Sunday Sundries, 182

1. AOTW: Me? For being a day late--and, probably, a dollar short? Aw, let's be generous: No AOTW this week--Easter and all ...

2. I finished one book this week--Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (2018) by Kathryn Harkup. Visitors to this site know that I am somewhat ... obsessed? ... with Mary Shelley, her novel, her other writing, her life, her family, her ... (In fact, in the next month (?) I hope to publish on Kindle Direct the memoir I've been working on since, oh, the Flood: Frankenstein Sundae).

Anyway, my dilatory writing habits have one grim consequence: New books keep coming out, and I sort of have to read them--both to keep up-to-date and to, you know, delay myself some more!

Harkup's book is a mixture of things I already knew (some, very well) and things I didn't know at all. Among the former? The details about Mary Shelley's life, the genesis of her most famous story, etc. Among the latter? The "life science" of her day and how so many things that Victor Frankenstein does while he's creating his creature are, we know now, patently impossible given the technology and understandings of the early 19th century (the book first appeared in 1818). One example: Victor takes months to assemble his creature from parts, but how did he preserve them? (Rot runs rampant in humans, living and dead, of course.)

Anyway, I learned a lot, took lots of notes, will try to weave into my memoir some of what I learned without appearing to be--even more than I already do--a pretentious jerk (a perpetual AOTW!).

3. We're happy that Netflix is now streaming the most recent complete season (No. 6) of Death in Paradise, a series with a predictable chain of events each week--but there is delight in that, at least for us. We love it when the time comes that the Inspector says Round up all the suspects--and, after a subordinate has done this, the Inspector goes around the room eliminating, damning. I know, I know: This is hardly novel. Still love it. (The older I get, the more comfort I find in predictability!)

4. Yesterday, we had a combination of Easter brunch and birthday celebration (for our younger grandson, Carson, who will be 9 tomorrow). Sourdough waffles. Fresh fruit. Lots of laughing. Hearing stories (they just got back from a spring-break week visiting the family of Steve's wife, Melissa, out in Arizona--a visit that allowed them, as well, to hit Disneyland after a bit of a drive). It was exactly a year ago that the older grandson, Logan, now 13, broke his leg--severely--while surfing on a Calif. beach; they returned to the site last week, and he waded into the surf--but did not (wisely! wisely!) take to the board again just yet. He's a brave lad--recovery was long and painful.

Oh, and while they were gone, we "bird-sat" for their parakeet, Jet. Joyce had parakeets throughout her girlhood (and even later, on into our marriage), so she was thrilled to have a feathered friend again. (Birds immediately like her--whereas, they seem to view me and see meal somehow written on me in some avian symbols.)

5. Early Thursday morning, Joyce and I will head out to Massachusetts for my mom's memorial service on April 7. (She died at 98 on March 10.) Will be a wrenching time for all of us ...

6. Last word: a word I liked recently from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from wordsmith.org

metathesis (muh-TATH-uh-sis)

noun:

1. The transposition of letters, sounds, or syllables in a word. Example: aks for ask.

2. In chemistry, double decomposition.

ETYMOLOGY: Via Latin from Greek metatithenai (to transpose), from meta- (among, after) + tithenai (to place). Earliest documented use: 1538.

USAGE: “As Caractacus, Cedric was the heroic British chieftain who rebelled against Roman rule. As Cerdic son of Cymbeline, Cedric by metathesis was the founder of the kingdom of Wessex.”

Philip Howard; Column; The Times (London, UK); Mar 10, 1995.