Quickly while I can

Where does the time go? In my case, at least some of it went to a back injury on Saturday. I picked something up (a four-year-old) as I ought not to have (I forgot just how limp a four-year-old can get when he doesn't want to be picked up) and hurt my back. I've never done that before. Aging is an interesting process...

I'm knitting, truly I am. I spent all day Sunday sitting on the couch with a hot water bottle on my back, a book on my lap, and knitting in my hands. I finished the book, and I finished the second sleeve on Elektra. I also picked up the stitches to knit the right front panel. Once I'm done with that (no color changes, hooray! so this is actual meeting knitting again), and the second front panel, then it's just the collar and the weaving in of endless ends.
I don't know if you can see what's happening there, but that's the right sleeve I'm holding up. The big triangle that is the back of the sweater curves around underneath the arm, and that big blue patch is the start of the front panel. That front panel folds back when the jacket is worn. Trust me, it all works, and in hanging this about myself (as is increasingly possible as more of it is knitted), it would appear that I chose the right size and this is not going to be too big. But we'll see.

As a parting gift, I have an embarrassing story to share, but fair warning first, it involves both grammar and cursing. Are you ready?

In class today I was talking to my students about different kinds of affixes (prefixes, suffixes, you remember these things from eighth grade, right?), and I mentioned to them that there's a nifty kind of affix called an infix that is inserted right into the middle of a root. It's often hard to explain this one, I said, because English only has one. (Here's where I also warn my students about what's coming, because you should see their faces if I let the f-bomb rip when they aren't expecting it; somehow my warning that all language is data doesn't always sink in at the beginning of the semester.) The only infix in American English is "fuckin'", and it's used as an infix in things like "unbefuckinleivable", where it's inserted right into the middle of "unbelievable". British English can use "bloody" in the same way. So a student made a comment suggesting that this must be a recent change (it's not), to which I, without thinking, responded, "Oh, no. Fucking actually goes back a long way."

Lots of laughter. Followed by a very red-faced professor trying to retrieve the conversation and to keep it from turning to talk of the world's oldest profession. Some days you can't win for trying.