Speaking of things that irritate me

Mr. Broad Street Well has come back and told me that the pump was "of course" a well because "they didn't have piped water in those days".

I don't know if he thinks they didn't have aqueducts in Europe yet or if he simply thinks that London didn't have any municipal water system other than local wells, but either way he's wrong. The first statement is extremely wrong, and the second is just very wrong - but still, he's wrong and I have told him so. One of the ways we know our ancestors drank water is because they spent a great deal of money building and maintaining infrastructure to pipe water in to crowded areas.

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Like everybody else, I glanced up tonight

and saw how close Mars and the moon are tonight. It's stunning, really.

Lookups for the word "schadenfreude" have increased

Over 30,000% recently.

I tell you, one of the few real joys of the past four years is looking at the Merriam-Webster's Trending Words list. I've never been sure if they're actually trending words or if MW likes to troll the Right.

As noted at the website, when we're speaking English, it's an English-language word. I say this because every so often I come across somebody who insists that schadenfreude is an untranslateable German word with no English equivalent, and the joke's on them because the English word for schadenfreude is schadenfreude. Borrowings count. (Also, all human languages can express the same concepts, and no concept is really untranslateable, though some might require a bit of extra chatter to get across languages.)

*frowns*

When I optimistically made this optometrist appointment for the whole family on the first available date, I forgot to double check the calendar and schedule around the Jewish holidays.

If I'd remembered, I probably would have made this appointment for a later date. I think I'm going to have to reschedule, because of course people would get lax about congregating for community worship on some of the most important holidays of the year after our covid numbers had dropped so low.

If I don't like these numbers now, I don't think I'll like them any better in two weeks. Damn, damn, damn. After the Jewish holidays comes Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and then you're in the Christmas rush - ugh. If we don't go now, none of us is getting our eyes checked until at least the end of January, I can see it now.

Well, I'm going to not look at all for the next seven days and then decide.