Category: Entertainment

We have a strangely multilingual household, since Cassandra and I both speak English (obviously) and Spanish (at different levels) and are both using Duolingo to pick up at least tidbits of other languages. When she tells a cat to get off the counter, she usually says it in Hawaiian; I frequently say it in Spanish. If I’m trying to say something in German (which is not the language I’m currently focused on) and don’t know a word, I’m more likely to fill in with the Spanish equivalent instead of the English.

It’s probably not surprising that sometimes we invent words to fill in some of the gaps. Having spent a decent amount of time in fandom, I’ve been familiar with the term “glomp” for well over a decade, but Dictionary.com and Google Translate don’t recognize the word. Since cats are frequently glomped (carefully) in this house, knowing the Spanish equivalent seemed useful. So Cassandra invented one when she said “estoy glompeando a Zuko.” Or was it “estoy glompando a Zuko“?

After some consideration, I believe the root verb should be glompear, and it’s treated as a regular verb for conjugation: yo glompeo, tu glompeas, nosotros glompeamos, etc. But it could also be a root verb of glompar, conjugated to yo glompo, tu glompas, nosotros glompamos, etc. Which do you think is the most appropriate translation?

If you don’t like it, que-ever, don’t use it. For my part, necesito glompear un gato antes de trabajar.

Twas the day before the night before Christmas (also known as “Christmas Adam”), when all through the house, not a creature was stirring… probably because the furnace wasn’t keeping up with the sudden temperature drop, so all the cats were curled up with me on my bed. I would love to have called our HVAC company that morning, but we had tickets to see Dear Evan Hansen in downtown Chicago, and I was rapidly adjusting our plan because of the weather.

Typically, when we see a show in Chicago, we take the Metra in and walk from the train station to the theatre. It’s usually a comfortable walk of about a mile, though the last show we saw (The Twenty-Sided Tavern) was just over two. But that temperature drop had the forecasted high of 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind chills were pushing it into the negative thirties.

We had already tentatively selected a sushi restaurant a couple blocks away from the theatre, and Google showed a parking option in the same block, so I decided we would drive into Chicago instead. If you’ve ever driven in downtown Chicago, you understand that this is not a decision I made lightly: the roads tend to be crowded with drivers who have no objection to darting across multiple lanes to turn at the next light or stop suddenly to let their passengers out. The Chicago taxi drivers mock the Uber drivers as poor drivers, and I suspect the reverse is also true.

Nevertheless, the roads near me looked almost clear of the snow that had fallen the previous afternoon and overnight, so we bundled up with multiple layers and ventured into the city. Between the weather and the holidays, the Chicago roads were the emptiest I have ever seen them. Though we couldn’t spot it at the time, Google’s directions to the sushi restaurant were accurate; it was buried in a food court with just a sign on the window along with several other restaurants. Unfortunately, there was nothing even vaguely resembling the entrance to a parking garage that we could see. We looped the block a couple of times, then headed towards the theatre to find their parking lot instead.

Successfully parked, we trudged through the slushy sidewalks and bitter winds to find that the sushi restaurant – and the rest of the food court – had a sign on the door saying they were closed through the weekend because of the winter storm and holidays. We huddled in their doorway briefly scoping out other nearby restaurants, deciding that the Mediterranean place we had just passed was our top choice… mainly because having walked past it already, we knew it was open.

After a tasty lunch and entrancing show, we reached home to find out that the house was still cold, and cold water was not running from our kitchen sink. After a brief panic, I realized that only the kitchen sink had an issue, and we directed a space heater towards its pipes, which sit against an exterior wall. On Christmas Eve, targeted space heater use brought the house up to a reasonable temperature until our HVAC company could come out.

All’s well that ends well.

I had a strange dream the other night, of which I only remember snippets, just enough to be interesting. It started on an airplane, where I learned that the flight was free for anyone willing to assist with host/ess duties. While that seemed like a reasonable offer, somewhere in the process, I lost the sandals I had been wearing when I boarded the plane. I’m reasonably fond of my Tevas, so I proceed to take another flight on the same plane in an attempt to find them.

By the end of the second flight, I had realized that each flight was a separate movie theme. Not the movies they were showing during the flight, rather the plane was actually part of the movie’s story. That said, I don’t recall what the first two “movies” were about. I do recall that when the third flight started, as I was still searching for my sandals, I glanced out and saw a humongous shark launch out of the water and bite a blue whale in half. I turned to my friend, who was not on the previous two flights, and said “This is a shark movie, stay out of the water.”

You may be wondering how I knew it was a blue whale. Really, I have no idea… my brain just said it was. And since a megalodon (such as in The Meg) is estimated to be around 60 feet, compared to a blue whale’s 90-100 feet, I’m guessing the shark in question was closer in size to the mosasaurus seen in Jurassic World; size estimates for those vary from from 55 to 120 feet.