donutsweeper | (no subject)

(no subject)

As a kid I heard Yiddish phrases and words now and again. My grandparents had grown up in New York City speaking it fluently (to the extent that for one the first time they'd ever heard English was their first day of school) and my parents understood it quite well, although spoke it only occasionally.

One phrase I'd heard often was hak maer nish keyn tshaynik (האַק מיר ניט קיין טשײַניק) which I'd learned meant what would be politely translated as 'stop talking nonsense' but really was more along the lines of 'you’re driving me crazy, leave me alone.'

Today I learned it literally translates as 'stop banging my teapot.'

I love language.

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Your mom is awesome.

All in all I'm a wimp when it comes to driving, I applaud her!

I have to say that I'm the wimp. I'm not learning to drive until at least my 30's. And all the bus routes in this neighborhood make it pretty easy to make that choice.

Ah, you are lucky then! The mass transit where I am now is pretty terrible. Luckily, in general I can avoid rush hour and super busy roads when I need to go places.

I'm more inclined towards getting a motorcycle license and a Vespa. If I drive the way I walk, I'll be a pretty terrible driver. I'm kinda absent-minded and tend to walk towards poles and any phallic-looking objects sticking out of the ground. I veer at the last second, so a motorcycle-type vehicle might be better for me.

I've never ridden either. They look fun though. BUT WEAR A HELMET!!!

Absolutely. I'm sure everyone I'm related to will fuss like hell. We're all fussy naggers. Should be safe enough though. Vespas aren't very fast.

Edited 2012-06-03 03:14 (UTC)

fussy nagging = they love you :)

Oh, I know they do but fussy nagging x 12 = smothering and they are pretty relentless. I have a lot of siblings and aunts and uncles. There's my grandmothers too. My parents and little sister are off on vacation right now so my brother and I are the only ones home. My aunts and grandmas check on me every night to make sure I eat dinner. My older sister texts me cooking instructions. It's pretty clear that I don't know how to cook much since my mom was trying to teach me to cook dinner a few nights ago in the communal kitchen and my aunts bore witness to the whole embarrassing thing.

But there's still a ton of leftovers left in the fridge though. And I can make eggs and potatoes and steam veggies. I never experienced the college dorm living thing anyway. This will be my substitute.

Ah families. Such fun. :)

The proximity makes the nagging very convenient for them. We all live in the same building. Moving out is financially impossible though, as if it ever were.

They are fun though, especially at weddings. My dad and brother both got stinking drunk at the last one and weren't allowed to drive. So my mom drove my older sister home and it's very late and she's very unfamiliar with the area and the narrow weaving highway we were on, and my dad and brother were both giving her loud advice and directions in the minivan and my little sister and I just sat quietly in the back listening to the whole fiasco. It was hilarious.

Do you have much family living close to you?

Heee, I bet you and your sister had a BLAST listening to it all!

I have a small family and we're not terribly close. My parents retired out here to be closer to my kids and we see them every couple of months or slightly more frequently. My sister wound up out here too, but I never see her other than holidays. My (small) extended family is all in NY and I rarely see (a few times this past decade) and one living grandparent who is in FL and I never see. My husband has family here and on either coast, but there's a lot of bad blood and when we get together it's unpleasant.

We're the quiet ones of the bunch. And it was loud in that tiny space and we didn't want to add to it. It's funny hearing them insist they're not drunk and no, they're not being loud. My brother would die before he would admit that he's just like dad. Including the volume problem. And the smoking. And the penchant for driving slightly drunk. And the abysmal temper. Even their footsteps at night sound the same. And the gadget fixation, which I also have.

gadgets are GOOD

I know, but they're so expensive. I got obsessed with ebook readers when they first came out and got several over the years just to try them out but my favorites are still my first loves, the Bebook One and Mini. They're pretty awful at formatting pdf files but they format html files pretty decently. I've been saving fanfic since I was a teenager and most of it in its original html files and I still do that now.

My first ebook reader was the original Sony Reader and I absolutely hated it. It load every ebook in my SD card and that took forever; it would use the title inside the files instead of the file names themselves; and it wouldn't show them in the folders I organized them in.

I was so happy when I found out about the Bebook that I didn't mind buying it from overseas. It reads most of the formats ebooks come in and it's so simple compared to the Sony Reader yet there's so many options for the html formatting.

I've tried the Pocketbook 360. It's pretty and it uses microSD cards but it feels really awful and unintuitive; all the buttons feel like they're in the wrong place.

I've tried the Bebook Neo but the battery drained awfully fast compared to the original Bebooks because of the Wi-Fi option.

I never tried the Kindle though, because it doesn't use external storage.

I love talking ebook readers as you can see.

I read all the time on my ipod touch, but that's as far as I've gotten into the ebook category. Although I use it primarily for fanfiction or old, out of copyright books from Project Gutenberg.

I love gadgets, but, like you said, there's that money issue. I'd rather go without than go into debt.

I wished I had that kind of sense a few years ago. Then I would have sold the other ebook readers on ebay instead of giving them to my siblings.

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