cimorene

Dear Miss Manners:

My grandmother received a phone call from her late husband's brother's wife this week. She tells my grandmother that her husband would like the set of china back that he gave to my grandmother and grandfather as a wedding gift 60 years ago. He brought the china back from Germany while in the service, and he wants to give it to his children. He did not tell this to my grandmother directly; he had his wife tell her.

this sounds like a stunt that my mother's infamous "sister-kidnapping & 50th-anniversary-party-destroying" aunt pat would pull. that makes a good story for parties. i should keep in mind to relate it some time.

elfiepike sent me a tiny miniature chair. it's incredibly cute. it's tinier than the candles on our coffee table. a tea light or a christmas ornament could recline in it comfortably. i am smitten. i already had a weakness for little tiny chairs, but this is a modernist chair which is possibly even more special.

professor saruman explained today that when writing in a foreign language, it's a good idea to have a "so-called native speaker" look over the paper. uhmmm. am i missing something? something like how 'native speaker' isn't actually a real word, let alone the totally normal term for, you know, a native speaker?

i haven't seen anyone linking stories about this online around lj, which is odd, but i read in hufvudstadsbladet yesterday that nasa's just unveiled a plan to have an inhabited moon base by 2024 as an intermediary step to establishing a colony on mars. this is the future! coincidentally, just last week isilya and i were talking about how much more aggressive the push to make space inhabitable should be.