Monday, October 20, 2008

Verbatim

"It's not long like the Jell-O, it's short like the castanets."

—Fiona, discussing Deborah's hair

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Healing Huehnergard

So what do you do, when you want to reprint a classic book... but you've got corrections for it? Well, normally, you could just re-edit and re-set the whole thing, and there you go. In this case, though, the book was John Huehnergard's Ugaritic Vocabulary in Syllabic Transcription, and the text was very complex. The author's corrections and additions alone ran to 32 pages, so we decided to just make an index. It then fell to me to take the scanned pages, and let the reader know that there was supplemental material:




Later that week, after describing what I was working on, Deborah summarized what I'm doing as "the laying on of hands."

I thought it was quite appropriate.

One Seventh of a Back Yard

This afternoon I dropped off my down payment on a new back yard, and had the opportunity to chat with Brent Wilcoxson, who is pleasant and funny when no one is protesting. There was to be a public hearing this afternoon regarding the sale, though, so there may be protests yet.

In the mean time, all sorts of spray painted lines are decorating the gravel and grass back there, identifying the locations of property lines, phone lines, and power lines. From the looks of it, we'll still have the alley (mostly) as it stands. If we want to get rid of it, we and our neighbors will have to take it up with the town council ourselves, unless they suggest it first.

Monday, October 06, 2008

My Favorite Light Bulb Joke

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Bathtub full of power tools.

Just thought I'd share. Feel free do discuss my sanity (or lack thereof) in the comments. (Mom's a psychologist, and she maintains I'm sane. She's such a sweetie.)