I learned something today.

I belong to to the linguaphiles community because long ago I needed to know the plural for "anam cara" for a friend's wedding gift. It's Gaelic for soul mate. A very nice Irish person helped me with that.

Even though whenever I comment I seem to get flamed, I just can't leave it because it's so darned interesting. Today I hit paydirt. I was taught the first line of this little "poem" when I was a child. Someone asked about why "receive" and "believe" had opposite positions for I and E and people started posting the rules. Apparently there are extra lines that explain it best!

I before E except after C,
or when sounded like "ay" as in "neighbor" or "weigh"
... unless its weird.

Dreaded week - dreading my goodby luncheon

I shouldn't listen to Faten. I keep forgetting that she is quasi-royalty from Jordan and has no idea how the common people live.

She helped me pick out the restaurant for my luncheon today. It turns out that it's a really expensive place. T told me that and asked if we couldn't just have pizza. I was shocked and said, "Sure!" I told her Faten helped me pick it. "Faten," she repeated with understanding in her voice. But T didn't realize my lunch was including the other two contractors and the civil servants and we really don't have anyplace big enough for everyone. The place Faten suggested is the only place with a big enough room. The irony being, it's so expensive that most people probably won't come. At least, that's what I'm afraid of.

If it were affordable, we would have too many people to fit. In a place big enough, we won't need the space... maybe. We'll see.

I just hope the lunch menu is much cheaper than the dinner menu.

Ugh.