Journal Entry: August 6, 2008

Something funny.

I subscribe to a handful of news feeds just to get a quick overview of what's going on in the world, and there was a story this morning with the headline:
"Mauritania forces stage coup after officers sacked."
I also, just to keep a hand in, subscribe to a French news feed that pulls from some of the same sources, and today it carried a French version of that story. Its headline read:
"Putsch en Mauritanie apres le limogeage de militaires."

Now, yeah, "limogeage" is a pretty funny word, but that's not what I'm getting at here. I just found it interesting that we have this word in English, "coup," which is extraordinarily French, but everyone knows it. But, in France (where "coup" means "cut" and is much more versatile and commonplace than military coups are), the same event is called a "putsch," which isn't a very French word at all (it looks Yiddish to me).

Anyway, I found it funny. "Putsch." Silly Frenchies.

Umm... T-- is in Tulsa on business. She went up yesterday afternoon while I was still at work, and then stayed the night. As a result, I had to go pick up AB from the babysitter's after work, and this particular babysitter lives in...Egypt. A long way away. Anyway, I've been doing a markup on my little sister's novel, and she happened to be free for the afternoon (husbandless and kidless), so she met me at the house after work then rode out there with me, and we talked about her book the whole way.

We had McDonalds for dinner, and then I played with AB for a while before putting her to bed. She was in an incredibly good mood. Around 8:00 I sent my sister home because I was expecting D-- for some Civ, but he was at a schmoozing sort of event for work and it was going profitably, so he stayed at that until 9-ish. I had already made arrangements to come into work a little late this morning, so D-- brought his laptop over anyway, and we played until midnight-ish.

Then this morning N-- came over to watch AB until T-- gets home (we expect her in around 2:00 or 3:00). I made it to work about 9:00, and now it's already almost lunchtime. Awesome.

Ah. As I said, I had intended to sleep late (thus the late-night Civving), but I woke up half an hour before my alarm clock went off this morning. For the last week I've been virtually unable to wake up at all, groggy well into the afternoon, and yet this morning I jumped out of bed before the alarm clock went off. Now, admittedly the alarm clock was still set for an hour and a half later than its norm, but still. I give the credit to going off my medication. With any luck my pain will stay manageable (and I'll actually get better), and I can stay off the stuff. It would be nice.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.