This past December I was awarded the Carol J. Fisher Award for Excellence in Research (in memory of Hugh Agee) and today was our awards banquet so I got to receive the award there. I'm two years into this program now, which means I've spent about five years in the department as a graduate student...with a few more years to go before I'm finished!
A big ol' rat snake periodically uses our back porch as its shedding grounds. Sometimes we see it around and sometimes we only find its ecdysis. Today we were...lucky...enough to find both.
Andrew texted me while I was in a meeting to tell me that...there was a big ol' rat snake slithering up the side yard. The kids encountered it on their way to the trampoline.
By the time I got out of my meeting it had taken refuge in the bush beside our garage...and Benjamin had found its long ecdysis on the back porch. As you can see, it's at least three feet long!
.jpeg)
I forgot to write about Rachel's choir concert!
It was a Tuesday night (March 31) so Miriam and I watched half it in on our commute home from Athens and then watched the rest of it in Andrew's office.
Andrew took a bunch of screenshots but I honestly don't know where I put them...like...they're on my computer somewhere probably...but I don't know where precisely (and should be writing actual papers so I'm not going to take the time to find them now). I got to attend Rachel's concert in person in December, which was wonderful, but I think it's so nice that streaming events like this is "normal" these days because I don't think it always was (or at least not so quick and easy to access)..jpeg)
I zoomed in on her below in case you need help finding her (she is in the second row from the back, third girl from the right):
We recently finished learning all the letters of the Arabic alphabet and now are moving into other little details of the language. One of the benefits of learning a foreign language is the opportunity to look at your own language from a different perspective, which can help you to understand why your first language works the way it does.
We've spent the past couple of days looking at the difference between sun letters and moon letters. A sun letter causes the "al-" prefix (meaning "the") to assimilate with itself. So, for example, in Arabic "sun" is شمس (shams) and "the sun" is الشمس (al-shams) but you actually pronounce it as ash-shams because "sh" causes the "l" to assimilate. In Arabic "moon" is قمر (qamar) and "the moon" is القمر (al-qamar) and in this case it really is pronounced al-qamar because the "q" doesn't cause the "l" to assimilate.
When Andrew learned about these they felt somewhat arbitrary to him but slowly began to feel intuitive.
When he initially taught them to me he spouted off this arbitrary list and I was like, "Yeah. No way am I ever going to remember that."
Like, I knew al-noor changed into an-noor and a few other things that could help me remember but mostly I was like, "There has to be a reason for this, a pattern of sorts."
Of course, I never bothered to actually determine the pattern because, well, learning Arabic wasn't precisely top-priority in my life (I was busy surviving infants and toddlers). But, when I was teaching it to the kids the other day and I presented them the list of sun and moon letters, I said to myself, "Okay, let's figure out why! There has to be a reason..."
So, here's the list from Wikipedia:
| Sun letters | ت | ث | د | ذ | ر | ز | س | ش | ص | ض | ط | ظ | ل | ن |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| t | th | d | dh | r | z | s | sh | ṣ | ḍ | ṭ | ẓ | l | n | |
| /t/ | /θ/ | /d/ | /ð/ | /r/ | /z/ | /s/ | /ʃ/ | /sˤ/ | /dˤ/ | /tˤ/ | /ðˤ/ | /l/ | /n/ | |
| Moon letters | ا | ب | ج | ح | خ | ع | غ | ف | ق | ك | م | ه | و | ي |
| ʼ | b | j | ḥ | kh | ʻ | gh | f | q | k | m | h | w | y | |
| /ʔ/ | /b/ | /d͡ʒ/* | /ħ/ | /x/ | /ʕ/ | /ɣ/ | /f/ | /q/ | /k/ | /m/ | /h/ | /w/ | /j/ | |
We went for a walk today. I was holding Phoebe's hand and walking beside Benjamin. We were talking about the trees, how green and leafy they're getting. We were noting what kind of trees he likes and what kind of trees they have elsewhere in the world.
And then Phoebe came to a sudden halt. My arm yanked backwards, pulling me off balance.
"Whaaat?" I asked with a little more impatience than was probably necessary.
My patience is thin these days. We are on a countdown to the end of the semester and I am frustrated by all of my final projects. I cannot seem to pull any of them together. My brain is feeling pulled in a thousand directions and I wish it would stop, that we could just fast forward to the end. But I also want time to slow down...so that I have time to finish these projects, see?
Plus, Phoebe yanks on my arm frequently when we walk. She will come to a screeching halt to look at a rock or a pinecone or a leaf. She'll drop into a squat to examine an ant or pick some wood sorrel. Or her shoe will come loose. Or she'll see an airplane and stop to stare.
And every time I'll about feel like she's going to yank my arm off.
This afternoon we got to go to Benjamin's swimming awards banquet. He's had a really great season and has improved so much, so it really was no surprise when he was called up as the most improved swimmer on the silver team.
.jpeg)
Grandpa spent his first day of retirement taking the kids bowling. It was the first time for several of the children because we haven't gone bowling here. I honestly couldn't remember why we hadn't just taken the kids bowling...until Reid told us how much it cost. Let's just say "Private Equity Bowlero Ruining Bowling" isn't a sensational title. I was fully expecting the fees to be around $5 per person per game...maybe even $10 (it's been a while since we've been bowling). I was not expecting round $30 per person—talk about exorbitant!
But the kids had fun.
And we remembered why we have never gone bowling here.
Miriam finished with her finals on Wednesday, so she was available to go bowling with everyone. I asked her to be my photographer (Andrew and I stayed home to work).
Here's Benjamin:
.jpeg)
