"...we give each other chocolates & roses the color of blood because birds mate in April."

Huh. I thought I was going to rejoin the world today, but given the ice storm (which doesn't seem to have hit this side of DC) and the fact that everything seems to be closed, it's possible that won't be the case. We shall see.

In the mean time, happy valentine's day. (there would be related pictures if my camera had not run off and disappeared...) You will just have to be satisfied by the knowledge that I have once again not sent anybody poisoned chocolates.

Word for the day:

"enislement" (which I surmise to mean the making of something into an island, although unsurprisingly my dictionary is completely mystified by it)

Some quite long time ago (elementary school, though I'm not certain when) I read a book by Laurence Yep where the narrator was a dragon-- I totally forget the title, and I think there were several sequels which I didn't read, but the point is that there was an inland sea (which had dried up... there was some plot stuff about salt flats) that I misread as being an "island sea." And the connotations of that, even once I sorted out my mistake, continue to fascinate me. It's not too different, really-- land surrounded by water, or water surrounded by land, a pocket of ocean tucked into the middle of a continent, isolating the sea creatures the same way the galapogos wildlife is cut off from other land.

This miscellaneous thought brought to through the joint agency of John Fowles and grauwulf.