docoflove1974

Ah, yes, we have such a notification and registration system here. Not that many people utilize it

Kosmo: According to Elcock (p. 198), lapis does survive in: Italian: lapide 'gravestone, tombstone; tablet, plaque' Spanish: laude 'tombstone' I also perused the Spanish and Italian dictionaries that I have, and found: Spanish: [*]l

Aurelia: I wouldn't use the Wikipedia information, mostly because, well, it's a start, but it will lead you down the wrong path on this topic. I lifted this directly from the Wikipedia entrance: "Standard Italian and Neapolitan are generally mutually comprehensible, though with notable grammatical differences such as nouns in the neuter form and unique plural formation." Neopolitan, then, is not a language by the linguistic definition. In order for two speeches to be of different languages, there must be mutually unintelligible. I'm not saying there can't be some ability of understanding--we've talked about it in this thread and others where Spanish and Italian speakers, Portuguese and Spanish speakers, etc., can understand some of what the other is saying, but the differences in the grammar between these speeches is quite enough to constitute separate languages. The other problem that comes in (and I think this has been brought up before): often Italian linguists will term the various dialetti as different languages...there is a blurring of the linguistic definitions of 'language' and 'dialect'. Now I want to go through Rohlfs again (Silentium...if you're reading this, do you have a copy at hand?), but I would say that 'Neopolitan' is much like 'Genovese' or 'Milanese' that I grew up around--I'm sure they have elements of Celtic in the substratum, but they're both truly dialects of Italian and not separate languages.

Hope you're having an outstanding day!

Ok, in quickly consulting Elcock's (1960) The Romance Languages (p. 197-203), the Greek which was the influencing factor was, as he notes from Rohlfs (1968's Grammatica storia della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti) of Doric roots, meaning that it was Greeks left behind once Magna Graecia was taken over by Rome. It seems to have left some lexical traces into Latin, but overall not much is shown to be of true Greek influence; instead, it seems as though there were Greek-speakers in the area who were bilingal with Latin--and not just on a local level. Indeed, the word for 'rock' in many the Romance languages comes from the Greek petra, not from Latin lapis (Spanish piedra. French pierre, Italian pietra, Rumanian pĭatră, Proven

You shoulda just sold the car to him! Let him worry about it! (Unless, of course, you're keeping it for sentimental value...)

As I recall (and I'll check up on this later when I get home), there are Greek lexical elements in not just Neopolitan but in many of the southern Italian dialetti, but little-to-no morphological and syntactical elements in the area.

A tax on chocolate!?!? That man should be tarred and feathered! How dare he!

Um, well, no, they're not. As PP said, everyone bitches and moans about it every year, but the Powers That Be have decided that no changes are necessarily, so the status quo will be held. It needs to be blown to smitherines, but it ain't gonna happen.

Well, a simple explanation would be impossible. There are various national polls, some done by coaches, others by newspaper and Internet sportswriters, which get compiled in a database. The polls start pretty much at the start of the season, although there are pre-season rankings. Once approximately 4 weeks of the season has gone by, the polls in the database are weighted according to schedule (weak vs. strong opponents), and there's a number that's spit out by some computer. I've forgotten how many bowl games there are in general (too damned many, IMO), but there is a Bowl Championship series, which takes the "most important" bowl games in the system (Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl), which go to the top 8 teams--the winners of certain major football conferences (Big XII, Big 10, Pac 10, SEC and a few others). The Championship Game is one of these 4 bowls--it rotates every year--which pits the top 2 teams from the BCS computations. This is the system that has been in place in some form or another for the last 15 years. More information can be found here: The BCS is... But if there is a quick summary...it's a major pain in the ass that few truly understand...even the coaches are befuddled. Most likely the movies you saw didn't follow this story line.

Sounds just like !

Hail hail one of our illustrious leaders! Have a great day, Viggen!

Summer, baby! Well, maybe autumn. Hey, 'round these parts summer is really August, September and October (if one goes by climatology)...so maybe a bit of both?

Brian God bless Mayor Judith Jones Davies!

Aw....I'd totally come over to cook for you guys! I have bad knees in particular, and while I don't get to the point quite as bad as yours, there are some winter days where I'm cranky and kinda limping. Thankfully our winters here aren't that bad.

March is an amazing month here in Baghdad-By-The-Bay. The weather is either rainy (but not cold...55'F or so) or gloriously sunny. It seems like we're done with the rain for about a week, so I spent much of the mid-morning and early-afternoon outside. Bella was all too eager to join me, and was ecstatic to be outside again. I don't know who had more fun: her going all over the backyard as I cleaned up the debris from the neighborhood trees, or me playing with her. She took several naps in the sun while I read (more on the book below). After about 3 hours outside, she wanted in, so I obliged her. The rest of the day one or both doors were open, letting in the springtime air. I got quite a bit done outside. I wanted to fertilize the plants and prune the rosemary bush. I pulled a ton of weeds that had been growing wantonly between the brickwork. My landlord keeps saying he's going to come by with weed killer, and I know he means to. But I also know he's more than got his hands full with other duties. Besides, I told him the backyard was something I somewhat wanted to keep up, so he lets me do pretty much whatever I want. Nothing major, but general upkeep. The only thing I won't do is the bar; I'll clean up my own stuff, but if the boys can't take away their dirty pint glasses, well, tough shit. I ain't their mamma. My landlord has threatened to recycle/throw away their deserted glassware...and still no action. Hmmm, maybe he and I will talk about that. Overall this was a productive day. Along with the backyard gardening, I finally got to the 9-months' worth of paper shredding. I finished the survey that I'll send to my students, so that I can plan my private courses in the fall. I finished the biography on Marco Polo that my dad gave me (Laurence Bergreen's 2007 Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu), which I recommend very highly. It's under 400 pages, yet you get the feeling you've read a huge volume's worth of text on the great Venetian. I also did some general farting about--a luxury I was afforded having done most of the grading yesterday, and one which I haven't had in a few weeks. Dinner even tickled my creative bone: Cajun-Asian Fritto Misto. Say what? Basically, cubed yellow squash and chicken breast are quickly marinated in a milk, vinegar, and Tabasco batter, fried, and then sprinkled with more Tabasco and soy sauce. Outfrigginstanding. Dessert was taking platanillos (the very small banana-like fruit, yellow ones which are in between a plantain and a banana in the starchy scale) and fixing them the only way I like a banana: sauteed in butter and brown sugar, with rum. No ice cream...I don't want it in the house, or else I'll eat it...particularly when I get home from teaching. For tonight...Well, I should really start on what remains of the grading. That way, tomorrow is a domestic day, ending with the finishing of the grading and the creation of the last of this round of midterms. Then again, the Sharks are playing tonight...hmmmmm....

Ok, I admit part of me loves the fact that he's so brutally honest. A kindred spirit, if you will. Still, too much of something is never a good thing. (Incidentally, I'm starting to get the same way with Gordon Ramsay, although I still love how he turns these so-called chefs into better versions of themselves. Still, small doses....)

Outstanding! Perhaps something will come from your ever-growing celebrity!

Oh sure! No problem! I'm full of ideas*! *No guarantee that these ideas are worth even a hill of beans, however. Tax and title fees not included. Offer subject to termination at the whim of the owner. Take it as you wish.

Yep...plus I like a firm mattress, and those pillow thingies almost make it too soft for me. On the other hand, the new shower head is wonderful...and since it's a hand-held shower arm, I could put it on the massage setting and set it right on the small of my back, which has a nice sized knot in it right now. I almost got it out!

Well, did they comment on a lack of sanity on your part? Perhaps did they make up elements of hording or becoming the dreaded 'cat dude'? Hey, the good news is that you're worth talking about!

Yeah, I've slept on one before...it didn't do much for me. I usually fall right asleep once I hit the pillow, but that's just me. HHey, they sell a lot, so there must be something to it! What also helps: a cuddler of a cat fall asleep on your lap. I'm cuurntly typing 1-handed, and it's pretty tiring. I installed a new shower head today, too...just a hot shower works wonders!

This week has been utterly brutal. Actually, the last few weeks have, and it wasn't until Thursday that it all came to a head. I teach an 8am class 3 days a week, on a campus that's 25 miles away. For us 'round here, well, that's not much of a commute, and I really don't view it as being far away. But an 8am class, that means I need to be on campus by 7:30 to get last minute stuff done, which means I have to leave the house no later than 6:45. Originally I thought I had to leave the house at 6:30, but the traffic hasn't been horrific, so I've been leaving later. But I was still waking up at 5:30, simply because I move about as fast in the morning as molasses on a frozen wintry day. Well, this wasn't working. It's very hard for me to fall asleep before 11:30 (and I really do prefer 12 or so) unless I'm either sick or exhausted. So I was really only getting 6 hours of sleep or less, and while this doesn't sound like a bad thing, with all the running around I was doing, I was getting very tired. Mt. Grading Pile was getting harder and harder to tackle simply because I was having less and less time during the day to get things done, and more and more meetings were being requested. It's great to be wanted and all, but this was getting ridiculous. To make matters worse, my weekends were being filled up with plans to meet up with family and friends; the time I usually take to leisurely grade and prep for the week was being compacted into the space of a few hours during my two days off. I was not a happy Sarah. When I'm stressed I do one of two things (and sometimes both): I either eat junk and processed foods, or I don't go into REM sleep and therefore wake up anything but refreshed. I can fall asleep, but don't seem to get a good night's sleep; I don't think I toss and turn, but who knows. Well, the last couple of weeks I've been doing the bad-sleep routine, and as a result would hit the snooze alarm 4 and 5 times before I could get myself to turn off the alarm...please, just 8 more minutes...please.... Monday-thru-Thursday I didn't wake up on time once...in fact, twice instead of hitting snooze, I accidentally turned the alarm off totally. Thankfully I caught it; once I only slept 15 minutes before Bella decided to wake me up for good, and the other time, while I slept an entire hour more, I had the time in my schedule to do so. As a result of waking up late all those days, I felt like the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz:" discombobulated. Nothing was working right, and because I was so tired I kept forgetting things, which is highly unlike me. Clearly this 5:30 crap isn't working. My body doesn't function at all. So, time for a change: Friday I decided I'd set the alarm for 6. Ok, 30 minutes doesn't sound like much, but if I don't have to leave the apartment before 6:45, well, I can get ready in 45 minutes. And it was a kind of magic! Friday I was refreshed...the day went better...and I didn't feel like falling down like a pile of bricks at the end of the day. (I would have done the once-usual of going out for dinner and go to a movie, but since I had eaten both breakfast and lunch 'out', well, it was time to stay home with a salad and my copy of "The Princess Bride.") So, the routine has been changed...and there's a weight that's been lifted from my shoulders.

Eh, I don't dislike them, I don't like them...but I do respect them, and all other non-human animals, as being great to look at and marvel. But even domesticated animals will turn if mistreated...it's their natural instinct. A woman down the street has two pitbulls, the 'dad' and the 'daughter' of a litter. She insist that her dogs are loving, friendly, and the lot...and, honestly, Junior and Echo are. On the other hand, she's trained them not to fight and to behave. But give those dogs (or any others, for that matter) a different environment, and they will get aggressive and do harm. As much as I love Bella and know that she wouldn't really hurt me, I know that things could change given different circumstances.

I wouldn't change the name...well, then again, February does end tomorrow...otherwise I'd say that there's still time for another lovely specimen to rear its head.