SPATULAs, Pad Thai, and Adverbials

So, I suppose I should write an update on ye olde SPATULA.  I know you all can't actually see them, but I want you to know that there are actually two posts lurking about in my Blogger Closet that were meant to be SPATULA updates.  I just never finished them.  I do that a lot.  I think there are some 20 ish posts I have here published on my blog, but there are about 45 total posts in the closet.  I should go through and clean that place out.  It's getting musty and I'm pretty sure there are spiders...

hands down...most awesome spatula on earth.

Anyway.  SPATULA.  So, Dr. Parry was fabulous and worked so well with me the entire time we were getting my project proposal ready.  He never shook his head and said "What was I thinking?  Clearly you're not cut out to do projects with the adults..." and for that I was grateful.  In the end I did manage to get my proposal finished and submitted on time.   I settled on the immensely clever and creative title of " Not the Hero We Deserved, But the Hero We Needed." Because when in doubt, just rip off a quote from your source material.  Except that I really like that speech Inspector Gordon gives there at the end of that movie.  As for the project itself, I'm supposed to be doing research right now.  The thing is, they don't actually tell us if we've gotten the grant till February.  Not that I really need the money to do this project, really.  Which is why I'm supposed to be doing research right now regardless.  I guess if I ever really need to write a paper for one of my classes I'll really get into that research.  Dr. Parry said if I find anything interesting he'd love to talk about it with me.  Bless him.  

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So I've decided that I'm embarking on a quest.  I want to find the best Thai food in the Provo/Salt Lake area.  Which is to say, I want to find the best Pad Thai in the area.  I always get the Pad Thai, which seems like the best way to evaluate the relative quality of each different place I go.  On that note, today after class I decided to go and try the Thai place I looked at every day on my way to Vivint.  It's called Spicy Thai and it's on University Ave. next door to Magleby's Fresh (whatever the heck that is...they advertise their breadsticks, which was odd enough I almost went in after my meal and requested to try them).  I'm sorry to say that I was not hugely impressed.  I got the impression that it was one of those "Dudes in the office need lunch" kind of places, specializing in fast, not horrible, "Thai" food (quotes being important indicators of the quality of the food).  

My plate did not look this good...

In following with a place that caters to people on timed lunch breaks, the food came very fast.  I'm all for eating expeditiously, but when my food gets to me too fast I'm likely to assume that it was just siting there somewhat like a hamburger from McDonald's, soaking up the rays of a luscious heat lamp.  I took that picture straight off their menu, but I'm afraid that my meal didn't look even that good.  And the food itself was...fine.  Bland and fine.  I am oddly picky about the texture of my noodles, and theirs were quite good, fully cooked, but firm rather than mushy.  But the sauce tasted like the same sauce I could buy at Target.  Nothing special at all.  I traditionally get a dish of lime to squeeze over my Pad Thai, but once I got my food I never really saw my waitress till I was nearly done, so no lime for me.  Which is a pity, because that little zing would have been really helpful.  I splurged and got a brownie and ice cream for dessert.  It was chewy and sort of fudgey, but the taste was odd.  It tasted like they used butter flavored Crisco actually.  Not my favorite.  Either use butter or use Crisco people.  Don't try to use both.  The price for the Pad Thai was pretty reasonable, however the brownie was not.  Overall rating would be 2.5 stars (who decided stars was a good way to rate restaurants?  makes no sense to me...).  Probably not a place I'll be going back to.

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This semester marks my first steps on the road to editorship.  I am taking Elang 223, Intro to Linguistics with Professor Oaks.  I love Prof. Oaks.  He is hilarious.  Today in class he said "Verbs are the dungeon masters of the sentence."  The other day he was talking about back formations, which is when people assume that someone who "edits" must be an "editor".  The word didn't exist till people just started saying it.  Tangentially, this is the basis of my favorite joke in Clue, when Col. Mustard asks Wadsworth what he does and Wadsworth says "I'm the butler...I buttle."  Anyway.  Prof. Oaks is telling us about back formations and he mentions that there is currently one coming into existence right now.  "Ush" as a back formed verb from "usher" is starting to be more and more common in popular usage.  As he is telling us to pay attention and listen for "ush" he suddenly exclaims "See?!  There are so many reasons not to give up on life!" 

Anyway, the point was not, actually, to talk about how ridiculous my professor is, but rather to explain that I think I am really going to love my editing minor.  I have loved everything in this class.  Today we talked about some of the basic parts of speech.  This is the stuff I thought I'd hate.  I always loathed grammar when I was in high school.  But that is one thing I can say unequivocally in favor of my two years in Russian class.  I took from that class a new-found love of grammar.  It's like a logic puzzle, trying to trace out the parts of speech.  In Russian it's all about word endings, but in English it's about syntax.  I'm signed up for two more linguistics classes next semester and I'm very excited for them.  One of them is a straight up grammar class, and the other is...oh gosh, I don't remember how he explained it to me, but I know that it was what he suggested when I asked him if there was a class just about morphology.  

And lastly I will leave you with this gem.  A great song and a great video.  Please enjoy!