All is quiet here in west Alabama. I am tucked away, typing merrily, in the back bedroom of the house, still not quite dressed for the day. I doubt seriously that anyone else even knows that I'm up yet, which is fine by me. I like having a bit of time in the morning between wakefulness and conversation that allows me time to gather my thoughts, settle the last remaining embers of dreams into the dustbin of the day, and ease into the day as I'm ready.

Yesterday I purchased many, many bulbs for the front flowerbeds. Fifty assorted daffodil bulbs, fifty assorted tulips, and a combined package of grape hyacinths and some other small flower whose name escapes me.

I went out this morning to plant the bulbs, and found that the ground was virtually too packed for me to shovel. Alabama red clay mud, when packed solid and baked slowly until dry, is virtually impervious to all man and beast (except, of course, fire ants, which can tunnel through plutonium and survive, I'd think).I managed to dig a few small trench rows, in which I laid alternating bulbs—tulip, daffodil, tulip, daffodil. After that, having spent far more time than I wanted with far fewer results than I would've liked, I gave up, put the shovel back on the porch, and went back inside.

Ever noticed how only the very strangest of the learning mnemonics you used as a child are the ones that stay with you to adulthood?

Yesterday afternoon I actually started laughing out loud at myself as I tried to orient myself to the four directions of the compass. In doing so, I mentally drew a compass in the air—east on the right, west on the left—and finally placed myself facing north.When learning directions, I was never entirely certain if, when looking north, east was on my right or on my left. For some reason, I just had trouble making it stick. But, it turned out, I wasn't the only one, and a fellow student piped up with his "easy way to remember the directions on a compass."

He said, "You can remember to go clockwise, right? Start with north, and move around the compass like a clock, and say the phrase 'Never eat soggy worms!' and there you are—all four directions!"

Damn him.

This link, English as She is Spoke, has a writeup that makes it well worth examining:

"This 1883 book is without question the worst phrasebook ever written. The writer, Pedro Carolino, who was Portuguese, did not particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary. The results, I'm sure you'll agree, are staggering."Today's snippet-o-joy from Danno:

In retrospect, a hiatus was exactly what I needed. I wasn't happy with anything I had to say; none of it felt meaningful or thought-provoking. So I decided to take a break, throw myself into something else for about a week, and I knew I'd come back full of ideas and ready to tackle the world—in a literary sense, of course.

As I'm coding, he comes up behind me, wraps his arms around me and says, "You do such neat things." After the past 24 hours, I think that was exactly what I needed to hear.