Vacation pics

These pictures are from John's mom, Brenda. They're from when John and I went to Illinois this last July on vacation. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures this time, although there were a few I could post, and I might do so at some vague time in the future. I would've taken several when we went to a lake for boating, but I was afraid my camera would get wet and left it behind. Mom took hers, though. Yay!
Well, we'll start with before we left. This is at Uncle Tim's house. I got my Palm Pilot out because everyone else was playing with their technology... There may only be two of us in the picture, but there were other culprits. This is just the best picture.


John and I in the kitchen for our turn at dinner. We're very cooperative. Yes.




Geese! This one looked really good as a print, I thought.

I'm in the middle of the canoe.






See? Middle of the canoe. This was probably taken fairly shortly after we hit that side there. I'm guessing. Odds are.











I love my husband.








Introducing the photogenic bridge. Bridge, for short. Bridge, blog readers. Blog readers, bridge.

Like I said, I love my husband. Too bad it was a bit windy.

Good picture of Beth.

The wind was harder on some than others.... Sorry Dad, but I like this picture...

Sorcery and Cecelia

Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: being the correspondence of two Young Ladies of Quality regarding various Magical Scandals in London and the Country by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

A mouthful, I know. Caroline Stevermer is also the author of A College of Magics, semi-reviewed by yours truly on 2-8-05.

This book was awesome. Almost the moment I finished it I told Beth how good it was, and got her to start reading it. Of course, that was a couple of years ago, but it's still good. I wrote some of this back then.

Perhaps the fastest way to begin describing the book is as the authors themselves did, in the dedication. "The authors wish to dedicate this book to Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Ellen Kushner, all of whom, in their several ways, inspired us to create it." I haven't read Heyer or Kushner (although I might sometime, solely based on the fact that their books must resemble Sorcery and Cecelia in some way!), but the Tolkien-Austen mix is a very apt description. This is a book in the style and manner of Jane Austen... only, it's in an alternate world, where proper English society contains wizards and such. The result is truly delightful, much more enjoyable than pure Austen. (=

Adding to my admiration, it turns out that the book started as a mere letter game! The authors each invented their character and took turns writing letters from their character's point of view. No rules except that they must not discuss plot with each other. When they finished, they realized it was a book, did some editing, and sent it off. The letter format makes it take a little while to get into as you're reading, but it's well worth it once you do. My only critique is that the two characters seem too similar to each other -- but given that they're cousins and that they were actually written by different people, it doesn't seem that bad after all.

"'Practice your dancing. With enough study you might attain a degree of proficiency.'

'What a rude thing to say!' I replied. 'I would practice, but practice requires a partner.'

He smiled with such a degree of cynicism I almost expected his teeth to glint metallic. 'You won't lack for partners now. I've made Sally Jersey give me a waltz with you. Everyone will be agog to find out why.'

'Don't you want to know what I'm going to tell them?' I asked.

'Oh, they won't ask, don't think it. No, they'll dance with you and then say I am justly called mysterious,' he said." –the Mysterious Marquis and Kate

"Then I realized Oliver was not merely standing, mute as a block, at my elbow, but was staring--positively gaping--at the Marquis.

The Marquis glanced from me to Oliver and said, almost too solicitously, 'Are you feeling quite well, Mr. Rushton?'

'Oh--quite well, thank you,' replied Oliver, coloring up. 'Only--I was admiring the way you tie your cravat. What do you call that fashion?'

The Marquis regarded Oliver with bland composure. 'I call it "the way I tie my cravat."'

Already blushing fiercely, Oliver began a soft, incoherent gobble of apology.

The Marquis took his leave of us with automatic civility and crossed the bridge, leaving me with divided emotions. On the one hand, he was shockingly rude to Oliver. On the other, I have often been shockingly rude to Oliver myself, and I understand the impulse."

New Babylon 5!

See? Babylon 5: The Lost Tales. Cool, huh? John and I got it on Netflix and watched it Thursday night. It's good. Isolated from the rest of Babylon 5 it wouldn't be all that great, but as part of it... mmmm. There are two short stories on the DVD -- it's a little confusing on the menu. There are three options for watching it. Apparently two of them are the short stories by themselves, and one is both of them back to back, although it has a whole different title, rather than being called "play all." But at any rate, two short stories. And they feel more like short stories than just about anything else I've seen on TV. They're not episodes, they're short stories. The plot concepts were fun, if not quite as impressive as they thought themselves. Definitely seen worse on sci-fi. Of course it's low budget, so although the special effects may not have been as painful as in the original show, this release is still limited.

But when all's said and done, it's Babylon 5! It was good to be in that universe again. It was especially good to see and hear of the characters again. Sharon, go, watch Babylon 5! (= And there's a lot in the way of special features on the DVD, a lot of interview stuff, especially with J.M.S., who, as a person separated from his shows, isn't as cool as Joss Whedon; but we still like him. And Bruce Boxleitner seems very intelligent for an actor, which makes the interview with him and J.M.S. fun.

On a much sadder side, apparently Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs (played G'kar and Dr. Franklin, respectively) have died. If I had heard that before, I'd forgotten. In terms of them as actors rather than as whole persons (since I only know them as actors), I'm especially sad about Andreas Katsulas. Especially after hearing J.M.S. talk about him. Remember that scene with him and Londo in the elevator, the particular one that's just of him laughing? Apparently that was all his idea and initiative. He didn't even ask Straczynski about it first, they just filmed it. Then Straczynski went over and watched it (the laughing he didn't remember in the script made him curious, so he went over and investigated) and approved. He's another one who seemed very intelligent. I miss G'kar, Marcus, Ivanova. She wasn't even mentioned on the DVD. A little odd. Marcus I can understand, he wasn't a major character for as long, and, well, there's no need to explain what he's doing these days... But Ivanova? Not even a passing comment? Oh well. Such a good story. And it looks like they want to do more of these. It makes me happy.

There's a review on amazon, second one on the guy's page at the moment, that talks about it in more detail than I did. Explains more of the negative side. I might have given it three stars instead of two like he did, but I agreed with most of his points.

Latin and my future

Not that I'm saying that Latin is particularly in my future. It's just that Latin made me think about some things in the future again.

You may have noticed one of the books on my "Currently Reading" list is now Wheelock's Latin. This is because I'm now learning Latin, thanks to Rachel, who organized an informal class. Our planning meeting was two weeks ago tomorrow, and we go over the first lesson tomorrow. I received my textbook on the Wednesday after our planning meeting, and although I was going to study a little at a time, adding about 15 minutes a day into my evening routine, instead I read all the preface materials and chapter one in a fit of language learning. This was after getting home from work at about 9:30 that night. I needed to go to bed. But did I? No. Instead I realized how much I'd apparently been missing foreign language. I can think of few things more fun, especially when it comes to learning.

Even Latin is fun -- I mean, at this point, it's not a very hard language for me. There's the annoyance of learning classical pronunciation instead of the ecclesiastical I'm used to from choir, but at least the pronunciation is regular and learnable. Between Spanish and Greek, none of the concepts are new, the forms are similar, and practically everything is cognate. I would probably have more fun with the third set of Pimsleur Japanese, which I really need to get someday vaguely soon. But gobbling up an easier language is fun too. And for those of you who are also in the class, please don't hate me for writing this. (= Like I said, I've already studied Spanish and Greek, and that makes it a lot easier for me, quite aside from the fact that I love languages. If you need any help with any of it, just let me know.

So, I think John is right. It would probably be good for me to go on and get a Master's in linguistics or some such. It wouldn't be a problem academically speaking. Even when it's hard work, I love it enough to make time for it. It'd be perfect. On the other hand, I'm not sure what practical purpose it would serve. I remember many linguistics jobs require a Master's, but I don't really remember what those jobs are, aside from government and teaching stuff, which I'm not sure I'm interested in. I'd have to look into it more. Teaching... aside from questions of my skill as a teacher, I'm sort of against on principle. It's not that it isn't good to teach. Certainly it's good. But it bugs me when it seems like the only option is to teach, for certain fields. So even if some of your students love it too, all they're going to do is teach it to more people... it seems like one should not only be able to enjoy the knowledge for its own sake, but make a living from it in some way other than passing it on. Of course, part of being a professor is doing research, but it seems unfair to the students to become a professor for the sake of research.

Yes, I'll have to look into it more. There must be something. Maybe even something flexible enough so I can raise children at the same time, and maybe even someday be a novelist on the side...

John's hike

In the middle of August John went on a hike with Stephen and took my camera. I think that gives me the right to post some of the resulting pictures I liked.

In other news, I figured out how to post multiple pictures in the same post. Hmm. Pretty simple, I'm surprised I've never done it before.

Pictures!

I recently actually added things to my deviantart account. There are pictures. Too much bother to post them as well. If you want to, you can get a deviantart account and be notified whenever I add things. Otherwise I'll just have to keep commenting about it on here... (=