Today we were going to go to Halifax but we're not because there's a blizzard outside. The snow is very powdery and there is a lot of wind so it looks like someone put a thousand kilos of confectioner's sugar through an industrial strength blender.
That being the case, I've been trying to teach myself eleventh grade physics from a textbook, reading Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" (very good book, very bizarre too) and writing a few pages to my novel, Lost in Six Billion Dreams. I'm actually at a bit of a writer's block because I can't think of a word to describe the sound a string makes when you stretch it far enough. I wonder if it even exists. Douglas Adams, the author of Hitch Hicker's Guide to the Galaxy, once co-wrote a book called "The Meaning of Liff" that is a collection of made-up words for all those sorts of unnamed situations. For example, Kalami is the ancient eastern art of being able to fold maps up to their original state, and a boscastle is a pyramid of cans put right outside the entrance to a supermarket. Pierre and I have our own collection of words we use in our conversations, since we both suffer from a rare verbal disorder called Franglais.
Our words include Sarthusiasm: Sarcastic Enthusiasm, for ex. "I'm so exited we have band for another four hours!" and Wongling, the word to describe the way a tall pole sways back and forth in the wind.