isoglossia

8.23 Monday night. As always, watching “Razočarane Gospodinje”. Bree Van De Kamp is vaporing on about a trip to Tuscany or somewhere.

Me: Honey, I would like to go to Corsica!
Magda: Go.

So about three weeks ago I posted a little thing about how we’d used artificial wine corks we would have had lying around anyway to de-bonkify the major Bonking Zones and so on. In one of those instances of coincidence that makes it feel as though the world bobbles ever so slightly on its axis, the very next day I stumbled upon a site called Parent Hacks, which appears to be pretty new. Parent Hacks operates under the principle that whatever you’re doing, someone else has done it before and found a solution to the problem that you’re just now bumping up against — and this collaborative knowledge concept is my favorite thing about the internet, after Wicked Weasel (NQuiteSFW). Parenthacks offers a forum of pooled knowledge about what I am increasingly coming to believe is the most challenging, rewarding, and hilarious task the world can offer. By this I mean trying to integrate a new tiny thrashing human into the teeming mass of society. Also into your house and life.

So Asha over at Parent Hacks, “a collaborative weblog of practical parenting wisdom”, linked to our Monster-proofing post and for a few days images of the back of Adam’s not-thoroughly dented skull were flitting around the internet as that link got linked to and so on and so on, like that ’70s ad for Faberge Organics® Shampoo with wheatgerm oil and honey. Our site traffic briefly spiked well into the double digits, causing isoglossia’s bamboo web server to smolder ever so slightly.

Since I know for a fact that some regular readers have already procreated, a few of them intentionally, I link back to Parent Hacks here. Check it out — you just might find a solution to a problem you didn’t quite realize you had.

If you have not yet had children, and therefore still have a life, and are viewing this site on a computer, maybe Lifehacker is the place for you.

Magda is skiing. It took some doing to get her out the door. It’s not so much that she doesn’t trust me to change, feed, water, trim the hoofs of, etc. the boy. Instead I think that she worries she’ll come home to find him happily playing in my steaming eviscerated torso, entrails strewn all around the place. And who wants to clean that up after a day on the slopes? So anyway, for the second Sunday in a row she’s tearing down a mountain while Adam and I spend some boys-only time together. He’s down for his nap now, and I am taking advantage of the break in the relentless mammamuhmomamama?-ing to do some computer-related crap. An ongoing project here at isoglossia is to get our photo files in some sort of order. I’ve installed an external hard disc for backing up our massive media folders and have done some sorting. This inevitably leads to some strolls down memory lane.

During my first long weekend in Slovenia, a colleague and I decided to drive over the Alps to visit Prague. I know it is a pretentious cliché to like Prague, or possibly even mention it. My colleague disappeared almost immediately with some sketchy guy and I spent the entire time on my feet, which were inauspiciously housed in Australian torture-boots. By the end of the weekend my feet were raw bloody stumps, but I saw all corners of the city at all hours of the day and night. That was four years ago this weekend.

A good city for endless walking. Wear comfortable shoes.

I can also recommend the eponymous novel which has the added Euro-snobbery-deflecting attraction that none of it is set in Prague.

For the record, it bugs the hell out of me when I hear people describe Ljubljana as “a miniature Prague” etc.

Conversation in the car, which at the time had no source of music whatsoever, was generally poor. To this day I remember certain highlights:

As the high, snow-covered peaks of the Julian Alps appear in the windshield:

“So, are these ‘mountains’?”

I’ll say it again: don’t undertake long car trips with people who can’t drive a standard and never ever shut up.

You can also see the above picture in all of its bandwidth-clogging, 4455-pixel-wide scrollable massive glory, complete with upclose looks at the stitching imperfections. Meh.

Flickr’s Panorama Group’s output may well blow your mind.

Previous gratuitous panoramae:

• Ljubljana, Prešernov trg
• The harbor at Piran
• Piazza Unitá d’Italia, Trieste
• Bohinjsko jezero

(in the header photo archive, which is crawling with them)

• Reka Soča
• The waterfall Slap Savica
• Venice, Piazza San Marco

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, Scotland’s great poet of the people. At Burns Suppers all over the world, Scots and wanna-be Scots will be sitting down to a meal whose formula never varies: haggis, tatties and neeps, and wee drappies of whisky.

If you Google haggis (two words which together sound like a cat vomiting, oddly), you are likely to call up an advertisement inoccuously promising a

Traditional blend of lamb, pork,
oats and onions. Shop online today!

Yeah, I’m going to buy a HAGGIS on-line.

I’d prefer to make my own, if I were going to eat one. I’m sure that most of Isoglossia’s readership feels the same way, so as a public service I’m posting the recipe I got from an ancient cookbook I bought in a second-hand shop while visiting the auld sod:

Haggis

1 sheep’s bag and pluck.
2-4 medium parboiled potatoes.
½ lb. oatmeal (pinhead).
¼ lb. minced beef suet.
1 teasp. salt.
½ teasp. pepper.
Cayenne.
1 pt. liquor from pluck.

Wash, scrape, and cleanse the bag and soak overnight in cold water with salt added. Wash, squeeze, and cleanse the pluck; put into boiling water with the windpipe hanging over the side into small pan with water. Boil for two hours. When cold grate and use half the liver. Mince the heart, lungs, onions, and suet, and add the oatmeal (which should be toasted to a golden brown colour), salt, pepper, and cayenne. Stir in one pint of liquor from the pluck. Prepare and sew the bag. Fill about half full, sew up and prick well. Plunge into boiling water, and cook for three hours, pricking occasionally during the cooking.

Enjoy!

What to say to a Haggis
Another great Scottish holiday
Recipes without the word ‘windpipe‘ in them
Slovenia’s version of Burns
A lesser-known but funnier Scottish poet

Out on the terrace admiring the moon.
Magda: [shivering] How cold is it on the moon?
Me: [authoritative] COLD. Remember that episode of “Futurama” when they were on the moon and even Bender’s metal teeth were chattering?
Magda: [enthusiastic] And he had an affair with the moon-farmer’s daughter!
Me: [nostalgic] “The Crushinator.”
Magda: [dubious] Yeah, but, Honey, I don’t think “Futurama” is the most reliable source of information about space. [mimics a robot chattering its teeth, to adorable effect]. The sun is shining on it now, though. How cold is it?
Me: [authoritative] It’s really really HOT where the sun is shining… No, wait, there’s no atmosphere, so it’s not hot…
Magda: [wistful] And no wind [rolls eyes to indicate bliss of windlessness]
Me: [authoritative] The forecast says there will be burja tomorrow.
Magda: [fondly] I like the one where Bender is made of wood.