Bah, humbug!

Well, here it is on the eve of another Limmud, and I've still got a big pile of unprocessed notes from the last one and Limmud Fest. That's what comes of having a girlfriend to take up your time, I suppose, so I shouldn't complain.

Speaking of writing, I got a letter in response to one of the stories I'm still theoretically sending occasionally out. It wasn't the normal form letter; it constituted several pages, and as I flipped through it I discovered they were critiques of the story. At that point I got excited, as if it was a simple rejection, I wouldn't have got so much detail back. Perhaps it might be a sale contingent on requested rewrites. So I flipped back to the front and discovered they'd bought it outright (admittedly, requesting changes)! A sale, to a major SF magazine! (And not one of the small press magazines I made my two extant sales to.)

Then I woke up.

Boy, was I disappointed.

(And IRL, the submissions referred to above have been completely theoretical for probably over a year now (though still on my to-do list).)

Unusual feature of the German language

I finally acquiesced to aviva_m's demands, and skipped ahead in my German book so I can learn other tenses, as she's fed up of only being able to talk with me in the present. I've made a start now on the perfect tense—so now, as my boss put it, I can talk perfect German.

Meanwhile, I've learned about unusual feature of German: there are a number of prepositions which take a noun in the accusative when there's a motion involved, but in the dative instead when there isn't. That's interesting; I can't think of another language that does something like that (though of course I only know four in enough detail that I'd know of something like this). Anyone know of any further examples of anything similar?

Speaking of German, rysmiel's correspondence with me over the years has been peppered with the occasional "und so weit". From context I'd guessed it meant "and so on", but now I know it literally means "and so far", which doesn't mean the same thing at all. So can my germanophone readers confirm whether it has the former meaning at all? (Or, alternatively, can rysmiel let me know the intended meaning?)

Can you guess what I got up to last night, at Moishe House?

( View piccy )

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4D Godless Christmas festivities

Courtesy of Jim at work:

If Chanucka is a two dimensional festival (triangles), Christmas is a three dimensional festival (pyramids) then I thought I should invent a 4D festival to celebrate at the 9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People.

Read on to find out what on earth he's on about.