isoglossia

The typical “we’re back” post, Mk. II
Just four months have passed since I wrote the end-of-vacation post that marked our return from the states. At that time we thought it would be a good long spell before we were back in America, but as it turned out that vacation trip was just the beginning. Since August, we have become FAR more familiar with Logan Airport than one could reasonably wish. That awful place has been the only constant in our travels back and forth, which have also involved Ljubljana’s Brnik, Ronchi in Trieste, Venice Marco Polo, Munich (which is named after Hayden or Schubert or some such, and which when Googled turns up some stomach churning results), Paris-Charles de Gaulle (um, ugh), and JFK (let sweet release come swiftly).

In there somewhere, Magda also managed to make the time for a family visit, adding Warsaw’s Okęcie (now renamed Fryderyk Chopin) to the list. As this year comes to a close, let’s just say we’re tired of airports no matter which composer, statesman, or noodle-importing traveller they’re named after, and our wish for 2006 is to avoid them entirely. That’s all we’ll say about our latest trip, other than to add for anyone who came here accidentally by Googling “travel with baby”, avoid Delta at all costs. One baby bassinet for the entire coach class AND no free drinks on international flights is not a good combination, and we are praying for Delta to collapse under the weight of its own suckiness, a standard for shitty service which only began with those factors listed above. Die, Delta, DIE!

Jagers In De Sneeuw, minus jagers
We spent a lot of time on our visit explaining how it never snows in the precise location where we live, and then returned to find the landscape postively Brueghelesque. The elder. This will be my fifth winter here, and in that time I’ve almost never seen snow fall in town, and never seen it stay for more than a few hours. I am all in favor of snow for skiing on, but the scraping, shovelling, slipping on, not so much. Still, a few inches lasting a few days is a nice rare sight:

But as I type this list heavy rain is falling on the no-longer-pretty snow, and the morons are blowing off their own and their children’s fingers with annoying ordnance, in the traditional observation of the new year’s arrival.

The year in review, as expected
Before our unplanned departure for the U.S. I had begun putting together some notes for the stomach-churningly predictable “year in review” list that every nitwit feels compelled to put together as the calendar turns. (Note: if you have not felt this urge, this does not guarantee that you are not a nitwit). Beyond watching our son grow, 2005 was a dramatically uneventful year for us in an essentially good way, so there wouldn’t be much to list. For example, I can’t think of any new music, films, or books that particularly impressed me this year, but then again, you tend not to get your socks blown off by media when you are spending an entire year covered with vomit (not your own). For those not entirely absorbed with their own progeny, 2005 seems to have been a poster child Bad Year. Particularly for politicians and the youth they send to die, not to mention for the collaterally damaged. Then with the abrupt and shockingly personal bad way the year ended for my family, the mood to make much of this list has evaporated, but I’ll forge ahead anyway, if for no other reason than to insert a tiny measure of content into a web page that has been slim on it during these last few difficult months.

Media-wise, by far the most interesting, pervasive, and time-wasting -consuming material has come to us down the high-speed teat at which we suckle addictively. The other main source of entertainment has been in personal communication. Sometimes there’s a combination of the two:

• Unreasonable request of the year:
  “Honey, can you play with Adam so I can cook your supper?”
• Analogy of the year:
  “I love Flickr like a crack whore loves, well, crack.”
• Unnecessary offer of the year:
  “Honey, ‘enlarge your penis by up to 10 centimeters.’ It’s a spam!”
• False economy of the year:
  “Well, if bloody L.L. Bean are shipping the snowsuit in ‘azalea’, we’ll just have to have a girl.”
• Neologism of the year:
  No clear winner.
• Relationship counseling site of the year:
  Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About (also a novel).
• Collocation of the year:
  “…the spawn of Manhattan’s most prolific and rigorous douche hatcheries…” (via Elsa).
• Short Slovenian Apicultural poem of the year, English Language Category:
  I can give you a bee
  for free
• Revisionism of the year, Children’s Literature Category:
  Richard Scarry for grown-ups (via Mimi Smartypants).
• High-technology abuse of the year:
  Using FoxyVoice to read Bad News Hughes’s holiday mayhem entries to us in robotic monotone, find Sarah Connor.
• Low-technology abuse of the year:
  Using clothespins to make Adam into a porcupine.



• Questionable parenting practice of the year:
  See above.

Go, already, 2005. Let 2006 commence!