Ag baile

Our disenchantment with Mariano's had to begin somewhere. monshu's been stopping off there on the way back from his downtown culture forays. On Tuesday we had a lovely piece of pork he'd bought there; on Wednesday, we had a bad can of clams that had been on sale. Not that we knew it at the time. It was fine--delicious in fact--served over pasta with a little garlic and oil. Then shortly after midnight, the Old Man staggered to the bathroom and vomited.

At first, I had no idea that was the cause; I just cursed him for waking only moments after I'd finally managed to drop off. (I really have to be more careful about watching wrenching dramas less than two hours before bedtime.) Then I was flooded with remorse and concern, thinking it was the flu. He's so much more resistant to tummy trouble than me, I didn't even suspect the dinner at first. Sure, I felt a whiff of nausea, but that's normal when someone's ralphing in the next room, right? It was another couple of hours before I began feeling nearly as terrible as he did.

But the curious thing is, that's as bad as it got. I may not have slept very well, but I never ended up hugging porcelain either. I still felt in no fit shape to go into work, so I called in and tried--without much success--to sleep a little more. For lunch, we had oatmeal. Dinner was beef tea and triscuits. We both seem out of the woods now, but the real question will be how we sleep tonight.

At least I was able to take care of one or two practical things. The nice guy at NetFlix suggested we contact our local post office in an attempt to get to the bottom of our breakage issues, so I stopped in and made a formal report. The very professional Miss Phillips promised to call us back once she'd had a chance to investigate. On the way back, I stopped into the pet clinic and made an appointment for the little nipper. There was more I'd hoped to do, but even that was enough to leave me feeling a little lightheaded, so I read and laid around some and watched an episode of Veronica Mars on the telly with monshu.

I'm hoping my weekend plans are still a go, but the last thing I need to do right now is abuse this stomach with alcohol and a céilidhe just isn't the same sober. With any luck, though, a filmic one will arrive unscathed. B'fhearr braon sa bhaile ná dhá braon sa chathair!

Réalta im' intinn féin

Seachtain na Gaeilge is almost over (it runs through Monday) and I'm only just now getting around to observing it. I blame the weather; normally, the misty dank would have me pining for the loughs and boreens, but there's no mist around, only snow and ice. I had to almost force myself to pick up Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea (a decent read if you're willing to ignore the anachronisms and attempts at postmodernism, which I am). Once I did, though, I found myself reaching for my dictionaries again, and we all know where that leads.

I was mildly impressed with myself for remembering that "Star of the Sea" would be Réalta na Mara. But I wanted to be sure, so I googled and found out that it's not as straightforward as all that. (This is Irish after all.) Old Irish had rétglu, an n-stem with genitive singular rétglann, the modern reflex of which would be réaltann and réalta is found as a fifth declension feminine in the earlier literary language.

Nowadays, the CO treats it as fourth declension: invariable in the singular with plural réaltaí.) In dialects, the old genitive réaltann sometimes serves as the nominative as well. (Others of its class prefer the dative, e.g. Éirinn as a variant of Éire.) In some, réalta gets reanalysed as a second declension feminine, losing the second syllable altogether and acquiring a new analogical genitive, réilte. Then in his dictionary of Cork Irish, David Webb notes that the form preferred in West Cork is réiltín, properly a diminutive and used in the standard language to mean "asterisk".

That's the fun of Irish: Don't like the declension of something? Feel free to chose another!