If money was no object, I think I'd pay to have a diriginble manufacturer make me the first house dirigible, and live a lot of places. It would be solar powered.

One of the officers in my mom's genealogical society spends 6 months of the year in California and 6 months in Australia.

Risky.

Meara--you learnt ASL, right? Why? I'm playing with it on a whim because every deaf!fic I read stresses how you can't translate directly, and it made me curious about the differences in grammar. God I'm awful. I can't even decide which hand to dominate with.

Hil could tell you a lot about it.

ASL grammar is really different from English grammar. It's not always possible to even transcribe it well (though there are a few different systems that try to do it), because lots of meaning and grammatical structure is conveyed through facial expressions (there are some really specific expressions that mean certain things, or that change a statement into a question, or convey if/then sorts of structures). Are there specific things you want to know? There are several fairly large books just on the subject of ASL grammar, and it doesn't really sum up so well.

I've only looked at a handful of words and their modifications, and it's fascinating. Signing slow fv. fast means very slow. A teacher is a person who puts things in your head. A student is a person who puts things in their head. With the "agent" symbol.

Some of it reminds me of bits of Patois grammar where instead of "very" you just double your adjective, etc.

I did not sleep one second last night. I hope I fall over soon, but not too soon. And I better put my stupid glasses back on.

Yeah, what Hil said--I felt like we spent one whole semester on learning how to give directions and describe a room.

I took it because I was interested, and I"d wanted to take it during college but they didn't offer it. And because I was in DC and Gallaudet was right there. I liked it but (a) it met on Saturdays from 9-1, which seemed very early when I was 23, and (b) by the time I hit fourth or fifth semester they started acting like we were planning to become interpreters, and requiring a lot more stuff than I was prepared for (and throwing a fair bit of attitude, also).

I still find it fascinating, but then again, if I won the lottery one of the things I'd do is move a different place every few months/years, and take classes in the local language and stuff. I like language.

I am trying my hand at meatloaf again. I bought a box of food service gloves, and they make the experience much less oogy, plus the meat doesn't stick to the gloves the way it does to hands.

I mixed sharp cheddar in the meat and put a bunch in the middle of the meat loaf. I keep thinking cutting up some turkey sausage into chunks and mixing it in would be good too.

How many times have y'all wrote out a post. Read through it and then just deleted instead of posting?

I might do that more often than I post.

Go you with the innovative meatloafs, Connie! That sounds great.

That's really cool, Hil & meara, about ASL. The differences between languages are fascinating.

So I just got off the phone with the vet, and yeah, TNG has cancer. They are assuming I'll want to operate, and probably I will, except she is losing mobility pretty fast. I will want to talk to them about how fast the tumor will grow/metastasize, and how long she has if I don't operate.

Thing is, she is so sensitive a temperament that the slightest thing knocks her off. Just coming out of the mild sedation for the needle biopsy resulted in her having diarrhea all over the living room yesterday. I am having a hard time imagining how she'd do after actual surgery. Not well.

If she's only got a short time left, I want it to be a low-trauma as possible for her.

I'm sorry, Consuela. Poor dog, and poor you stuck with the hard decisions.