Is it almost the 15th... already?

Man, does time fly, or what?

So does money, apparently, right out of my checking account and into the coffers of others. It may perhaps be the one phenomenon that occurs at what seems to be faster than the speed of light.

I just could not get into the swing of work today. I checked the job I did yesterday and sent it in. To count the words, I made a copy of the file and methodically deleted all the Russian text. Interestingly enough, the formatting is so messed up, that when I did a spell check, some more Russian text turned up, but I'll be switched if I know where it is. Attempts to erase it also erased some English translation.

I cracked open a copy of H.L. Mencken's The American Language that turned up in one of my boxes. It's a fascinating, scholarly work that is very informative, if the subject suits you. Here's a sample, from a footnote to the fourth edition (1946):

During the heyday of Babbittry (c. 1905-29) to contact was one of its counter-words. In 1931, Mr. F. W. Lienau, an official of the Western Union, forbade its use by employés of the company. "Somewhere," he said, "there cumbers this fair earth with his loathsome presence a man who, for the common good, should have been destroyed in early childhood. He is the originator of the hideous vulgarism of using contact as a verb. So long as we can meet, get in touch with, make the acquaintance of, be introduced to, call on, interview, or talk to people, there can be no apology for contact."

Today, it's hard to imagine a world where contact is not used in the senses described by Lienau.

Another item that caught my eye was this, as an example of "tall talk," from Mark Twain:

Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansas! Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing. I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen, and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm 'bout to turn myself loose!

That was from Life on the Mississippi (1852), and pity the poor typesetter who ran out of exclamation marks!

* * *Galina and I went over to the kids' new digs after visiting the Shanghai Restaurant. I had something called "sizzling rice soup," while Galina made dinner out of a plate of pot stickers. The new place is not much bigger than the rooms they had with us, but - as I observed to Galina - the major difference is that it's theirs.

Sitting on their front step, I reminisced about how Galina and I spent the first year of our life together in the United States living in an "apartment" in the basement of a townhome-style house on 84th Street in Jackson Heights, in Queens. For no real good reason, I remembered suddenly that the bathroom of our first place was arranged so that one literally had to step across the shower pan to get to the toilet and sink.

Now, we live on a height that overlooks most of Pagosa, with a backdrop of the San Juan mountains and the Continental Divide on the horizon.

* * *I used the PathAway app on the Palm to track our route to the kids' place. I found it interesting to note that the map (from Expedia, if memory serves) has some minor boo-boos in some places, some misaligned roads in others, and is completely wrong in the area of our store. Ah, well... no biggie. I'm not interested in using the app to navigate around the area... I just want to record landmarks and good mushroom spots, though with the return of dryness, it may turn out to be a very thin year for mushrooms. Feht and I plan to go out on Sunday, but unless it rains tomorrow or Friday, I don't think I'm going to hold my breath.

Cheers...