Ah, the innocent pleasures of childhood!

Today's paper made me sentimental for the low-tech forms of geekiness available to those of us born in the 1960s. We didn't have PCs then, but some of us had mothers who collected fascinating books on linguistic archaeology. Some of us idolized Michael Ventris for deciphering the Linear B Minoan script, then devoted rainy afternoons to the greater task of attempting to unlock Linear A. Some of us spent hours with foreign dictionaries, puzzling over instances where, for example, one could simply transliterate from Polish to Czech and then those where the languages diverged more noticeably. Some of us - admittedly not very many of us - staged conversations in Manx on city buses to perplex the other riders.

( Some of us would have been bouncing up and down with girlish glee at the prospect of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. )

(The icon I'm using was originally animated, but I didn't know how to edit it down to size while keeping the motion. Alas.)

Spring Break!

My spring break begins as of 3:20 p.m. today. Yes, I have written my human subjects paperwork and sent it to G. Yes, I have rewritten the intro to my item response theory paper and contacted my colleague. Now I can play!

Plans for the rest of the week:

• Revise and resubmit my yellowjackets essay.


• Read various edifying books.


• Read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.


• Read Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, by Robin Wall Kimmerer.


• Get caught up on Rome and maybe try the new Robin Hood.
  
• Try out more new knitting stitches.


• Play more Diablo II.

Oh bah. Just as I was pasting this into the LJ window, I got an e-mail that means I have to do more work. I'm going to save it 'til tomorrow.