about Mom's shortcomings and what we could do to help her overcome them, which is a complete reversal of the usual. I've been meaning for a couple weeks now to send out an e-mail to my siblings once the holidays were over to take stock of where she is and what we think can be done, and for the first time I think I'll include him in that conversations.