Oh look, it's Dietrich

It looks like Sockmas has struck, and I couldn't be more pleased. Or mystified.

For the past few days, small packages, each in the same sparkly lavender, silver and pale blue metallic wrapping, have appeared on my doorstep with my mail. The current tally:

One very fuzzy and loveable purple sock
One very sparkly thin purple sock
One rainbow-striped toe sock
One very fuzzy red and black striped sock
Three haiku about said socks

Note the number "one" before each socklike item. I also wonder why the fuzzy purple sock has no haiku attached.

Lone, fuzzy, purple
The first sock I received, in
Knitted mystery.

So I walk onto my porch after coming from the gym today, and what do I see but a long 1-800-Flowers box on the porch! Sure enough, the damn thing's addressed to me, and I enfold it in my arms along with the other bags and books and things I'm carrying. I open the door, and there in the hall is...another 1-800-Flowers box - this one even bigger!

So after two trips up the stairs, I delay gratification for a little while by tidying up and getting ready for my shower. Then, I open the boxes.

The littler one has a bunch of carnations called Moonshadows, which are of the deepest blue-violet hue I've ever seen. Gorgeous, and simple, and just wow. A card is attached, expressing elegant and heartfelt wishes from my favorite housecat/high priestess, catling. Much squeeage ensues.

I open the bigger box. Here, ensconced in much paper, each stem with a little water-filled stem-condom on it, are THREE DOZEN ROSES. Not one, not two ladies and gentlemen, but THREE. Three dozen. Thirty-six-freakin'-roses. They are gorgeous, and they easily fill the biggest vase in the house.

I open the card attached to the box. Where catling's had a little message and her name, this card just says:

"Nice boots."

Okay, people, fess up! I have my guesses, but my first one was wrong. I'll reserve my second guess to avoid embarrassment. Just come forward, put the gun down, and we can forget any of this happened. Or, you know, celebrate that it did!

(Incidentally, concrete is on his way to the Diesel with my present, which is apparently...more flowers. I am such, such, SUCH a lucky girl.)

Now, instead of just random word strings in spam, they're putting random LATIN word strings!

These lines appeared in the midst of the usual English lexigraphic rubble; anyone got a translation?


obsisteret aeris corpus, aeris huius, qui supra terram est, quominus

maneas, hoc considero. transcendi enim partes eius, quas habent et
ubi nisi apud te firma securitas? tristitia rebus amissis contabescit

non fuistit, verum quis dabit vobis? et si in alieno fideles non


nec vi nec insidiis leo et draco: neque enim respondebit illa nihil se

mecum effluxerant - forte duodecim anni - ex quo, ab undevicensimo

The question is not, "Can I succeed at this?"

The question is, "Do I want to?"

The question is not, "Do I do this because I can?"

The question is, "Do I do what my heart desires?"