The semester is over and I haven't written about my Sanskrit class since September. Obviously, I've missed a few days of class in the last month, but not as many as you might believe, especially since much of my recovery was over the Thanksgiving break. So, what do I think of Sanskrit? I love it and find it fascinating. Most fascinating is the seemingly disparate script.

In the beginning of the class, we learned some particular characters that represented vowels, then some more for consonants, even some diacritical marks to form consonant-vowel combinations. But then, there was a wrinkle: consonants clustered together and formed some strange characters that tended to crush together in the space usually reserved for one character. Sometimes they squeezed next to each other; sometimes they stacked; sometimes they had a half form, different form, sideways form, or a completely new character (called a ligature). For example, the "ka" used roughly the same space as "kka", "ddhya", or "svbhri". But, the complexity was just beginning.

Sanskrit nouns decline. Not "decline" in the usually sense, but rather, linguistically, the words have declination, that is they are spelled differently depending on their number (singular, dual and plural) and usage in a particular sentence, or parts of speech, of which there are eight. Not to mention all nouns are one of three genders. Further, under certain, and common, cases entire words combine, in what is called external sandhi. Sandhi makes the sounds of the words flow into each other to make them more pronounceable, or poetic, even. (English has a rule that is very simlar to sandhi: a demonstrative "a" becomes an "an" before a word with a vowel sound. i.e. a tree / an apple.) Even a whole sentence may be written as a breathtaking collision of clustered sounds--an alphabetic train wreck. Added to this, there is no fixed word order, verbs can be dropped and tense can change often and abruptly. Disentangling individual words in a sentence, removing sandhi, and decrypting their parts of speech and meaning, can be quite a puzzle.

Thankfully, I love puzzles, but since you may not, I won't go on about the stunning complexities of Sanskrit grammar. The take-home final exam was to translate a 19-line story--a sort of Aesop's fable about a mouse that transformed into a tiger.

And, as if I even need to say: I'm taking Sanskrit 2 next semester.

Posted by David | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been a tough couple of weeks. David's reaction to the Plavix was so severe he ended up in the ER not once, but twice. Last Tuesday was especially bad because his hands and wrists were so swollen I got to feed him breakfast. He slept and moaned a lot and even without the miserable, dejected look on his face it was obvious he was feeling hideous because he didn't tease me all day! It was especially painful because it's the end of the semester and I had four final papers due, which I couldn't bring myself to care about at all. Somehow school seems so much less important than it did at the beginning of the semester. But, David's better and the semester is over!

Of course, as soon as David was able to move his fingers without intense pain he started working on our new website design. This is something he's had in the works for a month, now, but those pesky health problems kept getting in the way. Despite his deeply perfectionist nature he's decided he's done with the first round of improvements, though he still has all sorts of neat things planned. I, of course, have nothing to do with it, except to wander by while he's working on it and announce very seriously that I don't like the color scheme. I'm so helpful. You can be helpful too and tell us if it works on all browsers. We adore Firefox, and David's quite taken with Opera, but Explorer drives him absolutely insane. It's not coded at all properly, so while you can write all sorts of neat code to look cool in other browsers, it looks like crap on Explorer. Not that I understand the coding bit at all, but the looking good (or not) I definitely do, and Explorer has serious drawbacks.

At any rate, David's feeling all better, we've been running a couple times and we're very excited about being at home in Boise for the holidays and Vegas for New Year's. Well, actually being in Las Vegas isn't so exciting, but getting to see David's family is. We've been talking about camping New Year's eve, but I think it might be too cold, even with all our fancy gear. Maybe we'll just watch movies, instead.

Posted by Leah | Permalink | Comments (1)

This morning was a beautiful time for a walk: the air crisp and clear, lit with an orange sunrise; birds and squirrels out and about; all of which I noticed while walking to the Emergency Room with impressively swollen left eye lids, a pair of Fat Albert lips and a full body rash. My eye was really more bugged-out than swollen, as though I'd been in a fight, but without black and blue marks, nor the interesting story. Last night, I had a couple of itchy bumps on my elbow, which I discounted as bug bites. Early this morning, it was fairly obvious those "bites", which had multiplied over most of my body, were symptoms of an allergic reaction. Leah checked online (the great source of truthiness) and read that swollen lips can be associated with a swollen throat and requires emergency attention. At the hospital, I received a few drugs, including a steroid and the swelling dissipated. I was released after three hours.

Apparently, I'm allergic to a post-operative anti-platelet drug, Plavix, which I've been taking for about two week. The reason I haven't had a reaction before today is unclear. I plan to ask the cardiologist tomorrow, at my routine follow-up appointment. After that I will have several other doctor visits later this week. In the meantime, I have a new drug regiment, and aside from fatigue, possibly due to the loss of 6 more vials of my blood, I feel fine.

Today's complications should not diminish a small victory in my recovery: with the doctor's consent, I ran yesterday afternoon. Leah and I loped along our regular route for 40 minutes, granted, in 5 minute stretches spaced with 2 minute walks. I felt fine (no chest pains!), and plan to go again tomorrow...maybe.

Posted by David | Permalink | Comments (2)