happy birthday sumi!

Happy Birthday, Sumi!

One of my classmates has several of those Despair Ware postcards up by his desk. (He also has a framed South Park picture. The picture of his wife is kind of crumpled and just taped to the wall, but the picture of the South Park kids gets a frame.)

Grammar question: I've been reading a few articles about Rahm Emanuel and his brothers. They have a younger sister, Shoshana, who their parents adopted as a baby when the brothers were teenagers. Several articles referred to her as their "adoptive sister." That just looks really weird to me -- shouldn't it be "adopted sister," if they've got to point out that she's adopted?

Edit: American Heritage Dictionary says usual usage is "adopted child" and "adoptive parents." No ruling on siblings.

How do I get rid of her?

You can play with the settings on your live feed to hear less news items about a certain person.

I love Facebook because it's so low maintenance. It's a nice way to stay in touch without having to read or write a lot.

This is me. I tried to convince a friend of this, because he's a notoriously crappy correspondent, but he wasn't buying.

I bought catnip while I was out this morning, and then couldn't figure out why the cats were going bananas over one of the bags I brought home. In the five minutes it took for me to go upstairs and change, Oz had the bag of catnip out of the bag and was running down the hall with it in his mouth. Both cats are now totally high and wrestling.

MC Hamnmer pants are coming back. How do we stop the insanity?

[link]

OMG the fit mac pitched in the Dr office was ridic. I had to hold him and three of us had one arm to give him a half flu shot and ppd test. Unbelievable.

Poor noodle must be really panicked to act that way. It might not be an evil idea to give him a mild tranquilizer before going, in order that he have a calm visit or two to let the lizard brain realize he isn't going to be hurt...?

Hil, I wonder if there isn't some kind of transitive verbage going on with adopted and adoptive, like 'adopted daughter' means the parents voluntarily adopted her, whereas 'adoptive parents' means you were adopted UPON, not of your own volition. Therefore, if the Emanual boys were well into their teens, yet still minors, they didn't have a say in whether their parents adopted, hence "adoptive" rather than "adopted"?

Ouch. That sounds like the kind of fun that's not.

Also ouch - my manager just called to tell me that a guy we interviewed a few months back, who was a manager with our firm in Shanghai for several years, just rang up her purchases at Walgreen's. *Awkward*.

Hil, I wonder if there isn't some kind of transitive verbage going on with adopted and adoptive, like 'adopted daughter' means the parents voluntarily adopted her, whereas 'adoptive parents' means you were adopted UPON, not of your own volition.

Wouldn't it be the opposite with the parents, since it's the 'adoptives' who are the actors here, not the 'adopted'?

ETA: Wait, no, I think I'm reading you wrong. Carry on.

Hmm. I think I can make an argument for saying she's their adopted sister, and they're her adoptive brothers. I think.