Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

My West Coast friend called and cancelled our dinner plans because she wound up with two flat tires and is getting towed from Bowie to Rockville. I'm guessing that two flats at once, with bent rims (which she mentioned on the phone), means a womdigious pothole.

Which means that in mid-March, the February snow is still having eitful[1] effects on my plans. Rough winter.

Oops. The footnote is longer than the rest of the entry again. I've got to be more careful of that.

[1] "Eit" is a word that originated at MIT and has spread even as its meaning has shifted. (I learned it from Elbows, with its modern meanings.) As a noun, it basically means "a bad/unfortunate thing". As an interjection, it's kind of like "Alas! Woe!" but with possibly more exclamation points (or more likely, a monosyllabic profanity), or can be interpreted as the sound of the universe screwing you over. As a verb, it more or less means "to cause misfortune to". But all of these translations fail to convey all the nuances of "eit" (which shift depending on context and tone of voice), which is why the word gets used despite all of these near synonyms. Hang out with folks who use the word long enough, and you'll soon grok[2] "eit". For what it's worth, the near-antonym of "eit" is "pock", which is the sound of the pinball game of the universe giving you a free ball. I've only ever heard "pock" used as an interjection, or rarely as a noun meaning "an event that made me say 'pock'". And no, I didn't make up either of these words -- ask any of the folks on susboid.

[2] I don't really have to translate "grok", do I? I've never gotten around to reading the novel it's from (uh, Stranger In A Strange Land, right??) but I've been using the word since the 1970s.