Daily post

Sleep: 11:30pm to 4am, 5:30am to 9am, 9:30am to 10:30am

Pain: 6

Weather: clear, 48F, 70% humidity, high 64F

Daily BPAL: EGG NOG 2007
Description: Sweet brandy, dark rum, heavy cream, sugar, and a dash of nutmeg.
In bottle: Egg nog, heavy on the rum, with a hint of nutmeg
On me: Egg nog, light on the rum, no nutmeg. Definitely better in the bottle.

Daily Tarot: Page of Swords: The approach of an unexpected challenge, to be met with clear thought and just action. A person filled with an eager appetite for all matters of mind and logic. The gathering of information through unfaltering vigilance, careful examination, and subtle spycraft. The use of reason or eloquent speech to penetrate the veil of confusion and cut to the heart of the matter.

Reading:
Lives of Themistocles, Pericles, Aristides, Alcibiades, and Coriolanus, Demosthenes, and Cicero, Caesar and Antony by Plutarch
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Saving Louisiana?: The Battle for Coastal Wetlands by Bill Streever
The General History of the (Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious) Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson (Daniel DeFoe?)
The Orphan's Tales Volume 2: In the Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherynne M. Valente
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

(no subject)

So last night I. and I saw Cloverfield. Pre-warned, we sat in the back and that was enough for me to be fine with the camera-work. It started out rather slow, but once things got going they *really* got going and it was great! I thought it was very well done.

Of course, then we came home and there were police all over the place because some guy had been caught trying to mug someone in my apartment parkinglot, right in front of my building. I. actually felt worried leaving me there, but I had to work today, and they'd already caught the guy, so eventually I convinced him I'd be fine and promised to lock my doors, which I did. Everything was fine, of course, but it's still kinda creepy. The area I live in is usually pretty crime-free.

Anyway, today I'm here at work, which is annoying because I'm *still* somewhat sick, but I switched my shift last week when I was *really* sick for this one, so there's not much I can do about it other than sit here for 6 hours hacking. Why is it that the cough is always the thing that lingers on for *weeks*?

Definitions

revetment: (n) 1. A retaining-wall (of masonry or other material) supporting the face of an earthen rampart or the side of a ditch.
2. A facing of masonry, concrete, sods, etc., supporting or protecting a bank or embankment.
3. A facing of stone or other hard material over a less durable substance.

peripatetic: (n) 1. A student or follower of Aristotle, an Aristotelian; the sect of such followers; (more generally) a scholastic philosopher.
2. A person who walks about; a traveller; an itinerant dealer or trader.
3. Movements to and fro or from place to place.

barathrum: (n) 1. A pit, gulf.
2. A deep pit at Athens, into which criminals condemned to death were thrown.
3. The abyss, hell.
4. An insatiable extortioner or glutton.

judicature: (n) 1. The action of judging; administration of justice by duly constituted courts; judicial process. Often in phrase 'court of judicature'.
2. The office, function, or authority of a judge; a judge's term of office.
3. The extent of the jurisdiction of the judge, and of the court in which he sits to render justice.
4. A body of judges or persons having judicial power; a court of justice; a legal tribunal, or such tribunals collectively.
5. Mental judgement; formation or authoritative expression of opinion; criticism.
6. The quality of being judicial (as opposed to moral).

servitour: (n) 1. A (male) personal or domestic attendant (in early use chiefly, one who waits at table); a man-servant.
2. A servant.
3. An attendant or caretaker in a church.
4. In Scotland: A person in a subordinate office or employment; an assistant in a school; an apprentice, spec. a lawyer's apprentice or clerk.
5. An official or semi-official title of certain officers, e.g. of the Royal Household, or municipal bodies. 'servitor of bills': a tipstaff of the court of King's Bench.
6. A military attendant, a squire or page.
7. A lover.
8. One who serves in war; a soldier; specifically one of a class of persons to whom lands were assigned in Ulster in the reign of James I, as having served in a military or civil office in Ireland.
9. In certain colleges, one of a class of undergraduate members who received their lodging and most of their board free, and were excused lecture fees.
10. In Glass-making: An assistant to a master workman; Now specifically as the designation of the second of the men composing a ‘chair’.

tipstaff: (n) 1. A staff with a tip or cap of metal, carried as a badge by certain officials
2. Used for ‘stilts’
3. An official carrying a tipped staff; specifically a sheriff's officer, bailiff, constable; an officer appointed to wait upon a court in session; a court crier or usher.

cartouche: (n) 1. A roll or case of paper, parchment, etc., containing the charge of powder and shot for a gun or pistol; a cartridge. Also, in Pyrotechnics, the case containing the inflammable materials in some fireworks.
2. A case of wood, pasteboard, etc., containing iron balls, to be fired from a cannon or howitzer.
3. A cartridge-box.
4. A ticket of leave or dismission given to a soldier.
5. A corbel, mutule, or modillion.
6. Any ornament in the form of a scroll, as the volute of an Ionic capital.
7. A tablet for an inscription or for ornament, representing a sheet of paper with the ends rolled up; a drawing or figure of the same, for the title of a map, or the like; a drawn framing of an engraving, etc.
8. In Heraldry: The oval escutcheon of the Pope and ‘churchmen of noble descent’.
9. In Archaeology: Name given to the oval or oblong figures in Egyptian hieroglyphics, inclosing characters expressing royal or divine names or titles.

modillion: (n) In Architecture: Any of a series of projecting brackets placed on the underside of the corona of the cornice in the Corinthian, Composite, and (less commonly) the Roman Ionic orders; also in extended use.

echolalia: (n) 1. In Pathology: The meaningless repetition of words and phrases.
2. In Educational Psychology: The repetition of words and phrases by a child that is learning to speak.
3. A depreciatory term for a succession of sounds in poetry which subordinates sense to sound.

lateen: (n) Short for lateen sail: a triangular sail suspended by a long yard at an angle of about 45 degrees to the mast.
(adj) Hence, belonging to or having such a rig.

taffrail: (n) The aftermost portion of the poop-rail of a ship.

copra: (n) The dried kernel of the coco-nut, prepared and exported for the expression of coco-nut oil.

uxorious: (adj) 1. Of persons: Dotingly or submissively fond of a wife; devotedly attached to a wife.
2. Of actions, etc.: Marked or characterized by excessive affection for one's wife.

martello: (n) In full Martello tower. A small circular fort with thick stone walls, esp. any of those erected in the British Isles as a coastal defence during the Napoleonic Wars. Also in extended use.

louvre/louver: (n) 1. A domed turret-like erection on the roof of the hall or other apartment in a mediæval building with lateral openings for the passage of smoke or the admission of light.
2. A similar erection serving as a dovecote.
3. A hole in a roof for the passage of smoke; a chimney.
4. Chiefly pl. An arrangement of sloping boards, laths or slips of glass overlapping each other, so as to admit air, but exclude rain. Originally, such a contrivance as used to close the apertures of a ‘louvre’ (sense 1). Also used for other purposes, e.g. to deflect air issuing from an opening or to prevent the direct passage of light through it. Also, an individual slat or strip of such an arrangement.

erg: (n) 1. In Physics: A unit of work or energy; the amount of work done when a force of one dyne moves its point of application one centimetre in the direction of the force.
2. A type of desert area in the Sahara consisting of shifting sand dunes.

dyne: (n) The unit of force in the centimetre-gramme-second (C.G.S.) system, i.e. a unit equivalent to that force which, acting for one second on a mass of one gramme, gives it a velocity of one centimetre per second.

bolus: (n) 1. In Medicine: A medicine of round shape adapted for swallowing, larger than an ordinary pill. (Often used somewhat contemptuously.)
2. A single dose of a drug, contrast medium, etc., introduced rapidly into a blood-vessel.
3. A small rounded mass of any substance.
4. The name of several kinds of fine, compact, earthy, or unctuous clay, usually of a yellow, red, or brown colour due to the presence of iron oxide.

rococo: (adj) 1. Old-fashioned, antiquated.
2. Of furniture or architecture: Having the characteristics of Louis Quatorze or Louis Quinze workmanship, such as conventional shell- and scroll-work and meaningless decoration; excessively or tastelessly florid or ornate. Also of interior decoration.

lignin: (n) 1. An organic substance, forming the essential part of woody fibre.
2. 'Lignin-dynamite’, as the wood sawdust saturated with nitro-glycerine is called.

More definitions

tierce: (n) 1. A third part
2. The third hour of the canonical day, ending at 9 a.m.; also, the period from 9 a.m. till noon.
3. An old measure of capacity equivalent to one third of a pipe (usually 42 gallons old wine measure, but varying for different commodities); also a cask or vessel holding this quantity, usually of wine, but also of various kinds of provisions or other goods (e.g. beef, pork, salmon, coffee, honey, sugar, tallow, tobacco); also such a cask with its contents.
4. A band or company of soldiers.

animadvert: (v) 1. To turn the mind or attention to, pay attention or attend to, observe.
2. To take note, observe, remark, consider, bethink oneself.
3. To turn the attention officially or judicially, take legal cognizance of anything deserving of chastisement or censure; hence, to proceed by way of punishment or censure.
4. To comment critically (on), to utter criticism (usually of an adverse kind); to express censure or blame.

parrel: (n) A sliding band of rope or metal attaching a spar or sail to a mast while allowing it vertical movement.

riparian: (adj) 1. Of, pertaining to, or situated on, the banks of a river; riverine.
2. In Anatomy: Of or pertaining to a ripa in the ependyma of the brain.

prytaneum: (n) 1. The public hall of a Greek state or city, in which a sacred fire was kept burning; esp. (in ancient Athens) the hall in which distinguished citizens, foreign ambassadors, etc., were entertained at public expense.
2. In ancient Athens: the presiding division of the Council of Five Hundred; the prytanes collectively.
3. In extended use: a large public building; a place where people of note are assembled.

collectanea: (n) Passages, remarks, etc., collected from various sources; a collection of passages, a miscellany.

grab: (n) A large coasting-vessel, drawing very little water, built with a prow and usually two-masted, used in the East.

periagua/pettiaugua: (n) 1. A long, narrow canoe of a type chiefly found in Central and South America, hollowed from the trunk of a single tree or from the trunks of two trees fastened together.
2. An open flat-bottomed schooner-rigged vessel or two-masted sailing barge, of a type used in North America and the Caribbean.

shallop: (n) 1. A large, heavy boat, fitted with one or more masts and carrying fore-and-aft or lug sails and sometimes furnished with guns; a sloop.
2. A boat, propelled by oars or by a sail, for use in shallow waters or as a means of effecting communication between, or landings from, vessels of a large size, a dinghy.

yawl: (n) 1. A ship's boat resembling a pinnace, but somewhat smaller, usually with four or six oars.
2. A small sailing-boat of the cutter class, with a jigger.
3. A small kind of fishing-boat.

cochineal: (n) 1. A dye-stuff consisting of the dried bodies of the insect Coccus cacti, which is found on several species of cactus in Mexico and elsewhere. It is used for making carmine, and as a brilliant scarlet dye; also in medicine as an antispasmodic, etc.
2. The colour of cochineal-dye, scarlet.
3. The insect (Coccus cacti) which produces this dye.

prandial: (adj) Of or relating to dinner or dining; relating to or occurring during a meal.