clew, snib, noggin, lunule, greebles, zarf

Lovely collection of obscure words for small technical bits of thing, over at Making Light. A snib is the little knob you click to lock a Yale lock open or closed from the inside. I am also partial to jot and tittle, the actual derivation of which I never knew. (Respectively, the smallest letter of an alphabet, and the dot on an i or j). Also, nurnies and greebles made my day. Pobbles also ran. Edward Lear would be proud.

I think, cautiously, that barring one rather late Honours dissertation and a sudden unexpected Masters external examining to the solar plexus¹, I have this day finished the marking. Possibly all of the marking ever, which is simultaneously a worrying and a horrible thought. Although, given some of the the incredibly inane atrocities inflicted on an unsuspecting Sheri Tepper, not that horrible. Nonetheless, am severely drowning my sorrows in Season 2 of Farscape. Mmmm, John Crichton. (jo&stv, don't lend Season 1 to dragonroost just yet, I forgot to put Disc 6 back in the case before I returned it. Don't shoot me!)

In other news, since our wayward charlady, Phantom!Lizzie, has not yet reappeared, we today found a new one. The house is actually clean for the first time in months. The new lady is a small energetic dynamo person, and does weird and unlikely things like cleaning windowsills and the grubby corners of the kitchen floor. Disturbing those historic layers of grime will undoubtedly summon Phantom!Lizzie from whatever dimension she's currently occupying, but I think I might chalk a few quick symbols and re-banish her.

Last Night I Dreamed: I was buying quantities of yarn from a knitting store in a larney mansion on a hill somewhere. Tea was served, in fine bone china cups. Then the stormtroopers kicked down the door.

¹ Also, in a bizarre case of morphic resonance, on Edward Lear.