all things me

Today I got back from my prolonged trip to Godson & Co. I was supposed to leave on Sunday but my aunt lured me into staying over Monday cause I’d get to be alone all day. Well, eventually, I ended up taking care of the kids (aged 6 and 8 (this coming autumn)) — the choice was mine.

Now, let’s see.
First of all, I read two books (only two! Gasp! But I’ve only got about 50 pages left of From a Buick 8 ): Cujo by Stephen King (***), and Suomen kieli — who cares? by Pirjo Hiidenmaa (****). The latter is about the presumed corruption and deterioration of the Finnish language because spoken language and foreign languages (especially English) affect written, standard, language enormously: spoken language causes lack of inflection (you know how much I hate lack of inflection…) and words borrowed and modified from foreign languages rarely get a Finnish equivalent.

Another thing, I got stung by a bee for the first time in my life yesterday. Uh. It was pretty awful. It just attacked me when I was on the cell phone talking to Grandma. I think it was confused by my skirt… Anyway, the sting still burns but it wasn’t as bad as I thought– I’m still alive, aren’t I. (XF Alert) Hopefully it wasn’t a genetically manipulated bee designed to turn me into a pod for an alien…
Funnily (or oddly), just on Thursday my aunt had been stung by a bee at a stable. We both were innocent!

On Saturday we went on a little weekend trip to “the biggest store village” and a wild animal park (they call it a zoo). I bought a very nice pair of shoes and a small backpack from the store.

My godson is so cute. He’d seen me read with a piece of kitchen tissue folded as my bookmark and sometimes, when the kids were eager to disturb me, I followed the lines with the paper (so I’d know where I was). The other day, I think it was yesterday, he sat next to me with a folded kitchen tissue and started reading his Beyblade magazine, following the comic strip pictures with it.

Ugh, talking about Beyblades… My godson is very enthusiastic about them at the moment. He watched the latest episode (something about a tournament in Las Vegas) at least twice a day and played the different characters as he was watching. Pedro with his sword, Jose and his gun and… some guitar guy. And he could remember some parts of the dialogue by heart, and by dog (no sic) did he repeat it over and over and over. I’ve got Beyblades coming out of my ears!

As a linguistic sidenote [Finnish alert] Sunday night we (me and the 2 kids) had a, well, a hysterical moment (laughing…) and my godson called us “käkättirastas”: There’s a bird called räkättirastas, it’s a kind of thrush, fieldthrush claims my dictionary, and käkättää is a dialectal word for laugh (the sort of loud and crazy ) and he — very cleverly — combined the two. Wow!

Quote of the Day

There comes a time when most folks see the big picture and realize they’re puckered up not to kiss smiling fate on the mouth because life just slipped them a pill, and it tastes bitter.
— From a Buick 8 by Stephen King

Something in the quote seems lost. I’m missing a “but” in “not to kiss – – *add but here* because”. Or it simply means that *when* life slips a pill *then* folks realize… But I understood it so that they’ve not puckered up to kiss but because the taste of the pill. Ah, never mind.

They have two cats, my aunt & co. I mean. I don’t like cats as a species but the individuals are quite nice (cats are cute, I’m not going to argue with that). One of them hopped on my lap one night when I was watching the news (and once when I was reading in the rocking-chair) and they purred and rolled around when I scratched them even just a little bit. I’m still a dog person, mind you.

Uhhh, the bee sting is a real pain in the butt… almost literally (thigh).

Finally I get to sleep enough. Even though I didn’t have to wake up until 7:30 each morning, the sun woke me up around 5-6 every time… My room (at home) is nicely pitch black. I’m not even going to set my alarm clock!

Quote from an unknown source:

There are only 10 kinds of people in this world. Those whose understand binary, and those who don’t.

Yesterday we had Grandpa’s 80th birthday dinner. We all were there: us and all Dad’s sisters with their families. One of my aunts asked if I could do a homepage for her, and if course I could! The website is done now (apart from her critique and my adjustments accordingly). It’s pretty exciting I’m going to be the webmistress because she doesn’t have a Internet connection at home (and I understand about that stuff, she has “heard about a resolution and something called jpg” ).

Anyway, I don’t have anything to say really, I just wanted to post the following quote I read yesterday in the car (on the way to the dinner) and bookmarked it with a Jesus brochure I found in my pocket

Quote of the day:

“Space-lag,” he [Ford Prefect] said, “is very bad for sub-clauses.”
— Douglas Adams: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Finally decided to join the clique A Year of Reading. I’ve been reading DT5 crazily to get it read in May (one of the rules, one of two, is to read one book per month (at least try) and I was determined to do that even though I wasn’t in the clique) and because of that I’ve stayed up preeeetty late. I have 4 days to finish it now but I only have about 300 pages so it’s no biggie. I’ve been reading Everything’s Eventual for my translation studies paper but I don’t know if I’ve really read it or just skimmed for the appropriate words (realia). Some stories I’ve read and some just skimmed. Maybe I’ll be true to myself and admit it doesn’t count as reading. Besides, I’ve read it before. I am going to read Carrie — and EE in *Finnish* — after the paper’s done, though. Cause I can keep them till (*checks To Do list*) mid-June.

Luckily I’m working for the summer, so I get to read Black House on my way to/from the department. I know nothing keeps me from reading my backpack books in more places than bus stops, buses, train stations, trains, trams, University, cafes… but when I’m not in one of those places (or similar), I’m at home thus I can read my bedside book.

A bit silly, but I updated previous entries. I noticed I had forgotten to add some things to the new layout’s blog after writing them to the old one (i.e. written while I was making the new layout). Anyway, nothing serious, just some spider stuff. Check out May 14th and 22nd if you want.

@ 13:50
Quote of the day: Purple sold scary books better than any other color, Mike had been told. — Stephen King: Everything’s Eventual, 1408

@ 23:18
Day 5 without my TV: I hope the Stand they showed on Estonian Channel 2 ended last week cause my tv is the only one which shows that channel…

I started wondering how many games I do in fact have installed… Let’s see: 1. Black and White, 2. Blair Witch II, 3. Desert Storm, 4. Enter the Matrix, 5. Ghost Recon, 6. Globetrotter II, 7. Half-Life, 8. Half-Life Blue Shift, 9. Half-Life Counter Strike (haven’t played though, cause it’s only multiplayer), 10. Half-Life Opposing Force, 11. Hitman I, 12. Hitman II, 13. IGI II, 14. Iron Storm, 15. Monkey Island III, 16. Grim Fandango, 17. Max Payne I, 18. Max Payne II, 19. Morrowind, 20. Need For Speed Porsche 2000, 21. Need For Speed II, 22. No One Lives Forever I, 23. Outcast (it’s a great game, must play again sometime), 24. Prisoner of War, 25. Quake II, 26. Rogue Spear, 27. Starsky & Hutch, 28. The Longest Journey, 29. The Sims (plus extensions), 30. Sum of All Fears, 31. X-Files, 32. Splinter Cell, 33. Tomb Raider II, 34. XIII.
Eh…. maybe… I could… uninstall… a few… I mean, most games keep their saved games so I wouldn’t have to worry about starting everything from scratch…
Got rid of some other programs as well while I was at it.