Thanks for the bday wishes, guys! Happy birthday, Nutty!

Aims, so so sorry you were laid off. I hope it ends up leading to a job you like much better!

lisah, I'm glad he was considered well enough to send home. I hope he continues to recover well.

msbelle, I hope mac gets into a better groove soon.

~ma for Liv, Trudy's aunt, Drew, ita (no painma) , Frankenbuddha's nephew, lisah's friend's brother

jobma for Theodosia!

Serial:

DavidS is descended from a long line of Rottweilers? But he seems so gentle!

Connie, [link] is a site for Irish - English translation with speech synthesis files to listen to. According to that, priestess is Cabóigín , but I'd be cautious. computerized translation and especially tricky when translating between languages as different from one another as Irish and English are. (I just started following an online Irish course this week so I got this site tip from them.)

Ouise, I did something similar. I brushed it with cold coffee (it's a devil's food cake and the recipe already has coffee in it). I wish, though, that I'd thought to put it in a tupperware container I had because the evaporating steam would have soaked back in again. Of course, I really wish I hadn't screwed up the timer so that I could have gotten it out at the right time. *facepalm*

I agree that the way Americans are taught to look down on "mere manual labor" is something to be ashamed of. And the tracking of practical vs. theoretical sucks too, IMO. I didn't find out until I was already at UCLA for a while that UC is theory-oriented while CSU is practice-oriented. What a crock. Although I didn't get to go there long due to guilt trips that made me drop out, what I liked about California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA) was that they didn't enforce that divide. Nor were they as rigid about a divide between design and art as UCLA was.

And ~ma for bonny!

Good luck, Theo!!!

We use letters of recommendation all the time, but it's like pulling teeth to get them. We generally need about three or four every granting cycle. I always feel weird about them.

Those are letters of support for a proposal, though, right? I think that's totally different than a personal letter of recommendation.

Happy birthday, Spidra!

Coffee-brushing the cake sounds like an excellent, yummy (if jittery-making) improvisation.

If I had my 20s to live over again, I would definitely (among many other things) pursue a skilled manual labor trade. I knew someone a couple of years ago who was finishing her journeyman/woman stint with a local plumber and was set, at 25, to make easily double what I do now at 42 (though she did say that the sexism she'd had to deal with was pretty nauseating; she'd developed a thick hide and a dirty snarkmouth to deal with it and had earned everyone's respect, but she resented needing the hide and the snark).

I wouldn't have a clue, but I can ask on FB what the Irish for goddess is if you still need it? I've a few gaelgoirs on there.

My guess is there's a few different words for it. There tend to be for groups of people, and I bet there's pre and post Christian ones too...

I agree that the way Americans are taught to look down on "mere manual labor" is something to be ashamed of

I have been thinking a lot about this topic lately. Specifically, I have a client whose mother is in California right now picking grapes so she can pay her son's legal bills. Honestly, this makes me feel like shit, although he tried to make me feel better by telling me that she's only boxing grapes and that is much easier than actually picking the grapes. In the end, though, I ended up telling him that as a mother, I would do anything for my children. But I don't think her boxing grapes should evoke "I would do anything" feelings in me because what she is doing deserves respect. She is working hard to put her family in a better place and I respect that.

I know we are often down on Ayn Rand around here, and I have my own issues with her, but iirc, she placed a high value on work that actually produces something. One of the hardest working women I know is a client's guardian who picks mushrooms to support her husband, four children and two wards. Not glamorous, but I respect her hard work.

eta: I'm not sure what my point is wrt Ayn Rand - I guess just that she valued manual labor in her writings. If I had more time, I'd be curious to know more about why.

Thanks for all the lookups. I needed it as a passing term of address in a conversation, and I decided bean-uasal for "lady" worked better. It's a pity addressing someone as "lady" in English now comes off as mildly insulting.

I'm not sure what my point is wrt Ayn Rand - I guess just that she valued manual labor in her writings.

Well, yes and no. She made noises at it, but the plebes were not her friends.

but the plebes were not her friends.

I wouldn't take dating advice from her either.