These stupid made-up holidays I wish were a long-dead past phase. Every day a new thing! What will next Tuesday bring That will fail to amuse or amaze?
I announce The back door is back on and properly sealed to the house with glue that stinks of vinegar but the wooden frame still needs painting and I need some new aluminium screws before I can rehang the storm-door day.
I think it's used as an inhibitor to the setting process more than a solvent, but I agree with you on the niff. The small screw-cap versions are easier to use, less niffy and they stay useable after opening longer than the big tubes used in caulking guns even though they work out three to four times as expensive.
Must've been exciting to be developing caulk. And those break'n'shake glowsticks - they use acetic acid as a moderator to prevent catastrophic exothermic excursion.
Real science should occasionally explode violently, as I explained to my chemistry teacher.
(Stevie) Yeah, but not too often and not too big. A work colleague was severely burnt (20%, months off work) after an ether vapour explosion set off by an open tin of lithium aluminium hydride falling into a bucket of water. I'm glad I was in the office.
I don't think it is what she meant, but a friend wrote, " Actually, if you look on the agent orange information sheet it does list illnesses is children."
Weather should be nice this weekend - and friends from England might drop by at the mill. And tonight we're going to the DIY store to buy a new nozzle thingy for the kitchen mixer tap, and possible some screenwash for the car too. Can't wait!
Looking forward to having short grass again tomorrow, although it's going to be an long slog getting there, with 14 days' growth to deal with. I might even give he barbecue a spring clean too. Who knows, I may even take the tree cuttings to the tip at last.
[Phil] A trip to the tip? *jealous* It just doesn't happen here the same way - it's so organised and everything gets taken away. When I was a kid, the tip was a landfill site (actually, that sounds - and is - dreadful) in an old chalk quarry a mile or so out of the town. There was salvage and reclaimed stuff to buy from the backs of various containers - my father often came home with bits of fishing rods from which he would create new fishing rods. We were never allowed to buy anything.
[penelope] Your last two sentences, on first reading, had me envisioning a family life predicated on wombling. I realized that you meant that you weren't allowed to buy anything from the tip only after that movie had run to conclusion.
Perhaps more damning, I saw the young penelope as a sort of infant version of Edna the Inebriate Woman wombling across a huge pile of rubbish in a mac with a string belt.
[Stevie] that wasn't me, although when I was a kid there was a scary and batty old woman who lived in a caravan at the tip. She had been a well-educated governess who had worked for some grand European families. Didn't stop her from spitting at cars in town though.
So ... if no-one has anything better to do this midsummer's weekend, then come to the village of Zonnemaire in Zeeland where my husband (the windy miller) will be running the mill from 10.00 tomorrow morning Saturday, until 16.00 on Sunday afternoon. ('Free running only - the stones are not yet properly fettled for grinding flour) I will endeavour to have coffee on the go at all times, and it may well be possible to partake of a pancake at 03.00 if you so desire. Other than that, I'll be either sitting in the shade with a laptop writing up a wonderful conference over the past 2 days (Look for the Erasmus Energy Forum), or out on a bike ride, or painting my toenails, or asleep in the car.
arr, you've got to give the stones a good fettling afore ye can set them to proper milling
I was going to post a URL to an absolutely rivetting account of improving and modernising the fettling of iron castings in Indian foundries, but it seems that mc5 isn't supporting links.
I've used the verb 'to fettle' since I was a pony-mad child, and through my career in international motorsport, which spanned more than a decade. I'm now scared of googling for the definition.
Don't worry, Penelope, I understand perfectly. My little sports car sometimes needs a bit of fettling. Some of that I do myself but mostly, because I don't have the equipment, it goes somewhere where it can be fettled by experts. Perhaps there is some sort of salacious meaning in Stevie's world but, like you, I'm not prepared to check. :)
It's the windy miller's 50th birthday this October. My plan is to have his replica Lotus Super7 (which has been stored in a potato warehouse somewhere in our village for at least 7 years - I have never seen it) fettled and back on the road so we can drive to his 50th birthday party in it. I think I've just found someone who can do it for us. Now all I need is the key to the potato warehouse.
As a Geordie, "fettle" has a different usage for me. For example "what fettle the day?", meaning "how are you doing today?" and "in good fettle" meaning "in good form/condition" (e.g. Alan Shearer was in good fettle the day he scored a 2nd half hat-trick against Leicester, to win 4-3). I suppose it's quite similar, but I'd not realised it could be used as a verb before.
There are quite a few nouns that can be verbed, but some that should never undergo that treatment ('leverage', for one). In my job (mostly editing/using English written by non-native speakers) I often find myself making changes that insert the verb of a noun - and I guess it's because it's easy to gather a vocabulary of nouns in a foreign language, but less easy to know which of them can be verbed. From my experience anyway.
Some people get bent out of shape about the "modern" habit of "verbing nouns". I have my own list of hates as you all know, but I had a think about this one, concluded the practice was a *lot* older than anyone usually credits and crossed it off my list.
[Pen] Your windy miller has just shot up my list of admirable Hollanders. Seven years in storage, even with all those eyes watching, is rather off-putting so he drops one position. My car is a similar type. Down here they carry the generic name of 'Clubmans'. Mine is a locally built unit marketed as a 'PRB'.
