Turkey minus one and counting

Turkey has now been acquired for the Annual Murkworks Homeless Waifs Thanksgiving Day Turkeyfest! On the side of the carton ours came in, I saw the words "young hen turkey", which led me to wonder what a male turkey was called. Figuring (rightly!) that this was a question that could be answered by Wikipedia, I learned that a male turkey is called a tom. This led risu to observe that turkeys are half cat and half chicken.

Ponder this, gentle readers (at least those of you who are in the States) as you sit down to your Thanksgiving Day dinners tomorrow!

In the meantime, I must observe that I have downloaded the MP3s available for public download on the sites for Captain Tractor and the Clumsy Lovers, as well as Carbon Leaf. The former is because I'd had them recommended to me by off-LJ friend Thomas, and I liked their album Celebrity Traffic Jam alright; I need to listen to the five tracks off their new album and decide whether I want to also pick up North of the Yellowhead. The Clumsy Lovers are due to rosepurr's recommendation, and of them I can note that I did enjoy listening to the tracks I downloaded, though I'm not quite sure if they are my cup of tea yet.

I also went looking for anything legally downloadable by the Paperboys, as I really do like both of the albums of theirs that I have, but I was disappointed to discover that their more recent albums are apparently only available via CD Baby or at their shows. Can anyone out there provide input on how reliable CD Baby is as a means of purchasing music? I'd like to get more Paperboys. Also, and this is to those of you who are already familiar with my musical tastes, exactly how quickly should I be trying to check out Nickel Creek? They've been recommended to me before.

One last thing: we downloaded the five-minute snippet of the next episode of the NEW new Doctor Who, and that gave me just enough to know that okay, yeah, sure, I'm willing to give this new guy a shot. From some angles, he was even almost cute. I'm not sure yet what to think about what actually happened in that snippet, though. Of which I will not say more, because Spoilers.

Wednesday miles: 2.25 (treadmill + walking)
Miles out of Hobbiton: 507.7
Miles out of Rivendell: 49.7
Miles to Lothlórien: 412.3

More German geeking

So, because I've been Writer's Block girl for the last couple of days, I thought I'd spend some time playing with some German in the interests of doing something completely unrelated to my words. (And you folks thought I'd given up on that, hadn't you?)

Accordingly, while mamishka came over tonight to get caught up on Lost (and to watch the new one with us), I worked on translating the first paragraph of Mariana, by Susanna Kearsley. Or, I should say, translating the first paragraph of the German translation back into English. I have not been able to find this novel in English for the life of me; it's out of print, and although I have it on my Amazon wish list, it's been unavailable via Amazon directly for some time and I don't feel like risking trying to buy a used copy from somebody else. But I found a German translation of it at a local Barnes and Noble--go fig.

(Of course, now tonight I finally realize that, since Susanna Kearsley apparently lives in Ontario, it could behoove me to look on amazon.ca instead of amazon.com, and lo and behold, THERE are available copies of Mariana to order. Along with copies of another of her novels I want as well, The Splendour Falls. Note to self: investigate this later, and/or conspire with my Canadian spies to acquire copies. ;) HOWEVER, it would almost be cheating to go ahead and get an English copy of the novel, neh?)

Anyway, I worked on translating the first paragraph tonight, and learned of amusing German words such as gemäß (in accordance with, according to), tatsächlich (actually), and Lieblingstante (favorite aunt, which gave me a devil of a time until I realized it broke down as Lieblings + tante, rather than Liebling + stante). Also, German's affection for splitting up verbs in such a way that it takes me forever to realize that the "hatte" at the tail end of an enormous sentence actually goes with the "Schuld an" at the beginning continues to drive me nuts. And, as a general note, when one is transcribing German text into a file for easier translation, it's best to SPELL ALL THE WORDS CORRECTLY, lest you spend twenty whole minutes trying to translate a word that doesn't actually exist.

Or, er, ahem, so I've heard.

But now I know what the first paragraph says, more or less. Go me!