Bedtime procrastination

I really should go to bed, but also I really should update.

The weather has been nice lately, which in a way is good because it makes me happy. It also sometimes makes me sad because there is little point sitting in the Meadows by yourself and looking at other people having fun with their friends. I could of course ask people to sit in the Meadows with me, but I don't want to impose. Also, it would be nice if they would ask me. (Thanks LG!)

The shit hit the fan big time New Scotland-wise when Panda decided she was adult enough to sign up for the Castle Ceilidh in St Andrews. No way are we going to take her along! Part of the 4-hour committee meeting on Friday was spent thinking of politically correct reasons to refuse her; I think we’re going with that we cannot cater for her needs and therefore do not want the responsibility of having to do so. It will probably result in tears and temper tantrums on Thursday.

Dancebase does Dancing for Downies, but it’s not very clever that they do it when Panda is at school.

The committee meeting was very long, but actually good fun. MG got tired and snappy at the end, but other than that. Some memorable quotes that I really couldn’t justify putting in the minutes:

“JF makes strange noises sometimes.” (HP)
“JG had very wiggly hair. It made him look a bit like a Klingon.” (JW)
“I like your Super Ted.” (HP)

Needless to say that there was a JF Strange Noises imitation competition, and the hair of AG was also assessed but it wasn’t related to any Star Trek character.

Which brings us to AP, who decided to burden WB and me with her problem that she could never tell the theme tunes to Star Wars and Superman apart. I think we spent about an hour listening to the two tunes and comparing, and we went off on tangents about other tv shows from our past (most of which I didn’t know – but then again, they wouldn’t have known Nathalie, Vrouwtje Theelepel, de Fabeltjeskrant or de Familie Knots). Eventually we decided that Star Wars and Superman actually have the same theme tune. They must have.

Language in Context was cool. We had lunch first (remind me never to eat nachos and curly fries at Negociants again!), and then the talk. RL based very strong conclusions on very little data, but everyone was very enthusiastic.

Linguistic Circle was even cooler. Gong phonology in a contact situation. Gong is a Sino-Tibetan language from Thailand, with four tones (one of which has two allotones), ten monophthongs (each with three or four allophones, but they overlap so there are only 17 monophthong realisations), and three diphthongs (with allophones). It has been in contact with Thai for about thirty years now, and the resulting Contact Gong has 17 monophthong phonemes because the Thai speakers can’t apply the allophone rules anymore, five tones (same reason), and ten diphthongs. Thai, like Normal Gong, has three. So 3+3=10.

Home-made tomato soup is nice.

We are doing a word-of-the-day thing in the office. WB started it on Wednesday. Previous words of days are absquatulate, buccellation, and ca’canny. It is my turn tomorrow for D. MM sent me a list of possible candidates, and although I do like decussate and dextrorotary, I think I’m going with doryphore. Some would say it’s very appropriate. But then I will get upset and might defenestrate you, and you may end up disabled or deceased.

Next week is my birthday. Help?

I am also going to a seminar on language policy and planning by someone called Tadhg Ó hIfernáin. JW is not convinced that this is actually a name. I think it is, but I wonder what the English version of it is. I think the Irish do English versions?

I also have my flight details for the Jakobsen Conference. I am flying to Sumburgh. Airport code LSI, which I think stands for Lerwick Shetland Islands. Which is odd as a) it is in Sumburgh, not in Lerwick, and b) there is an airstrip (I wouldn’t call it an airport, although they call it Lerwick Tingwall Aerodrome!) closer to Lerwick. I say LSI is in Sumburgh – if Google Maps and their satellite images are anything to go by, the airport is about five times as big as Sumburgh. Actually, from the very detailed satellite image (it’s an airport, the satellites are primarily for military use – guess why you can zoom into Sumburgh a lot more than you can into Edinburgh...) I am not convinced there is actually a Sumburgh beyond the airport. The next farmstead over seems to actually be called Jarlshof.

MG is Beltaning until 5am tonight. I am not waiting up for her.

Good night.

Worry and relief

From Michael Flinn (ed.), Scottish population history: from the 17th century to the 1930s (Cambridge: CUP, 1977), specifically from the chapter 'The demographic influence of the potato':

The potato made it possible to feed the increasing population, and the continued growth of the population in the early decades of the nineteenth century forced an ever-growing proportion of the population into dangerous dependence upon it (p. 422).

Oh dear.

The initial appearance, diffusion and general adoption of the potato can, fortunately, in Scotland's case, be documented fairly precisely (p. 423).

Phew.

The Shetland Times

I’m in the Shetland Times! Now I just have to make sure I live up to the expectations...

The talk at the Postgraduate Conference went alright. It wasn’t the same talk as I’ll be doing in Scalloway. This was about whether it was possible to use modern models to do historical research. My conclusion was that it wasn’t impossible, at least. Everyone was really positive, which was a bit surprising, because I really did think it wasn’t that good. Especially since I basically drew conclusions from very little data, and there was a bit of going in circles going on in my argument. But MM let me live, she even nodded a couple of times during the talk. I got a few laughs when I said that I can’t do what LC does, and drive over the Forth Bridge to Fife to record hours and hours of piper kids talking, and ask them about their social behaviour – because my people are dead. The questions from HTL (MG: ‘Who has a verb for a middle name, that’s stupid!’) were answerable, those from CH actually quite encouraging. The PGC was quite a success...

Mess

MS is uncontactable so the whole merged highland thing is still a bit of a mess. And FC is in a state because I was under the (wrong) impression that there was no step class in Term 3. Yay for New Scotland. :(

Holiday

So far I have...

• bought new shoes
• bought a little present for KM
• decided on a date for my birthday party (Fri 5 May), subject to MG's approval
• showed the neighbours how the satellite navigation system in their car actually works
• finished the presentation I'm giving tomorrow week
• helped my mum buy a new printer and installed it
• watched all three Shameless DVDs from the set
• given up eating the really manky potato flavour (! - not even real potato) snacks that my mom's friend brought back from their holiday in China
• tried to download my mom's friends China holiday movie from their camera unto their computer, which is impossible without installing the proper software, which is impossible because she's managed to lose the CD

I still have to

• meet my former babysat kids tomorrow
• make sushi with half our and half my mom's friend's family on Saturday
• buy chocolate for LG
• do some cycling, weather permitting
• close the bank account where the only thing happening for years is them taking out € 3.50 every three months for a debit card that I never use

It is also looking like I'll be home around the beginning of August for my mom's birthday plus to give AL somewhere to be on holiday between Romania and Ludwigstein.

Well done Edinburgh!

Well, I made it home on Saturday as planned, only slightly later. The luggage transport belt inside the airport terminal in Edinburgh had snapped, and they didn't seem to have a back-up system at all. We were all asked to deposit our luggage at the outsize baggage desk (basically: chuck it on the heap) and it would all be taken care of manually. Of course, if they wouldn't make one big heap but already do some sorting as the bags come in, that would have been a lot easier.

Getting to Edinburgh airport two hours before departure time seems to be a good idea anyway, given the time everything takes there. Queue at check-in only took twenty minutes but the whole queuing and x-ray procedure takes ages. Why they don't just open all x-ray terminals, I have no idea. It took about an hour.

Once in the airplane, we were first told that we were waiting for the bags for a maximum of 15 minutes, then that we would leave in five minutes regardless of whether we had luggage or not, 15 minutes later we were told we were going to leave in five minutes and now half the bags were on the plane, the other half wasn't, and another 15 minutes later we finally left. With all the bags, only they never actually announced that. I found out because the people next to me had to get a connection to Budapest and were slightly panicking.

Anyway, so we left 55 minutes late. The rest all went quite smoothly. The food was even quite nice.

At home now. Very windy.

Therapy failed...

Sorry to have to disappoint AL, but retail therapy didn’t work. Maybe I’m just not good at retail therapy. I’m very bad at buying things. I must have seen at least five different pairs of shoes that I wanted to buy (some of them affordable even) and all sorts of other cool clothes, but I didn’t buy them because I somehow doubted I actually needed them. I know that is sort of the whole point of retail therapy – buying stuff you don’t actually need but that’s good to have anyway – but I’m just incapable of doing that.

So I spent three and a half hours going up and down Princes Street, and I came back with one DVD. Well, one three-DVD set. Second season of Shameless. Good stuff.

Needed it too. Doing retail therapy on your own is not fun, if all the other people are doing retail therapy in pairs. And then going into the EUSA shop in Potterow on my way back was a bad idea too. A: they didn’t have chocolate chip muffins anymore, or the Guardian, and B: there are just some people you don’t want to see with someone else. (Skidedanskere!)

So watched three episodes of Shameless from my bed with my big fluffy toy dog. And tonight we’re invited over at LG’s to watch Much ado about nothing. Am debating whether or not to take the big fluffy toy dog with me. It may not be allowed to leave LG’s again, that’s the problem.

And breathe out...

Yay, Easter break! Well, I’m taking it anyway. Version 1.0 of the presentation is finished and with no one else in the office, it’s not exactly the most motivating place to work, so I’m leaving it at version 1.0. Nothing left to do, except send some e-mails out about the Postgraduate Conference, so I’ll go to the office in a bit to do that, bring home my laptop and then really start my Easter break.

After that I’m taking AL’s advice and am going into town for some retail therapy. There’s some stuff I need to buy for people back home, and I might just treat myself to something although I have no idea yet to what.

Went to the cinema with the NS bunch yesterday, to see Ice Age 2: The meltdown. I had forgotten about the little squirrel. And about the tiger actually as well. All I remembered was the mammoth and the sloth. It was an okay movie. Afterwards back to AF’s for tea and pecan pie. Was nice. But slightly too late maybe.

Nice to know

So some time in February VP said it was better to just stay friends, ‘because I was only getting so worked up about the whole thing.’ Of course by then it was already crystal clear that the whole thing was never going to happen anyway, and there was no doubt my feelings were never in the picture... but it was a nice illusion.

So today I learned that I was only told this after VP had secured non-single status for himself. Or perhaps slightly prior, that I was an obstacle that needed cleared before he could do so. Illusion shattered.

With all the commitment issues playing in this moment’s relationships, and me lending an ear to everyone (MG, WG and VP over the course of three days!), surely that whole relationship thing is an overrated institution that we could easily do without. Not worth the bother and the mental torment it causes.

Now if I keep telling myself this, I might start to feel better...

Ideology

Mainly for MG but others can enjoy too... Sixteen possible definitions of ideology:

• the process of production of meanings, signs and values in social life;
• a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class;
• ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
• false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
• systematically distorted communication;
• that which offers a position for a subject;
• forms of thought motivated by social interests;
• identity thinking;
• socially necessary illusion;
• the conjecture of discourse and power;
• the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world;
• action-oriented sets of beliefs;
• the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality;
• semiotic closure;
• the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure;
• the process whereby social life is converted to a natural reality.

From Terry Eagleton, Ideology: an introduction (London: Verso, 1991), p. 1-3. Here quoted from Rosina Lippi-Green, Language ideology and language change in Early Modern German: a sociolinguistic study of the consonantal system of Nuremberg (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994), p.7.

Window

Beautiful weather yesterday, and seeing as we seem to have a little visitor of the mousey persuasion, it seemed time for some good old spring cleaning. This involved cleaning the windows, also from the outside. Our living room window tilted inside out so it was very convenient to clean. Then it was my bedroom window’s turn to be cleaned. This one refused to be tilted properly, but got severely dislocated and ended up about a foot outside the window frame. Still on the hinges though. MG and I must have spent at least half an hour, if not 45 minutes, on trying to forcibly get the window back in place. Success in the end. The rest of the windows were cleaned from the outside by jumping up and down to reach the top of the window. We’re ground floor, officially, but we’re about three steps from ground level, so just enough for me not to be able to reach the top of the window when just standing.

Also did some work yesterday. The East German Marxist linguistics that haunts my Sorbian research reached new heights with this quote from Heinz Schuster-Šewc, ‘Sprache und ethnische Formation in der Entwicklung des Sorbishen’, Zeitschrift für Slawistik 4 (1959), 577–595:

Überhaupt ist es falsch, bei der Beurteilung des Selbständigkeitsgrades einer Sprache bzw. des Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses einzelner Dialekte von der Existenz sogenannter “Ursprachen” auszugehen. Die marxistische Lehre von der Gesellschaft lehrt uns, daß es in der Geschichte derartige “Ursprachen” und “Urvölker” niemals gegeben hat. Die grundlegende gesellschaftliche Einheit in der Urgemeinschaft war der Stamm mit den ihm untergeordneten Sippen. Jeder Stamm bildete auch in sprachlicher Hinsicht eine Einheit. Die weitere Entwicklung in der Urgesellschaft wird charakterisiert durch den Zerfall und die ständig fortlaufende Teilung der Stämme. Im Rahmen des Bevölkerungszuwachses und der territorialen Ausbreitung der Stämme zerfällt ein Stamm nach dem andern in kleinere Teile, aus denen sich im weiteren Verlauf der Entwicklung selbst wieder Stämme bilden. Zusammen mit dem Zerfall der Stammeseinheit zerfällt natürlich auch die Stammessprache, und es entstehen neue verwandte Stammessprachen. (p. 587–588)

Maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t see much of a difference between evil capitalist linguistics and Marxist linguistics. I wonder if Schuster-Šewc did...

Also thanks to LF for not changing over important things like music license and PA insurance. I got a call from the insurance company on Friday: ‘Your insurance runs out at midnight tonight. Why didn’t you renew your policy?’ Eh... because I didn’t know we had to? An update on the 60th Anniversary Preparations would also be good...