Tag Archives: family

Breakdowns

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A major project at work is falling apart.  One small, but absolutely critical, piece cannot be made to work.  I was fighting this all afternoon, fiddling with computer configurations and exchanging e-mails and phone calls with co-workers.  The project is already running late.  If it gets postponed again one or both of my October weekends with

[info]colgaffneyis

 will be in jeopardy.

In the middle of this comes an e-mail informing me of a new family problem, asking me to make some inquiries.  After doing so and communicating the results (interleaving all of this personal business with my work crisis) I learn this will cost us over $800.

And J has found another way to mismanage his affairs.  It is particularly  Irritating because it is a new manifestation of something we thought we had beaten.

Update on the Travelers, and those left behind

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mia_mcdavid and her mother are in the northern Chicago suburbs, staying with a family friend. They fly to Dublin tonight.

I got J up and off to school yesterday and today, without too much whining on his part.

Last night I started a sewing project for my colgaffneyis kit. I had been procrastinating about it for months. Not a big job, but the fitting is fussy.

We might have visitors this weekend. Some old (30+ years) friends were talking about stopping by on their way between South Dakota and Michigan. That was a couple weeks ago, before I went to Colorado, and they have not called back, unless they talked to Mia while I was away. So there may be a van with Michigan plates sitting in my driveway tonight.

“Seduced by a couple of bottles of Carlings Black Label beer”

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….How my father got started in the study of American dialects, from his 1979 autobiographical statement, “Linguistics through the Kitchen Door”, in First Person Singular: Papers from the Conference on an Oral Archive for the History of American Linguistics (First paper after the introduction).

The paper begins:

From my point of view, the plan for an informal history of linguistics is the brain child of Bill Austin, begot in the informal gourmet club composed of himself, Bill Card, Virginia [McDavid] and me. At irregular intervals during his years at IIT we would meet for a distinguished meal, and the conversation regularly turned to our experiences as linguists, and with other linguists.

I remember this “gourmet club” well, and was privileged to attend some of its sessions, where I learned a lot about both linguistics and food.

BTW, I have no idea why the proofreading of First Person Singular is so bad.

Last Night in Colorado

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My mother continues to get better, but this is a long, slow road. I am going home to Minnesota tomorrow, so I won’t see the next steps.

My brother Raven, his wife Anne, and their sons Patrick and Ian took me to dinner tonight at a local Mexican restaurant. Anne works for a local restaurant chain and I asked her if this was one of hers. She answered: “Don’t I wish!” It is a neighborhood family place. It reminded me of the kind of Mexican restaurant we used to visit in Chicago. We have not found the equivalent in the Twin Cities. I am sure it exists, but it is a long way from Roseville, which is close to being a culinary dead zone.

This was a good visit. I feel I have made a difference in my mother’s life, and in the lives of my brother and his family, who would otherwise have been alone on the front line in this crisis.