a wolf angel is not a good angel

My cat always comes for some love when I have to leave. No wonder I’m late all the time.

I actually got some good work done today. I am still terrifyingly terrifyingly behind, though. Tonight I will have much caffeinated things with sugar, possibly at a 24h Second Cup nearish me. Tomorrow I have an abstract due, and it’s to Germany, which means probably that it is due earlier rather than later in the day. Admittedly the abstract can be fairly, um, not good, but still. I’d like it to be coherent, though the “hey, this is so confusing it must be good” way is tempting.

Snow — the first I’ve seen this almost-winter.

A friend pointed out the first icicle of the season. I find it lacks something in comparison to, say, the first robin or tulip or lilac tree in bloom of the year.

(New linguistics posts coming soon.)

Being a Canadian at Thanksgiving is similar to — but not as bad as — being a Jew over Christmas.

A lovely coffee with my old advisor. Now everyone knows I’m a semanticist wannabe. (Stress on wannabe. Of course now that I’ve told everyone I’ll change my mind. Oh well.)

Background:

At Canada U, there wasn’t much semantics. Oh, there was one person who was, supposedly, a semanticist, but he’s really a failed mathematician. Also hasn’t published in years, as far as I can tell. I complained about him and his course regularly. To this advisor also. Indiscreet? Yeah.
The problem with the “semantics” at Canada U is that it isn’t. Oh, we covered all the general things. Predicate logic, and translating English into it. (Also covered in the prerequisite courses intro to logic, but whatever.) A sudden switch to using restrictors — except we never discussed why you might want to. (A: because predicate logic is not so good with things like “most”.) A mention of donkey anaphora (”Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it”) but no real discussion about it, other than it exists. Well, okay. Why do we care?
I know *now* why we care, but that’s because I have since had capable semanticists teaching me real semantics. Which was primarily the same thing, except that it was related to language. As a linguist, I like that.

So over coffee, I say that I’ve been back for so long because the only class I had that might not have been cancelled was syntax, and I wasn’t sticking around just for syntax. I said I was becoming a semanticist.

At Canada U I was a syntactician: though I wanted to want to be a phonologist, it never took. And I complained (see above) about semantics all the time. (I can’t imagine that any of this was news to anyone there. There have been fights since he got tenure about how he teaches semantics. Maybe longer.) So my advisor asks me if I had had any inkling of that.
“Well, in the intro course, semantics was my favourite section.” (Followed closely, I think, by morphology. Which is why I rather like the take-every-morpheme-into-account-as-it-goes school of semantics. Morphosemantics is cool. I guess that’s sort of what I’m doing in my paper. Anyhow.) And she laughed and said “But not after.”

No. But it is now. It’s what I want to work on, but don’t dare, because my learnability paper is due Wed. Actually, I’m good for that deadline, so I will let myself work on semantics now. I’m either a nerd or I have no life; I can’t quite decide which.

I say days because — though I am not in the States — I got one of those “you spent lots of money, here’s a free turkey” turkeys. But it’s 20 pounds. And we’re 5 people here. And one of us doesn’t eat turkey. And one of us has had to go away because the teachers at his school went on strike so they’re seeing an arbitrator and he won’t be here tonight. Twenty pounds, all for me, my mother, and my sister — who is ten. Good thing I like turkey salad. I bet, though, that this is going to be a slow day for the blogging.

I’m going to miss a friend presenting her work on the semantics of ASL because I will be driving that day. Frustrating. Like so many other linguists, I think ASL is especially neat. Why? I’ve no idea. I’m not switching. (a) it’s too expensive getting translators and (b) I want my field work to be somewhere warm. Fijian must be a really cool language, right?

A new Demotivators calendar. One day.

I can’t decide if I should put all these brief and unrelated comments in separate tiny blog posts. Today’s answer: no.

I told a friend yesterday that I had a blog, but for some reason held back on giving her the URL. I’m trying to figure out why. There’s nothing here I haven’t told her — she knows far more about, say, my feelings of Not Good Enough than I’ve posted here. I have not shared all the details of my paper on Tagalog, but that’s not due to any shame in it.
I think it might be because this is so inane. It’s not hard to find me — a search for linguistics+ blog would, I think, pull this up. I believe I’m linked to some of the blogs I’ve sent her links to. And my email address would also be instantly recognisable. Plus the pictures of my cats. (If you’ve decided to procrastinate by finding me: hi!)

I can’t quite figure out why I’m not giving her the link. Probably I will. And then remove this post because it’s too meta. That’s such an irritating but useful term.

I’ve written the introduction to my learnability paper and the description of my algorithm. I’m partway through the proof it works. Then I need to go through the implementation and explain why it’s better than the alternate one. Then I write my conclusion and my appendix. It’s coming: I might well be able to finish it today. Even with the fajitas.

Set a meeting with one of my old advisors. She’s a phonologist. I’m . . . not. So it’s mostly just a random chat. But it will be nice. I will have to try to remember to hold my tongue, though. Not that there’s much inapppropriate that I have to say — I have a semester where I don’t hate any of my professors. (She actually knows about the one I do hate. Who is a Big Name in the field, and also a big jerk. Luckily she’s discreet — lord knows I’m not.)

I have been lax. There is so much I have to have done already. Except I suppose not, since I haven’t.

I don’t seem to have any exciting and brilliant ideas about linguistics. Or neat things to say, or facts. I believe I’ve already shared my fact about what meaning Eskimo (Kalallisut) has a lot of words for (fear, not snow). Or English (anger, also not snow. Though more snow words, apparently). I can’t really face possible worlds at the moment.
I will continue to face learnability. Today’s goal: to finish a draft of the paper or handout. Then I will meet a friend for cheap fajita night. Mmmm, fajitas.

I am totally without a work ethic.

I will not expand on this more, though it would certainly prove the point.

[1] I keep singing that to the old “Journey into Imagination” tune. I preferred the old ride to the current one.

Or, more discussion of Fresh Fish.

I played it again Friday night, with my cousin and then a second game with my cousin and my uncle. My cousin won the first game and I won the second (or maybe the other way around? I can’t even remember) which just shows how much prior experience helps. It is one of those learn-as-you-go games. I have some ideas on how to better lay out my stores, but I’m but not entirely sure how much they will work.

I am much better at road placement now. It’s getting somewhere towards natural. It’s really crucial, though: if you build somewhere you can’t, it looks like the game would be ruined. (Note: we play the “if we missed an expropriation and noticed it after you bid so you can no longer place it where you intended, the turn gets restarted” version.) It’s best, though, to officially look for expropriations after every turn.

It’s still a lot of fun. I’m entirely taken with it. You need serious spatial reasoning skills, though. The games are remarkably short, mostly because there’s no point in taking 5 minutes for a turn because the endgame is, as far as I can tell, totally unpredictable at the beginning.

Back home, where the internet connection is weird. I can connect directly to the modem, but my computer has trouble recognising the connection when it’s via the router. (None of the other computers have issues.) And we have a router at my, um, other home, and my computer works just fine there.

Curious.

Okay, now I really really have to write my papers. And prepare stuff. And ack. I am so far behind on work. All I want to do is sleep.

My mother is making the cake I’ve been intending to make. Eventually. I need to — hmm. I need to sketch out a proof and find 3 examples (well, find one more example) where my algorithm works better than the other, and 1 example where both algorithm have problems. That would be a great thing to have done today, and I think it’s feasible. If I stop playing online, that is.