Nobody's ever done that to me but over the telephone. Of course, I helped matters so much by offering to chew a jawbreaker while calling back.

I bought "Woe is I", a grammar book, last Saturday. I bought it primarily for the wittiness factor, but it's actually managed to explain the subjunctive mood and when to use "was" or "were" and "may" or "might", so it's been worth the money.

I love grammar, but only at a distance. One of our guys at the London office of a Certain Noise Reduction Company That Rhymes With Shmolby was a very sweet, very precise German dude called Elmar. Elmar's secretary Maggie would regularly wander into my office talking to herself, because Elmar's letters were grammatically perfect and completely unreadable.

Basic vague idea for MWA submission starring Patrick Ormand: Cases that haunt him, and why, one in each place he's worked, and why he gets so damned restless.

Since the Kinkaid books are all well-known song titles, I'm going to call this one "Jet to the Promised Land". Assuming I can write the fucker.

I think you should do really great with that.

Any idea what the word count is, Deb? You might just focus on one case, rather than a couple, and really go in-depth with why it haunts him.

Such a good idea to use Ormand -- I'd love to see more of him.

Do we have any Latin experts around here? I'm fairly competent at recognizing Latin roots and deducing general meanings from unfamiliar words, but I need something precise. I had no idea it was such a complicated language, all stems and cases and such. Try to find one word for "blood" and you come upon "well, if it's this case, it has this ending, and what gender is it, too?"

I need the Latin of "blood for the blood," meaning a family member serving the family, up to and including offering blood. There's a Harry Potter fic bunny sitting quietly but purposefully in my brain, and my fetish for precision is demanding proper Latin and not what I can fudge together.

Well, in the sense of "lineage" it would be natura naturae or genus geni

In the literal sense, it's sanguis sanguis.

You can also do mix and match, so sanguis geni would work (and mean blood of the family-blood)

Or, you could make a case for the lineage-blood should be plural for the Wizarding world (blood of the bloods), which would make them naturarum and genorum for the second word

The literal one is nice, because it can be read backwards and forward, the individual serving the family and vice versa.

Such deuced useful folk around here, thank you!

Not exactly. It's just that the Genitive (which indicates "of") is the same construction as the nominative in its declension

But, you know. I'm a geek.

You can also bastardize a bit and be true to the books, if you want to tweak to make it flow better. Let me know if you want me to look for you saying something you don't mean to be.

It was my pleasure to get out the slightly-rusty Latin for a spin