{"id":3851,"date":"2010-04-07T22:37:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T02:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3851"},"modified":"2010-04-07T22:37:09","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T02:37:09","slug":"gabriels-hounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3851","title":{"rendered":"Gabriel’s hounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Today felt kind of weird, if only because of the weather, which even now at ten o’clock at night is still in the high sixties. (That’s, what, around 20 degrees Celsius?) It was nearly 90 this afternoon (32\u00c2\u00b0C), which is just crazy for the first week of April. Kind of makes all those “there’s no such thing as global warming because we had a snowy winter” claims seem even more ridiculous in retrospect, huh?<\/p>\n

The day got off to a weirdly inauspicious start, too, with today’s bit of “forgotten English” from my desk calendar. Today’s phrase was “Gabriel’s hounds,” describing wild geese<\/p>\n

…from the noise they make when flying, and from the legend that they are the souls of unbaptized children doomed to wander until the Day of Judgment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cheery, no? These geese are, apparently, “supposed to foretell death or misfortune to all who hear their sound.” So says 1880’s Gentleman’s Magazine<\/i>, and if you can’t trust 1880’s Gentleman’s Magazine<\/i>, who can you trust?<\/p>\n

I didn’t hear any geese, so I guess that’s something, though I did have the feeling all day like I wasn’t supposed to be in the office, like it was a vacation day I’d somehow forgotten to take. I actually managed to get a little work done, but I was very glad when five o’clock rolled around and I could head home. I know I just got back from San Jose, and from a weekend in Maryland, but I feel like I need to take an honest-to-goodness vacation, especially while I can still afford to do so. I’m getting a little serious again about looking for an apartment or condo of my own to buy…even if the prospect of monthly mortgage payments at least twice what I paid in rent in Pennsylvania for a place half the size doesn’t exactly thrill me. So while I have the time and the money, I should probably do something with it, especially since it seems increasingly less likely that Capfest 2010<\/a> is going to happen.<\/p>\n

Maybe someplace where it won’t be so hot over the summer. If it’s 90 degrees now, imagine what it will be like in July or August!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today felt kind of weird, if only because of the weather, which even now at ten o’clock at night is still in the high sixties. (That’s, what, around 20 degrees Celsius?) It was nearly 90 this afternoon (32\u00c2\u00b0C), which is just crazy for the first week of April. Kind of makes all those “there’s no … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-3851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}