Listening to: Meat Loaf- Bat Out of Hell (1 & 2)
Reading: The Reef Nora Roberts
Weather: 70 sunny
Trivia: In an attempt to halt the spread of bubonic plague, how did
medieval practices actually make it spread faster?
By killing all the cats. One of the chief ways that the plague was spread was for an individual to be bitten by an infected flea. While cats were carriers of fleas, by far the worse offender was the rat. People of the time presumed felines to be demonic familiars and would, typically, round up all of the local population and burn them at the first sign of plague symptoms. Naturally, this left nearly zero controls on the rat population which only hastened the spread of the plague. At things worsened, city leaders would expand their efforts and begin to burn heretics and the mad, but that's another story altogether.
Cool word: rhabdomancy [n. RAB-duh-man-see]
If you tell fortunes by casting sticks or rods, or if you seek out water or underground ores using a rod or a stick, then you practice rhabdomancy. Seeking out water or ore with a stick is also known as dowsing. The first part of the word comes from the Greek rhabdos (rod). The second part is from the Greek -manteia (-mancy), a suffix form of manteuesthai (to prophecy), which was derived from mantis (seer, prophet). The insect called the praying mantis (or mantid) also got its name from the same source, because of the "prayerful" way it holds its forelegs while waiting to catch prey, similar to the way a seer might pose while awaiting a vision.
Here are more ways to tell fortunes:
oneiromancy: from dreams
lithomancy: from the patterns of scattered stones
spodomancy: from the patterns of ashes
halomancy: from spilled salt
bibliomancy: from random pages in a book
rhapsodomancy: from random pages in a poetry book
Happy Halloween
Happy Halloween!!
I love how people decorate their houses for this holiday now. Al sorts of orange lights, pumpkins, skeletons, grave stones, ghosts, flashing light and scary sounds were found on the way to my brother’s house.
I know I wasn’t supposed to be on tick-or-treat duty over there today, but he got called away to Pittsburgh this morning, and my sister in law was in a panic. So once again I went over to give out candy and house sit, so she could take Keith out. Matilda went with some neighborhood friends who weren’t staying out quite as long as Keith intended.
Keith was the grim reaper, and Matilda was Dorothy. That’s about a far apart as you can get.
Some of the costumes that appeared at the door were great. There was one Harry Potter, and there were some very cute little, little kids. The gross award goes to one of Keith’s friends who was a dead hockey player. He had what looked like half of a hockey puck imbedded in his forehead, and had all sorts of fake blood painted on his face and clothing. It was disgusting.
The kid was thrilled that I told him so.
Other than being Chief Candy-giver-outer, I had another uneventful day.
I spent two hours at the laundromat this morning (it was so hot, the temperature outside was in the high sixties at 8.30!). There was the usual cast of thousands there, and only one who seemed lost as to what to do. He’d also forgotten to change his watch and was practically breaking down the door of the supermarket, trying to get in. He though it was 9.15, when it was only 8.15.
I took about two hours to get the laundry done this time, mainly because I had extra sheets and blankets to wash (courtesy of my cat’s throwing up in irritating places).
I just hate having to go to the laundromat. Period.
The rest of the day was spent putzing, playing on the computer, reading magazines and watching football. (Just the Patriot’s game, though.) I couldn’t stand watching the coverage of the plane crash. Once again, because it happened locally, it’s all crash all the time. It’s pointless to watch a futile and frustrating search, knowing damn well that with the information given no one could have survived.
I hate imagining the terror of the people on board and the anguish of those left behind.
I may have had Friday off, but these days have just flown by. I hate to see the weekend end.
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