• Traveling Along, We're Adventurers

    Transarctic: He’s Off!

    Ben Saunders is on his way across the Arctic at last. Strangely, he’s got company, at least for the first few miles. There’s another expedition on the ice, and they were within sight of each other for a while. He contributes a new word: “Shreezing.” It’s that cold up there, people.

  • Connections

    Old Friends

    I heard from an old friend today. Not via email, or voicemail, or textmail… I got an actual card in an envelope with postage. It seems she’s laid up after a foot operation and is convalescing at her parents’ house, and is feeling lonely and out of touch. I was talking about this tonight over dinner with David and Steve – we got together for some good old fashioned American comfort food at the Olive Garden (yes, yes, primitive irony). In a few minutes, I’m actually going to sit down and write a letter to her (or maybe I’d better…

  • Uncategorical Weirdness

    Sindarin Calligraphy

    Today a post in Caveat Lector sent me on a short excursion down memory lane. Dorothea’s husband David is an expert in Sindarin (one of the Elvish languages), and consulted on the Lort of the Rings movies, as cited numerous places (but an interesting place is here.) She reports: We’re hoping he can get the class list in advance, so that everybody can have a Sindarin name as soon as they walk in. This afternoon we picked up some chisel-tip pens (in distinctly un-Tolkienian shades of garish blue, orange, and pink, but they were the only real angled chisel-tip pens…