Limits

Earlier this month, my parents received a letter, which they have since forwarded to me. It ends something like this:

"The deadline for recept of Ian's Enrollment Application is December 15, 2006 and the number of spaces availableis limited, sowewould appreciateyourforwarding theenclosedenvelopeassoonaspossible.Thankyou."

Dreams

I've been dreaming more lately than I was earlier this year, I think. Last night, I had a variety of adventures. I and the people I was adventuring with spent a fair amount of time with the queen of Denmark, who was very friendly and was willing to spend talk with us for hours talking through our problems. I got woken up earlier than expected by my pager. I'm not on pager duty. I called the number that paged me, and it turned out to be a hospital, so I told them that they'd paged the wrong person and they ought to try again. Fortunately, I was not paged again.

The night before, I was on a trip to the mountains which involved staying in a cabin wiht a beautiful view. In the common room, there were floor-to-ceiling windows, with a stunning view from the mountain we were on to another nearby... a little comparable to the view from the visitor's center at Hurricane Ridge, though certainly not the same. I was there with a great many friends, including Colin and Abigail. In the morning, Colin and I went to the oath classroom to swear our oaths. When we walked in, he announced that he was #1, and I stated that I was #3. It was a small classroom, with stark white walls and bright flourescent lights. There were already several students there. I was handed the script for part #3, but before I could get a good look at it, (which is notoriously hard in dreams), I heard someone knocking on the door, followed by the distinctive ring of my doorbell. Ikea had finally delivered the other half of my coffee table. (I picked up the first half on my own, not realizing my folly.) The man apologized for waking me, and when I asked, he was even kind enough to take the box into my apartment for me. Then I went back to bed.

Words

Here's some cool words I've gleaned from Othello today:

Haggard: A wild female falcon. (It's also used to refer to unfaithful women, but I don't feel any need to collect vocabulary for that. I'd much rather collect vocabulary for making women happier.)

Sith: Since. As in, "I'll love no friend, sith love breeds such offense." And indeed, what passes for love among the Sith breeds great offense indeed. (And here I thought I wouldn't be able to stick in a Star Wars joke... I hadn't realized how resourceful Shakespeare could be!)

Hmm... if Shakespeare lived today, would his plays have any Star Wars jokes? Probably not, but it's a funny thought. Actually, that's probably part of the whispered "timelessness" of Shakespeare... that he didn't jape at the works of his compatriots. He still used the language of his day, not only high-sounding language but also the language of the lower class where it made sense, but perhaps he took some care about how much he drew from the day-to-day culture of his world.

Good. I have another excuse to ignore popular culture.

Speaking of which, I thought of a reason why fashion exists today, and even still, I'm not planning to become fashionable. I am thinking of buying some Hawaiian shirts from Amazon, though. Haven't seen prices to beat my first $3 Hawaiian shirt from Walmart, but that was Walmart, and that shirt has finally ripped, silk though it be. Most vendors online seme to think a Hawaiian shirt is worth at least $50, and maybe $70 or even $140 for a nice one. ????? They start at $20 at Amazon.

Butter

me up.

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

I think those results may have some truth in them, but they really butter me up well beyond my actual practiced abilities. I may be capable of learning to be all those things, but I'm certainly not yet. I hardly ever persuade people of things at all.


We've also got this:

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

I don't know much about Amsterdam, so I'll just leave it at that.

Spellings

This may be old news to some, but I just learned that our national Education Secretary is named Margaret Spellings. Spellings. Isn't that the kind of name a playful author would give the Education Secretary? Like in Harry Potter, or in something that's even more literal with playful names? This is real life!

:-)

Here's where I learned it. She has glasses to match, too.

Maidens and Shepherd Boys

I've found the beginnings of a story in a heap of paper in a box. They are writ in a hand not my own:

Well, the myths are always set in the early times, with the shepherd boys and young maidens.

Poetically, it actually works all right, evoking images of idyllic hills and so on. It does raise a question though: aren't there still young maidens? If not, why not? Did they all get old and become old maids? Are they all pretending to be girls and insisting that they aren't young maidens at all? Or did the dragons do a better job than I thought?
I was actually under the impression that some of my blog readers could reasonably be called "young maidens." Am I then set in the early times, blog and all? You know, that might not be so bad... but I've never encountered a true Celtic hero who spent any time at all updating a blog.