How's the weather?

Mom came to Boston this weekend - sans Dad, predictably. We did the usual dinners and hotel lounging and she helped set up our apartment a little more. I hope she had a nice time.

Andrea's mom was also here, albeit briefly, and she got a museum tour, too.
Here's a cyber, half-hearted apology to Andrea, her mom, and mine, for babbling on and on about everything from the floor tiles to the elevator and everything in between. I'll pare down my schtick soon - I swear.

I'm beginning to wish I'd buckled down on Latin and Greek, ignored Tufts insufferably stodgy Classics department, and gone on to a life in academia pursuing English word derivation. I love Anu Garg's Word-a-Day emails - etymology absolutely fascinates me and even the daily doses from the newsletters aren't enough. I long for the moments when the weekly round-up of reader feedback is posted and people submit their own interpretations and personal connections with the featured words.

Last week featured unusual insults, perfectly in tune with the budding cynicism I've been cultivating, as has recently been pointed out to me. "Policaster," a petty politician, employs the suffix "aster" and can create an insulting diminuitive for just about any word. Poetaster, philosophaster, et cetera... I'm just aiming not to be considered a bloggaster. One reader pointed out the Yiddish way of insulting someone's trade by inserting an "n" into a word: paintner and quiltner were her examples. So many ways to sneer at people, so little time...