old english and cats

so there are vowel changes i've griped about before. whatever to them. one of the ones that really irks me is the whole a turning into ae (imagine them smooshed together to make the aesh character). now i don't mind at all on principle, but the exceptions to exceptions to the rule gets old after a while. this one happened to be very quotable, so i've quoted the book on this. it has to be read to be believed. this comes from page 39 of The Elements of Old English, by Moore, Knot, and Hulbert:

a remained a only when it was followed by w or a nasal, or when it occurred before a single consonant followed by a, o, or u. Elsewhere a became ae.

okay. this doesn't seem so bad. the letter changes except for two things. so what if the second of those things is a bit picky. there is, however, a footnote. i'll quote that, too:

a always became ae before single h, however, even if the h was followed by a, o, or u ... Moreover in dialects where a does not break before l plus a consonant, a appears, not ae.

it goes on about dipthongization in ancient dialects revolving around a myriad of other letters, but i'll spare us all.

my question: so by "only" you really mean "all the frikken time"?

seriously. this is "between three pm and five pm on the third thursday of a blue moon month during the fifth leap year of a three-decade cycle" kind of logic. what the fuck?

on the bright side, i do not believe i failed the quiz today. i did not by any stretch of the kind and delusional imagination get an A, but i did not fail. i am satisfied. i went in there a firm believer in the "a 59 is better than a 29" rule of failure, and came out with what probably amounts to a C of some kind. truly, this is something i count as a blessing.

***

but this post has cats in the title as well, so:

charlotte has taken up pro-wrestling. she must be watching it while i'm gone in the mornings. she has some excellent moves. some disturbing holds. some violent tendencies. due to charlotte's non-opposable thumbs, i believe festus will be spared the "chair across the shoulders" technique, but it's a small concession.

she has discovered that he can't fight back. that when he slaps her, it does not sting. and so, she spends a considerable amount of time sniping at him: she bites his tail, tries to trip him by nipping his ankles, chomps down on his ears. she's a mean little cuss. and she doesn't want to just prove that she can trounce him. she wants to bathe in the glory of her "kill" by licking him. it would be sweet if my cats curled up in a chair together and groomed one another from time to time. this is a mugging gone wild.

and festus will fight back, will chase her all over the place. but once they meet in a clash of fur and feet, he loses, paws down. he is no match for the woman in his life.

***

i've discovered where a few of the hours-per-week have been going. i spend more time than i ought on this new personal wiki thing. i've long had characters etc in a hyperlinked word file. and i've long had an html-ed to death series of pages for the world. but my new goal is to incorporate them into a wiki. it's time consuming. but fun.

and that's all for now.

love and peace